Page 7 of Fractured Fang: Omega

“I can hardly believe it,” I said. If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up.

“Me neither. I feel like I’ve been waiting an eternity. I never thought I’d find my mate,” he said. He cupped my cheek with his hand. The touch was tentative but firm. “I’m not going anywhere. Unless this isn’t where you want to be, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. In a non-stalkerish fashion. There’s a lot I don’t know about you, mate. But I’m getting the vibe that you have concerns. Am I wrong in assuming that?”

He saw me. Not just what was on the outside but the true me. My mate saw me.

The accuracy of his statement startled me at first. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be hiding much from my mate, not that I would want to. But if he could read me this well after only knowing me for less than a day, what would it be like after a year or five or twenty? Would I be able to do the same, to truly see him? I wanted to. I wanted that for both of us.

I slapped his chest playfully.

“I’m fine.” And I was, at least more so than when I arrived. There were still things that needed to be worked out and arranged, but there was a glimmering hope I hadn’t had before. Fine was as good a word as any to describe my current state. “We’ll be together.”

“Yes, of course, we will.”

“I just… I’m not sure how to tell my parents.” People always thought of my parents as the perfect couple—the perfect parents. They were great in so many ways, but perfect? Not so much.

“What do you mean?” A little wrinkle formed between his eyes. “They are going to be so excited for you. For us.”

“I know,” I said, taking a step back again. I needed some space to breathe, to breathe air that wasn’t one hundred percent saturated with my mate’s scent. “I just… Can we keep this to ourselves? For a little while. I’m not rejecting you. Not even close. Things are really strained between my parents and me. We haven’t seen each other in years. When we talk, it’s all surface-level. And if I’m mated… they’re going to expect that I’m going to settle down and get a job within the pack, be useful.”

A ton of emotions flashed over Macs’s face, and I couldn’t tell what they were. His lips pursed as if he were thinking hard.

“What is it you want to do?” he asked, his voice very monotone, as if he were trying to avoid any emotion hitting it.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him about everything: college, my art, Levi, all of it. But something held me back. I sighed, letting out a long breath. “Paint,” I said. I wasn’t often asked what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t sure another shifter had ever asked me. I’d met plenty of people in the human world who wanted to pursue art. Many of them were the same as me, catching flack from their family for pursuing their passions.

“Paint what?” he asked. There was confusion in his voice but not contempt. “Like houses?”

“No. Like art and painting… anything, honestly. I paint a lot of wildlife.” If I had to pick one thing I was more drawn to than any other, that was it. But barely. I also loved buildings and people and sometimes just random designs.

“The reason I haven’t seen my family in several years is that I lived in the human world for a long time. I went to college and got a degree in art. My work sold pretty well, actually.” His eyes lit up with what I could only decipher as pride. My mate was proud of my skills.

“That’s amazing,” Macs said. “Can I see your work? Granted, I haven’t met many artists, or any, really. But I’ve always been drawn to it. When I was little, there was a time when I had to go with a human neighbor for a bit; I don’t even remember why now. I was really young. They took me to what I thought was a museum, but I now know it was just a local art sale. The paintings were like magic to me. It was like I was seeing through someone else’s eyes. I never forgot that day, and now… wow.”

“You don’t think it’s a silly waste of time? That it isn’t useful to the pack?” That was what I’d been told my entire life. My sketches didn’t put food on the table or warm the house, so they were not the best use of my time. All they did was steal time and resources from the pack.

“Anybody making a positive contribution to the pack is useful. Community isn’t built on hard work alone.”

“I wish my parents saw it that way. Anytime they caught me with a sketchbook as a kid, all I heard was, ‘stop doodling and get to work. Be useful.’” That was when I first started to hide things from them. I didn’t want to but losing my ability to create… wasn’t something I could do. It was who I was. Without it, I felt like a shell of myself, something they never understood.

“The pack you were born into wasn’t the best.”

“No, I suppose not.” It seemed fine at the time, but I hadn’t known any better. “I doubt it's very different anywhere else.”

Macs shook his head. “Things have changed in a lot of ways, Gabriel. True packs are not led by cruel alphas anymore. Most packs are like this one, or our neighbors Northbay and Greycoast. Their alphas are kind. They don’t control with teeth and claw but with compassion. The teeth only come out when necessary.”

While I found his words difficult to believe, I could hear his sincerity, he believed them to be true, which meant that I did too. But being kind wasn’t the same as accepting wolves who were different.

“Still. Packs require people to contribute. Chopping wood, learning a useful skill, cooking, building things, taking care of animals.” I’d heard the lecture enough times in my life to know the list by heart.

“Sure, but we must make time for things that make us happy. Otherwise, we’d all be miserable and burned out.”

“And you guys do that here?” It was a nice theory, but that didn’t mean it was something that was happening.

“Well, sure. Mae picked up one of those karaoke machines at a thrift store not too long ago, and you wouldn’t believe how much Franklin loves belting out tunes. Kate and Perry are obsessed with puzzles; anytime they have downtime, that’s what they’re working on. Wilder has started whittling wood. He’s terrible at it, but he’s trying. Granted, with three pups and a whole pack to run, he doesn’t have a ton of time to work on it.”

“I can’t believe you’re real,” I said.

“There’s more to your story, isn’t there?” Macs said, stepping closer to me. His eyes searched my face as if he were trying to find answers there. “I want to hear everything, but only when you’re ready. I’d love to hear more about what it was like going into the human world, and how you might have some pointers for us. We’re trying to figure out how to make some money within the human world. We haven’t quite figured it out yet. But we’re getting there.”

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