Page 1 of Our Haunted Omegas
Chapter One
Ambry
Moonscale London
I startled awake, sweat dripping down my nose. The bedroom smelled like panic. So much panic. Too much panic. The scent of the wolf sleeping next to me was barely detectable. His heart thrummed and mine followed its lead. This is why everyone thought we were married or at least more than what we were. More was such a suckass way to say it, though. It made friendship sound like so much less. Wasn’t that more really? We stayed friends while others our ages chose and divorced mates. Only a lucky handful had met their true-mates. Hell, most of their true-mates probably died in the war before they ever met them.
“Thanks a million, Ginger Barrell,”my wolf rolled his eyes inside his inner sanctum.“I think we’ve given them long enough. Wake him up. He hates it but I can’t do this. I’m about to rip the mattress apart and we can’t afford a new one and ---”
“Odie?” I muttered, patting around the bed for him before my wolf caught his panic attack.
“SHIT!” He shot up, back ramrod straight and his teeth bared to the world. “Fuck! Ambry!”
Sleep pulled at the edges of my mind but I forced myself upright and pulled him over. It was that time of the year again. The time when all the memories came back to fight us.
“I’ll go to work tonight,” I told him, trying and failing to count how many hours of sleep I’d managed.
“But your sword fighting class,” he sighed, his words almost a whimper crawling out of him.
“It doesn’t matter,” I shook my head.
Odell and I shared an overnight stocking job at my father’s grocery store. Any other employer would’ve told us to beat feet. One person per job. Only my father recalled what we did. So, in favor of us working at all, he let us share the job for decades. During the better times we took turns taking shifts but during bad times whoever had more get-up-and-go took over. It’s how Odie and I functioned since the middle of the war. The war against the hate group Mundanes Before Magic. I’d lost track of how long ago that was, but we were kids back then and the world blew up. When the dust settled my carrier was gone, but both Odie’s stepfather and mother were gone. He had never met his carrier who died during childbirth. So, he came to live with us and that was that. We’d taken each and every step of our life together since then. Together we almost made a whole functioning person.
“It does matter,” Odie flopped back onto the bed and groaned.
He still shook from the adrenaline post-traumatic stress sent broiling through his veins. I stroked his hair and decided it did matter that I missed the one thing I did without him but it didn’t matter more than him. The sword class would be there next week whether I attended it or not. For now, my job was to ensure Odie was still around next week too.
“Okay, it does,” I nodded. “But I’m okay with it. It’s Tuesday. It’ll be a slow overnight shift. Not many shoppers to get in the way.”
“I can do it” Odie said, running his fingers through his ashy brown hair.
His big brown eyes darted around the room as if the crazy bomb throwers lurked in some shadowy corner. I followed his gaze and my wolf sniffed the air. No one was there. We livedalone. The whole building was safe for now. Though, for now was the only safety anyone could ask for.
“Shhh….” I whispered to him. “I know you can do it but you shouldn’t have to like this. It’s okay. I don’t mind. Stocking or sword fighting. It’s all a workout. Only this workout makes us some money.”
My father would’ve paid our way forever if we had let him. He would’ve bought us a big house with a big yard and funded whatever hobbies we took to while outrunning the explosions still ringing in our ears. Only we had grown up. We needed something of our own and the bigger a territory was the more work it was to protect it. My wolf often joked that we kept the apartment easily because it was something so small that no one else wanted it. That was good enough for Odie and me. It was ours and we paid for it from our shared job.
“It’s ours until the dragons decide to fight again,” Odie whispered, picking up my stray thoughts over our link. We shouldn’t have had a link. We weren’t related and even though my dad took him in, he never merged onto our family link. Still, sometime during the war, before his parents ever died it happened. Therapists loved to dissect it but we refused to let them talk it in circles anymore. We were both omegas. We weren’t mates. Hadn’t even kissed in a romantic way. It was what the war gave us in exchange for everything it took from us.
“Then we’ll go to Spain and live near the bears or we’ll go stateside and live in that place that doesn’t use money. Loveville or whatever it’s called,” I grinned.
“Heartville,” Odie corrected me.
“Yeah, that one,” I nodded. “We’ll live where there are a lot more wolves.”
Odie let out a little chuckle and shifted into his grey wolf. I followed his lead and shifted too. In this form we could almost be mistaken for each other except I had a thick white patch offur on my chest, and he had a streak of white on his tail. I licked his ears until he drifted back off and caught a few more hours of sleep before his work alarm sounded off.
I startled awake for the second time that evening and tried to turn the alarm off before it woke Odie up but he was upright before I opened my eyes. He had shifted back to his human form while we slept. Seeing that his friend had gone my wolf gave up control too.
“I’m still going in,” I yawned. “Before you say I didn’t get enough sleep, neither did you.”
Odie nodded. Panic no longer clung to his scent. Shame replaced it. I let out a long sigh and scooted over to wrap my arms around him from the side. I rested my chin on his shoulder and my forehead against his cheek. I hated that his night terrors not only plagued him but also left him so embarrassed. Odie had nothing to be embarrassed about. He hadn’t started the war or thrown a single explosive. He hadn’t killed anyone. This wasn’t something we did to ourselves. It was done to us and we did our best to carry the scars around every day. Hell, most days we were fine. Except for summer. Summer sucked so many hairy donkey balls that I’d lost track of how many it gargled.
Odie let out a little chuckle and shook his head. His laughter soothed something inside me. He’d be okay while I was at work tonight. I laughed too and rested my forehead against his shoulder before kissing it and sliding out of the bed to head off for a shower.
“That’s why everyone thinks we’re married,” he teased.
“Do you care anymore?” I arched a brow and Odie shook his head.
