The day passes in a haze of ordinariness. No one asks him if he’s seen Ronmin so he does the same things that he ordinarily would.
He reads the reports coming in from his various assets across the packs in the regions and prepares reports of his own. He goes to the laundromat and gets groceries for the rest of the week.
He sees Garrett in the hallway and gives him a nod. The other alpha nods back like they’re nothing other than two men exchanging the same manly hellos that they always do.
The only difference is that when Hamish invites him over for a beer, he says ‘no’.
He’s back in his quarters by six in the evening and spends it on the sofa watching TV although if anyone were to ask him later what he’d watched, he couldn’t say.
Dan calls him just past midnight.
Otto answers the moment that the phone lights up. “You okay?”
“Yeah. It’s done.”
It’s done. Ronmin is gone.
“I think I’m going to be stuck here for the week though,” Dan continues. His voice is honey on the phone and the sound of it makes Otto relax into the sofa. “Everything okay your side?”
Everything okay. Otto doesn’t even know where to start with that. Ronmin’s death is going to stir up a hornet’s nest. The hornets just don’t know it yet. “Yeah, so far,” he says. “A week, huh?”
“I’ll be back Saturday at the latest. If it’s earlier, I’ll let you know,” Dan replies.
Otto tells him he loves him and hangs up the phone.
By Saturday, it’s clear that something is going on. The packhouse is a shifting paranoid mess of alphas giving each other suspicious looks and omegas reeking of fear even as they hide away from each other.
Otto catches a glimpse of Ronmin’s Warwick mate once. The young man has lost the dewy-eyed naivety that he had when Ronmin first brought him back from the Warwick farm.
Go home, boy, Otto thinks. No one would blame you.
Otto keeps his head under the radar. He follows his usual routine and shrugs his ‘don’t know’ whenever anyone asks him where Ronmin is.
His entire mind is focused on one narrow point in the future: six pm on Saturday afternoon.
He’s ready by eight in the morning: washed, brushed with his passport in his pocket and his quarter’s tidied, ready to be abandoned for whoever will be allocated it next.
He spends it sitting on his sofa with the TV on, leg jiggling as he looks at his phone every three minutes to check the phone.
Otto gets up off of the sofa at exactly five-forty and makes his way out of his quarters and down the hallway.
He spots Hamish in the distance but avoids him, ducking into a meeting room until the older man has gone past.
He wants to say goodbye to Hamish but he can’t. He wants to say goodbye to a lot of people, but none of them are worth the risk.
Not even his parents, although he’s not sure they’ll notice that he’s gone.
At five-fifty-five, he’s on the corner by the car wash and the Hungry Chicken diner. Dan arrives right on time, slowing the car just enough for Otto to get in.
Unlike Otto, Dan has luggage: a whole suitcase on the backseat. Otto hopes it has the sweatpants and t-shirt that sort of fit him.
Dan doesn’t kiss him when Otto gets in. It’s not safe for that yet.
Dan doesn’t kiss him at the airport either. Nor at the airport for the connecting flight they take after that or on the train out of the airport.
He doesn’t kiss him when they pick up a hire car or when they stop at a truck stop to fill up and eat.
Dan does kiss him when they get to the end of their journey and the tiny apartment on the beach. And then when Dan does kiss him, he doesn’t stop.
EPILOGUE
OTTO
collapsing packs and purple prose
Some places are more understanding of difference than others. Towsen Point is one of those places.
Otto lies back on the lounger by the beach and gives the book that Dan just handed him a dubious look. “I’m really not sure this is my kind of thing.”
“Just try it. One. Read one book. You might be surprised. If you don’t like it, I’ll never mention it again.”
“Okay, but only because I love you,” Otto replies. The book is slim with a purple framed cover. There’s an overly muscled male alpha on the front holding a male omega who appears to be in the process of falling given their positions.
They have a tiny apartment two blocks from the beach and have been down here every day since they arrived. Otto grew up near water but it’s new for Dan. He went straight from desert to city to mountain top, and until they arrived four months ago, he’d never even seen the sea.
Now, he swims every day, getting up way too early and coming back smelling of salt water and fresh air.
Otto opens the book and reads the first paragraph. Hoo boy. He can tell he’s not going to like this, but he promised Dan he’d try just one and he’s going to keep to that.
It’s become a tradition in just three months: this habit of getting the other to try something new.
It started with the sea swimming which Dan had to be cajoled into, and then it was shrimp which wasn’t a success. Then Otto discovered that Dan has fantastic taste in music and he’s slowly working his way through the recommended list of albums that Dan sent him.
Dan’s not as big a fan of Otto’s music, but he hasn’t mocked him on the musicals so Otto’s chalking that one up to a win.
Otto reads another page and grimaces. This is going to be another shrimp situation, he can tell.
“You hear anything new about back home?” he asks instead, as much out of the need to know as the desire to avoid the book.
Dan glances over at him from his own purple-covered volume. “Nothing new.” He shrugs. “This time I think all the chaos is a good thing.”
All around the surrounds of Fort Gosford, packs are taking advantage of Ronmin’s extended absence to wrest back the power he took from them. So far there have been no more outright pack wars, but there will be something. There always is, but for now, it seems that most packs are sick of fighting.
“And us?”
“Same,” Dan says. “And most of it’s true. They think we took the chance of Ronmin disappearing to disappear ourselves. Waiting that week after he was last seen was key, I think. Your friend Garrett’s done well with it. Instead of shutting his mouth, he’s been playing conspiracy theorist. Every one he’s come up with has been worse than that last. People are talking but no one’s believing.”
“I hope so,” Otto says. It’s the one thing he feels bad about: leaving someone else to clean up his mess or at least sweep it under the rug, but it seems that Garrett has taken that ball and run with it, even if he hasn’t done it in any way that Otto would have done.
Dan leans over and presses his lips against Otto’s shoulder. He grins. “You really don’t like the book, huh?”
“I really don’t. Sorry,” Otto admits. “Love stories really aren’t my thing.”
“Not any of them?”
Otto looks into Dan’s gray-green eyes and feels a tightening in his chest. Dan’s hair is getting bleached blond by the sun and his skin is darkening to a gold that makes him look like he’s some kind of sun god come down from the heavens.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Otto murmurs as he leans across for a kiss. “I really like this one.”
***
Other Books by this author
Turning the Tide
Book One of the River Beach Wolves series
It’s been three years since Eric Mercer finally took down the alpha leader of the River Beach pack, and he’s still struggling to hold onto power.
He got rid of one psychopath but a dozen more have turned their eyes towards them. The last thing he needs is for the omega he failed to return to River Beach. But he can’t say no. Eric did his best to protect the young omega but he didn’t do enough. Eric owes him an explanation at least. He just
hopes it won’t destroy the last shred of authority that he has.
Ben Schibold was just twenty-one when he was sold to Mason Reed and locked in an attic room for years on end: years that battered him both physically and mentally. Recovery has been a long hard road but now he needs answers. More than anything, he needs to know what happened to the child who was taken from him.
They both know that Ben’s trip back to River Beach will reopen old wounds, but what they’re not expecting is the resolution, redemption and romance that they’ve both been craving.
Turning the Tide is out now
Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle Page 80