by Aspen Grey
Three Ways to Destiny
SoCal Cuties — Book 5
Aspen Grey
Scent of the Author
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Also by Aspen Grey
Scarlet Mountain Pack Series
Texas Heat Series
Foxes of Scarlet Peak Series
SoCal Cuties Series
Contents
1. Ollie
2. Sid
3. Arthur
4. Ollie
5. Sid
6. Arthur
7. Ollie
8. Arthur
9. Ollie
10. Sid
11. Ollie
12. Sid
13. Arthur
14. Ollie
15. Sid
16. Arthur
17. Ollie
18. Sid
19. Arthur
20. Ollie
21. Sid
22. Arthur
23. Ollie
24. Sid
25. Arthur
26. Ollie
27. Sid
28. Ollie
29. Ollie
30. Sid
Epilogue
Scent of the Author
I. An Omega For Two
1. Max
Chapter One
Ollie
Friday night at The White Swallow in Pacific Beach and it was absolute mayhem. There were countless scents of countless alphas swirling around the cramped gay bar as a bachelor party of crazed, horny panther shifter bros hooted and hollered their asses off celebrating for one of them.
“Get him some sweet new omega ass before the wedding!”
“Hey, kid!” the douche was shouting in my direction. “Turn the lights off! It’s not cheating if the lights are off!”
“It’s not cheating if it’s a threesome!”
“It’s not cheating if you don’t admit to it!”
“It’s not cheating if you’re on a boat! Anybody got a boat?”
“It’s not cheating if you don’t make eye contact!” Someone roared. “Hit it from the back, big boy!”
Everyone cheered, raising their glasses and beers high into the air, spilling alcohol everywhere that I’d have to mop up later when everyone was gone.
“Big boy” was a bearded alpha named Troy, from what I could tell, who was missing at least two front teeth and looked like he probably played hockey. He was absolutely jacked, but beyond that was pretty repulsive. I was anything but interested in any of them, especially considering that all night the entire crew had been treating me like a piece of meat who’d been hired for their entertainment.
“You see the ass on this guy, Troy?” one of them said as I made my way through the throng with a tray of fresh beers. “Shit, goddamn!”
“I like that blond hair! Looks like cupid all grown up!”
“I think he might be here to try and discourage you from your marital vows!”
“Hands off, bitch,” another growled, tickling the back of my neck as I passed. “This one’s mine.”
“Hey!” I snapped as I began to unload their bottles onto the table. “I’m nobody’s, okay!”
“Ooooooh!” the group jeered in unison, putting their hands over their mouths like a bunch of goofy middle school boys who’d just told their first dirty joke. “And he’s got spunk!”
(For the film buffs out there, I felt a little bit like Spider in the movie Goodfellas—before Joe Pesci shot him, of course!)
“He could use some spunk!”
“Look at the size of him too! He can’t be more than five-foot-four!”
“Anyone need a spinner?!”
“Jesus Christ,” I grumbled as I took the empties, loaded them up onto the tray and made my way back over to the bar to seek refuge in the back room for at least a few minutes before the dickheads needed me again.
“Baby got back!” one of them called.
As an omega shifter, I 100 percent understood what good-looking human women went through when they went out and were around a bunch of testosterone-filled, booze-accelerated men with delusions of grandeur when it came to them getting lucky.
None of those guys had a chance with me, but it didn’t matter to them. They either a) thought they did or b) knew they didn’t, but didn’t care as it was all just part of their little “manly” game. I sighed heavily as I set down the tray behind the bar and put a hand up to Rusty, the old man who owned the bar, to cut him off at the pass.
“Five minutes,” I told him as I kicked open the door to the back room and stepped through.
Lord save me, I thought sarcastically as I leaned against the wall and took a deep breath. The air was stale and smelled of booze and dampness, but it was a welcome change from the overpowering stench of too many alpha scents out in the main bar area. I mean—as an omega—who doesn’t love the sweet smell of a sexy alpha? But when the smell is an alpha you aren’t into, and what’s worse, there’s a whole group of them, it can be a bit much. There was one area I envied humans.
Of course, I guess the humans still wore all kinds of stinky colognes and when too many of those got together the effect was similar, but shifter scents had a completely different effect than cologne had on humans.
The right shifter scent could tell you volumes about the man standing in front of you. You knew immediately if he was an alpha, beta or omega, whether that omega was in heat, whether the alpha’s scent was attractive to you, which of course was a good indicator of whether or not he would be attractive to you, and then of course there was one more thing that a shifter’s scent could tell you—if you believed in that sort of thing.
The right scent could tell you if you’d met your fated-mate.
No one really knew how to explain fated-mates, and many shifters were skeptical of the whole thing, but if you believed certain couples, they’d tell you it was definitely real.
I was one of those skeptics. The idea that you could meet someone who was meant for you seemed preposterous. People were just people and love was something we made up to tell ourselves that the person we’d decided to be in a relationship with was special, when in reality we were just two idiots seeking refuge in each other from the hardships of the world.
“Fuck you,” I said to myself. “You fucking pessimist.”
I grabbed my water bottle from the three-legged table that was propped up against the wall to keep it from falling and took a sip. The old piece of cobbled-together wood was like a metaphor for me and my life, and I hated the old thing. It was barely surviving, just like me.
Both of my fathers were put in jail when I was seventeen years old for robbing a convenience store. I mean—seriously? They’d both gotten their hands on a couple of pistols, gotten high on who-knows-what and then decided to go get paid. They’d been caught, of course, and it was a goddamn miracle that the cops hadn’t blown them away, but somehow they’d managed to survive and had been thrown in jail for nine years. That was three years ago.
Since then, I’d been on my own, working odd jobs to make ends meet, but a high school dropout in San Diego doesn’t have a whole lot of earning potential, and I was this close to being out on the streets when I’d found this job. It was hard and the pay was shit, but Rusty let me live upstairs in the attic/storeroom, which meant I didn’t have to pay rent and I could bank all my earnings. Of course, it also mean
t that I was pretty much on call whenever he needed me.
Rusty was like an old saloon owner out of a cowboy movie. Sixty-five years old, also a panther shifter alpha, a bit of a silver fox (if that metaphor could apply to panthers) and in fantastic shape for his age. He was still single, and as far as I knew, had always been and had no desire to change that. For a guy his age, he still pulled a lot of ass, young ass too. He’d probably go to his grave with a cigar in one hand and a tight omega booty in the other.
“I ain’t paying you to daydream, Olsters,” he said as he stepped through the door and stood in front of me.
“You ain’t paying me to be abused either, old man,” I replied, giving it right back to him.
“Abuse?” he chuckled. “They love ya! Can you blame ‘em?”
“If that’s what being loved is like, I’m not interested.”
“Still the cynic, eh?” he replied, taking a wet rag and wiping my face. Despite Rusty’s brusque behavior, he still had his moments. “Don’t you worry, boy. You’ll find your Romeo one day.”
“Not tonight, Rust,” I replied. “Not tonight.”
Chapter Two
Sid
“Sorry, folks, but these will be the last orders!” I shouted from the truck, using my hand to motion to the cutoff in the line of hungry beachgoers. The people who wouldn’t be getting their tacos tonight groaned. “I’m sorry. We’re selling out again tonight, but we’ll be back tomorrow!”
An elderly human couple, obviously tourists, groaned and turned away and headed back towards the beach and the setting sun as Clyde and I worked on the remaining orders.
It was just another incredibly busy, incredibly successful day at my taco truck, Taco-Climax which I was in charge of on a day-to-day basis as the head chef. The chain was owned and managed by my good friend, Garrett, who’d been my old boss at Taco-Gasms, the first truck he’d opened after leaving his old job.
He’d taken me on as a sous-chef and when he and Sawyer, his financier, decided to expand, I was the first in line for the next truck. It was a lot of hard work, but it was my passion and allowed me to be in charge of my own life.
I set up every day in Pacific Beach on Mission and worked from brunch to sundown, with a pretty steady line all day. I had an apartment not too far away, a few blocks from the beach, and everything was good. Well, almost everything. I still needed a mate.
But finding one in San Diego had proven to be pretty difficult. There were plenty of omegas around, but a lot of them were pretty vapid and had nothing to offer other than a tight hole for the night. At twenty-five, that sounds great to a lot of people, but I was growing tired of the party life and hookup culture—I wanted more, and so far, “more” had been eluding me.
A lot of people would think that a guy like me, with “daddy issues,” would only want to be a big man-whore and run around the city with his dick out, slamming every dime-piece omega he could get his hands on. But that wasn’t the case. Just because I only ever knew one of my fathers, Jeremy, an anti-social loner living in the woods in New Hampshire who I hadn’t spoken to in years, that didn’t mean that I didn’t want a family.
“You got those two fish tacos going, Clyde?” I asked.
“No prob, Bob,” he replied as he always did. I joined him and we both bent over the stove as we filled the last orders.
“No prob, Sid,” I corrected him.
“Nah, doesn’t have the same ring to it,” he chuckled as he covered the two fish portions with a lid to expedite the cooking process.
“But it has the advantage of actually being my name.”
“Yeah, but what rhymes with Sid?” he asked.
“Kid?” I suggested. “Bid? Rid?”
“No kiddin’, Siddin?” Clyde smirked. “How’s that work?”
“How about, ‘yes, boss?’” I suggested, returning the smirk. “Let’s try that one on for size.”
“Nah,” he replied, shaking his head. “I don’t need to try it. I already know I don’t like it.”
“The same way you already knew you liked cock without trying?”
“Sure is,” he laughed. “I mean—did you need to try?”
“Nah,” I mocked. “Some things you just know.”
I hadn’t intended to say something that came out so deep, but it ended up striking a bit of a chord inside me.
Some things you just know…
It made me think. Would I know the one when I found him? Would I know my mate when he stood in front of me? Did I believe in things like true love and fated-mates, or was I destined to wallow through the hollow hordes of San Diego omegas who failed to set my soul on fire?
I sure hope not.
Together, Clyde and I worked like an experienced pit crew and managed to get through all the remaining orders in no time, and it wasn’t long before we were packing up the truck so I could take it home for the night. The city didn’t like you leaving food trucks unattended on the streets overnight, and I didn’t want to risk it being broken into either.
“Grab a beer?” I asked Clyde as we locked up.
“Nah. Got myself a date,” he grinned. Clyde was a decent-looking beta who batted way above his average, especially online, and always seemed to have something lined up as far as “romance” was concerned.
“You’re always up to something, aren’t you, Clyde?”
He shrugged like a mischievous boy. “What can I say?”
I chuckled as I hitched the taco truck to my pickup truck and waved as I got in the driver’s side and pulled away. It was a short drive to my house, and as I pulled in and looked up at the dark window of my apartment, I knew that even if Clyde wasn’t going to accompany me, I needed to go out and wind down before heading upstairs.
The White Swallow, I thought as I parked the truck and got out. It was only a ten-minute walk away, at most, so I headed out, my mind spinning with thoughts of new taco recipes, visions of my future and dreams of love.
“You’re not gonna find it here,” I muttered to myself as the bar came into view. From the looks of things, it was really hopping inside, but as I grew closer and picked up the scents from within, I could tell it wasn’t going to be a very successful night in terms of finding love.
The place was swimming with alphas, and by the sounds from within, they were celebrating something. Probably a birthday party, or maybe a game was on, or maybe a bachelor party. Either way, the only omegas inside would be either taken, or so swarmed with attention that it would be a pissing contest over who would get to take them home, and I wasn’t interested in that.
“Oh, well,” I shrugged as I stepped past the bored-looking security alpha and made my way inside. “Have a beer and head home I guess.”
I made my way to the bar, where an old alpha was waiting. He nodded.
“Hey there, young snapper,” he said like some character out of an old Western film. “What can I do ya for?”
“Just a beer,” I told him.
“What kinda beer?”
“Whatever you think’s good and doesn’t cost more than a bad date.”
“Gotcha,” he smiled. “Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll get the boy to bring one out for you?”
“Sounds like a plan,” I replied. I turned and gestured to the gaggle of grinning alphas all drunk and laughing around a table at the center of the room. “What’s all this?”
“Bachelor party.”
I nodded. “I figured.”
As I took a seat at a high-top in the corner of the room and waited for my beer, I watched the wild crew and wondered what it would be like to be one of them, wild and carefree, filled with lust for any omega with a nice ass. It was probably a pretty easy existence, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted meaning. Commitment. Someone I could rely on and share my life with.
“Relax, Sid,” I grumbled as the door to the back opened. “It’s a fucking bar. You’re not gonna find that here.”
But then, something unexpected happened. No, something pract
ically impossible happened. As my eyes spied who must have been “the boy” the old man had referred to, coming out from the back with my beer on a tray, I caught his scent like I’d caught a fly ball into the outfield.
It cut through the rest of the smells of the bar like a snake slithering through the tall grass, straight into my nostrils with the force of a heavyweight boxer’s punch.
Warm banana cream…
The scent instantly tantalized me, gripped me and set my senses on fire. I felt my dick start to harden, but also my heart begin to soar as though I’d just met a long lost friend who I hadn’t seen in years.
The world seemed to brighten, the colors suddenly beginning to pop, and everything seemed to slow down as the beautiful boy walked towards me, his messy blond hair splayed out at all angles like straw blowing in the wind, and his bright blue eyes practically glowing beneath the dim lights of the bar.
As his eyes landed on me, he stopped dead in his tracks, his nose working overtime as he picked up my scent. I felt an explosion of something inside of me—hope.
Could it be? I thought desperately. Have I found my fated-mate?
Chapter Three
Arthur
My eyes scouted the horde of protestors on the other side of the ropes as we exited the venue. I’d been hired as security by Mrs. Wendy Addington for her appearance at tonight’s charity event in downtown San Diego. It seemed odd that there would be protestors or any suspicions of violence at a charity event, but Wendy, being a high-profile socialite in San Diego and Los Angeles, had been spotted wearing fur, someone had taken a photo and the blogs had gone crazy. As she stepped out behind me, the protestors went wild.