“It’s not a bad drive,” Vaughn said, fussing with the temperature controls on his dashboard. “We’ll be there before you know it, and then you can actually get some rest.” He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “I’m assuming you want to rest, I mean. I’m happy to show you the town, but…”
“I think sleep is probably best,” I answered on their behalf, smiling back at Mom to reassure her that nobody was about to make her dine out among strangers in an unfamiliar place. “For me, too. It’s a big day tomorrow.”
“It sure is,” said Dad. “You feel ready to get up on that stage?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I guess it’s happening anyway.”
We laughed, but it didn’t seem to lift the tension in the car. Vaughn seemed to be focusing on the road a lot more intently than he had driving in. I swallowed, biting down on my back teeth. Was I being oversensitive, or were things really strange?
I didn’t get the opportunity to speak to him in confidence until half an hour after we got back to his place. We made sure Mom and Dad were settled in their room, and knew where their bathroom was — knew how to get refreshments if they wanted any. It wasn’t that late, but all the social exertion had me ready to drop when we reached Vaughn’s bedroom on the other side of the house. Apparently, it had worn him down too. He exhaled heavily, sinking down to the foot of the bed.
“How am I doing?”
“With them? Great,” I said. It may have been a white lie, but I intended it kindly, and he wasn’t doing badly. Maybe he was just nervous. “Now, you tell me. How are you doing? Is this still okay?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Before I could stop to realize how much progress it demonstrated, I narrowed my eyes at him a fraction. I still bit the inside of my cheek as I pressed him, but I never could have done it when we first met. “You just seem… I don’t know. Tense.”
“Well, I want to make a good impression.”
“It’s more than that,” I insisted. “With Mom especially. I hate the idea of stressing you out, Vaughn. Are you sure you don’t-”
“What exactly would we do, at this point?” he interrupted. His voice wasn’t too harsh, but the tiredness had made him a little sharper than usual. It had him snapping at me like an elastic band — not so much painful or dangerous as stinging. “They’re here now. They don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“I’m asking if you’d want them to.”
“Finley. I’m fine.”
I swallowed, gearing up the rest of my courage to spend on one last attempt. My voice was quiet when I spoke, but just talking out loud was an achievement. “You don’t seem fine, is all. I don’t know, Vaughn. I don’t want to be paranoid. I don’t want to get on your nerves. But I know you so well already, and you just… don’t seem like yourself. Isn’t that right?”
He held his tongue for a few long moments. I worried, for a while, that I’d pushed him too far. Then Vaughn flopped back against the bed and sighed.
“There’s pressure,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Pressure…?”
“Sure. Pressure to make them like me. Pressure to like them. Pressure to walk a fine line between ‘guy who’s good enough to date your son’ and ‘guy who you actually like’.”
“Why would there be a difference?”
He shook his head, falling silent. It was the furthest I’d ever felt from him, even when he was miles away in Florida or any of his other long-distance work projects. I swallowed and watched the long, curved line of his body on the bed, and tried to think of the right words to say — how to make him feel better about this, or how to fix it.
It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d ever been invited to his Helena home, let alone my family. Maybe I should have thanked him for the offer and refused. Maybe this was too much for both him and for my mom.
I sat down beside him on the bed, unsure but desperately fond. “I’m sorry. This is sweet of you and I don’t want to fight. I just… I’m not good at this. Relationships. Knowing what to do. I’ve never done this before. I want it to work so badly, and the only thing I know for sure is that people talk a lot about how you’ve got to communicate.”
I swallowed, feeling the silence perching on my shoulders. He was still facing the ceiling, brow furrowed.
A thoughtful one, though. He didn’t seem angry.
Then again, what did angry Vaughn look like? We felt desperately close to one another right now, and we knew that we were mates on paper, but there was still so much we had to learn about each other. This was a very frank reminder of that.
After what felt like an age, Vaughn sighed. “You can’t think I’m much better.”
I blinked, and shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Relationships,” he said. His tone sounded a little gruff, but again — not angry. “All this shit. You think I’ve ever met anybody’s parents before?”
Actually, I had thought that. It seemed self-evident. I knew that Vaughn hadn’t been with many serious partners throughout his life, but he was beautiful and charming, and I saw no reason why there shouldn’t have been at least a handful of meet-the-parents date nights in his past. Hearing that this wasn’t the case threw me for a loop, and I settled in silence to absorb the correction.
“And I don’t know how to deal with your mom,” he admitted. “She seems nice, but I know what you’re like, and I know I’d want to kick anybody’s ass who made you nervous. I don’t want to tread a line, and treading lines is all I do. I make jokes. I don’t know. I didn’t think it was going to be this hard. That’s all.”
I rubbed his arm, smoothing my palm over the inside of his elbow to try and soothe it all away. We were running before we could walk, no question about it.
But how did we slow down without tripping and falling, now we’d already started?
“For what it’s worth, I think everybody’s nervous doing this,” I said. “Not that I’m an expert. But it’s like you said. You want to make a good impression. Especially, um. Knowing what we know…”
“Even that,” said Vaughn, but then he stopped.
It seemed ominous.
“That…?” I prompted. I had to wait for a good thirty seconds for my answer, but concern kept me patient. That and the rhythm of his chest rising and falling in the dim bedroom light. “What do you mean?”
“You know. Being mates.”
This still wasn’t particularly illuminating, but I had a worrying suspicion that I knew what he was talking about.
“Forever,” I said. “Big word.”
“Uh-huh.”
Vaughn looked over at me, finally drawing his eyes away from the ceiling. I was expecting to see nonchalance or disinterest in his face, but I didn’t see either. At worst, it was curiosity. “But you don’t worry about that,” he said. “Do you?”
I nodded down at my lap. Apparently, he knew me very well after all. “It’s what I’ve always wanted,” I said, as if trying to justify myself. “What I’ve been waiting for. Especially now that it’s someone like you, I’m… Wow.”
I smiled faintly, picking at a thread on my pants.
No wonder he’s not so thrilled. I get Vaughn Bennett for a mate. He just gets me.
It took him a beat, but he picked up on that aura of imbalance I was putting out. He sat up a little to shake his head, nudging me with his elbow.
“Hey. Not like that. It isn’t you.”
I nodded, but he wouldn’t let up.
“I’m serious. If there’s anything I’m doubting, it’s… me. My suitability. There’s not a doubt in my mind about you.”
I couldn’t help but crack a smile at that. He mirrored it back, if a little small and sleepy, and shifted back towards the edge of the bed. “All right, Mr. Graduate. Let’s get you some rest.”
///
“Fin…?”
The next time he smiled at me, I was forcing my weary eyes awake in the middle of the night. That crooked curl of his
lips was certainly worth the discomfort and the grogginess — and the husky whisper of his nighttime voice, so gruff that it practically tickled my throat.
I shuffled to face him better on the pillow, letting him wind his arm over my waist.
“Sorry to wake you up,” he said. “Just… can’t sleep, you know? ‘Cos I still feel like an asshole from earlier.”
I shook my head, brow still creased from sleep. “No, it’s-”
“It’s not all right,” he said, cutting me off with a shake of the head. “It’s not. I was stressed and I was being a jerk, and… you’re right. Of course we’ve got to communicate. Absolutely.”
I tangled my legs up in his. “I was being a jerk, too. I put you on the spot.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Not really. You asked me a question. I just didn’t want to answer it, ‘cos… yeah, I was having a hard time endearing myself to your parents, but that’s on me. And that whole mess about commitment, and forever, and…”
Vaugh sighed, and tipped his head towards the window.
“I can’t get it all out of my head. Will you run with me?”
“Right now?”
Even before I’d finished speaking the words, I could see the need written all over his face. I didn’t need another moment longer. I nodded, cupping his chin in one hand and leaning forward to press a soft kiss to his lips.
“Okay. If that’s what you need, then let’s go.”
As we slipped out of bed in the cover of darkness, leaving our clothes in the room behind us, I let Vaughn lead our way out into the world outside. This was his territory, after all — not technically, since he was still aligned with the Blackwater pack, but he knew where he was going. As soon as we were outside and in the privacy of a thicket of trees, he shifted into his fur, turning back to watch as I followed suit.
Then, it was a matter of following the whip of the long grass around his paws and the moonlight dancing off his fur. Again, I couldn’t help but think about where I was. He’d never asked me here before — never brought me into this thriving, lively bubble outside of Blackwater that he seemed to like so much. Should I be concerned, after all that talk about commitment? Even though he’d just told me not to be?
I considered it, but then I saw him looking back over his shoulder to make sure that I could follow, and realized a simple truth. If Vaughn wanted space from me, he’d be taking it right now. He could have sneaked out of bed without disturbing me quite easily, and run off this steam by himself. He could probably go faster, too, unhindered by his guest who didn’t have an intimate knowledge of the terrain or his usual routes. As wild and untamed as this land seemed, I knew we were still pretty close to Helena. It would be easy to stumble onto private land and cause chaos, or to stumble into a trap meant for easy prey.
He slowed to a stop on a beautiful patch of moonlit grass, a small clearing around us. Together, we curled up to drink in the fresh air and the freedom of each other’s company. I could feel our wolf hearts beating in time, and tried to forget about all the worries that were plaguing me — whether they were the nightmares about tripping during my graduation ceremony, or the much heavier thoughts concerning Vaughn’s feelings for me.
In either case, bad things might happen. No scenario was perfect, just as no person was. I just had to trust that in the end, any hardship would be worth it.
As I met his dark wolf-eyes, my ears flicking contentedly, I knew by instinct that Vaughn would definitely be worth it.
As we shifted in the low light, cuddling up together on the cool earth, I felt a sense of calm settling over him — a calm that soon spilled over onto me.
“You really love it here, huh?”
He nodded, thumb brushing over my hip. After what felt like an age, he cleared his throat to answer. “I like Blackwater,” he said, voice rugged and tired. “I like the air; I like being around our kind. But out here, there’s just… life, I guess. There’s a scene. There are people I don’t know, and who don’t know me.”
I kept my silence, content to sink into this part of Vaughn that I’d never seen.
That nobody had ever seen.
He cleared his throat once more. “It’s just, somehow… It’s mine.”
I kissed his shoulder, nodding against the warmth of his skin. I could feel his pulse just below the surface, and the vulnerability of that — his heartbeat, and this place that had only ever been his.
///
The morning passed like a blur. From the moment I woke up to the moment I was standing in the wings waiting to take my turn on stage, all I could remember was the white noise hum of background nervousness, and nausea in the pit of my stomach — the cool rush of the breeze coming in through the car window as Vaughn drove us to the school.
Now, my heart was pounding and I was searching for something to calm me down. To distract me from the thought of falling flat on my face on the stage, or being publicly informed that in actual fact, I would not be graduating after all. When slow and steady breathing didn’t work, I instead went against my better judgment and looked out towards the crowd.
So many people.
Before it could totally overwhelm me, I scanned the faces row by row, hunting down the one patch of familiarity and affection that I knew was waiting for me. They probably wouldn’t be looking my way, but I'd at least know where they were. At least I’d be able to spot a refuge in the sea of strangers staring back at me.
When I finally found them, it did make me smile. There was my dad, the sun glowing and kind on his dark brown skin — looking enthusiastic at every single graduate. I knew it must be killing him not to be allowed to clap and celebrate for each individual student. Beside him, Mom’s face was half-shielded by a fuchsia fascinator hat. It was so very like her to wear something fashionable and brightly colored, but not big enough to obstruct the view of the person sitting behind her. She’d almost certainly done that on purpose. She seemed tight-lipped, and I could see her fanning herself with a wad of paper. She prided herself on being able to withstand any kind of heat, thanks to her Italian heritage, but it wasn’t a particularly warm day anyway. I wondered if the tightly packed crowd was beginning to get to her.
Once again, it moved me almost to tears thinking about how only her love for me could’ve brought her here.
Then, next to Mom, I set eyes on Vaughn. He’d dressed in a fairly simple and sophisticated way, and I could only see the well-cut shape of his white shirt in the crowd — but no matter how plain he dressed, he was always going to look like a model for some high-end tailoring company. His face was impassive. Frankly, he seemed a little bored and antsy, but it wasn’t out of disinterest. I could tell because his eyes weren’t straying. They were fixed with deliberate attention on the line of graduates who were just about to take the stage, watching for when I’d first appear.
I smiled, feeling all of their support warming me like a campfire.
As I kept looking, though, I began to feel worse. While the groups around them kept leaning closer and whispering to one another, smiling through the relative monotony of the ceremony, my three guests were stock-still. Occasionally, Dad would say something to Mom, but there seemed to be no conversation whatsoever flowing between them and Vaughn.
The pit in my stomach grew. I’d forced all of them into such an awkward and uncomfortable day. I should never have agreed to have Vaughn host them. In fact, I shouldn’t even be here at graduation. I’d get that all-important piece of paper regardless. Was it really worth dragging my family across the country on a plane just to-
Oh, no. I’m next.
With my self-critical thoughts on a treadmill in my head, I didn’t dare to look back out to the silent trio in the crowd. Instead I tried to focus on the corner of the lectern from where the names were being announced, narrowing my attention to a pinprick so I wouldn’t panic.
Okay, so my mom and dad weren’t my biological parents — but I’d still definitely inherited a good fraction of Mom, through close proximity if not throug
h genes.
“Finley King.”
No avoiding it now. I gritted my teeth and climbed up onto the stage.
As I crossed the boards towards the dean, something changed. I could feel the sun on my skin, and read the sincere pride on her face as she extended my degree and held out her hand for me to shake. In a bolt of lightning, the fear dropped briefly away, and I was left with only a glowing kernel of something I rarely allowed myself to feel.
Accomplishment.
“Congratulations,” said the dean, giving my hand a quick and businesslike shake. I nodded and thanked her, heading down off the stage with ringing in my ears and a new indelible smile on my face. It was silly, really. I’d felt the happiness and success of being done with school right when I handed in my last paper, when it really mattered. To feel it again in this bizarre atmosphere of pomposity and ceremony seemed unnecessary, and yet here it was.
I ducked my head and grinned at the ground, overwhelmed by all these strong and contrasting emotions. Out of instinct, I soon looked up to try and find my family in the crowd again — but it was lucky that I did. Instead of seeing three impassive faces, I saw them burgeoning with pride. Saw Vaughn beaming as he bent to speak in my Mom’s ear, and the way she gripped his hand. The way Dad leaned in to cheerily join them.
This would take time, like every relationship did, but maybe there was hope after all.
It was just like Vaughn said, I guessed, even if he had been joking. He was a strong-minded alpha. Would he really have agreed to come here if some part of him, deep down, didn’t want me as a part of his future?
///
If anything, the real celebration started when the ceremony ended and the crowds began to filter out into the town around us. On the verdant expanse of the field where they’d set up our graduation stage on this surprisingly temperate May day, pockets of excitable graduates wove around each other, leading family members to friends and vice versa.
Claiming My Omega: Blackwater Pack Book Two Page 12