Chapter Thirteen
It had been one of the best days of Mal’s life. He and Rocky had got up quite late, and Rocky had made him breakfast in the well-stocked kitchen. Admittedly he’d made one hell of a mess in Cyrus’s immaculate kitchen, but Mal was well used to cleaning up after him, and this time Rocky actually helped him. The food was delicious, filling, and it was fun making plans for the day over the dining table.
They had spent the day out on the town. Cyrus’s driver, Jim, was remarkably well informed about the different historical places close to where Cyrus’s apartment was. Rocky got to marvel at the Statue of Liberty, although he wasn’t keen on all the tourists getting in their way.
Walking along the waterfront hand in hand was fun. One of the good things about New York is that no one seemed to mind two men holding hands, nor did they have trouble with Rocky’s obvious shifter status. Mal was someone non-paras might wonder at, but Rocky walked as though he owned the world – a common alpha wolf trait. Unlike smaller cities, like Jackson, New York embraced diversity and most people there were too engrossed in their own lives to give a damn about anyone else.
Mal finally got to see Times Square – a bucket list item of his - although he regretted it within the first five minutes of the car parking. After spending so many years in the quietness of Arrowtown, the lights, the cars, and the sheer number of people quickly proved overwhelming. After grabbing half a dozen hot dogs from a street vendor for lunch, Rocky asked Jim to take them back to the apartment.
There was another surprise waiting for Mal after he’d taken a nap. Rocky had ordered them fancy suits from a shop Jim knew that Cyrus frequented, and later that evening Jim took them to a quiet restaurant where apparently Cyrus had a permanent table.
“It’s our first official date,” Rocky said when Mal protested the prices on the menu. “I’ve never been able to spoil you before and now I can, just this once. You know the food is going to be good. I scented three other shifter couples here as we walked through, and the great Cyrus himself endorses this place.”
Mal forced himself to relax and it was a fun evening. The booze flowed, the food was excellent with big portions Rocky appreciated. When Mal couldn’t finish his, Rocky was quick to clean off his plate too.
“I’m doing this for you.” Rocky grinned as he swapped out their plates. “With the prices you were worried about, I know you’d hate for this to be wasted.”
By the time they got back to the apartment, sharing a last drink for the night before bed, Mal was quietly beaming, completely content for the first time in a long time. They curled up on the couch together – it was as comfortable as it was big, and there was a game on the big screen television. Rocky had turned the sound down and seemed mostly interested in tracing patterns up and down Mal’s arm, cradling a can of beer in his other hand. After the hustle and bustle of the day, it was lovely, enjoying a quiet closeness with his mate, and Mal hoped that they could hang on to those same peaceful feelings when they went back to Arrowtown.
“You know,” Rocky said quietly, “you never did tell me how you ended up on the streets. You’ve gotten my story out of me, so don’t you think it’s time to share yours?”
Mal glanced at his mate. “I thought we weren’t going to be revisiting history again,” he said as a sinking pit started to form in his belly. “It’s not really a time in my life I’d like to remember.”
“No, and I understand that,” Rocky said. “But that’s like the last part, the last missing piece of the puzzle – where you came from and how we ended up where we were.”
Mal thought for a moment. “Rocky, I don’t really know what you want me to say,” he said at last, because his mate deserved that much. “It’s not only that I don’t want to talk about it, but I’m also not sure you’d understand my early situation even if I did tell you.”
“You’re not giving me a chance to understand if you don’t tell me.”
Sighing, Mal gave into the inevitable. Clearly it was important to Rocky, and if Mal was being honest with himself, he’d been just as persistent when he wanted to know about Rocky’s background. If he was completely honest to himself, not all of that was about the origin of the curse. Mal had been just as curious.
“Admittedly, from what you told me about your pack situation, your experience was totally different from mine. You were also pushed out of your pack while you were still a child. I didn’t get to leave until I was seventeen.”
Mal hesitated a moment and then he continued. “I had to live with the fact that I was the lowest of the low for most of my life. When I was born, my parents were just normal every day, beta wolves. You know, nothing special or anything else. They had brought a son into the world, it was meant to be celebrated. But the alpha of our pack…I don’t know… You have to remember this was before paranormals came out. Not long before, but it was before paranormals came out and let’s just say my pack alpha had some weird ideas.”
“Weirder than taking on a coven, not believing in curses, and killing the source of the curse before it could be cured?” Rocky took a swig from his beer can.
“There’s more than one kind of weird as you know. You only need to be patrolling the streets of Arrowtown on a Saturday night after Cam’s bar has closed to know that.” Mal leaned against Rocky’s shoulder. “My alpha was the type that kept his pack completely hidden from humans, for example. We lived in a very remote area, and barely saw a half a dozen humans a year, if that.”
“I’m still not seeing how that made you feel so bad for yourself. I mean, you’re amazing, and I hope you realize that now.”
“Thanks to you.” Mal flicked a quick smile at Rocky’s solemn face. “The issue with my pack was…well it started pretty much from when I was born, or so I was told. On the first full moon after my birth, I had to be presented to my pack. It was a ritual all families in the pack went through. When I was presented, supposedly a time for celebration, my alpha claimed I had the stench of omega wolf about me, and male omegas were no use in his pack. From that moment on…let’s just say my life was shit.”
Rocky looked at him in shock. “How could that prick say something like that? Nobody would have known about your omega status until you shifted for the first time.”
Mal shook his head. “It’s not like I know why he’d say anything at all. I was apparently a smaller baby, but you know, a lot of the babies born in our pack were underweight. And it’s not like I could talk to my parents about it either, because after the alpha decreed I was useless, they barely bothered to do the minimum for keeping me alive. I was told – I think I was about thirteen at the time – but I was told I was lucky the alpha was so gracious, and they didn’t have me culled at birth.”
Rocky growled. “That was a barbaric custom, and it always has been.”
“I know.” Mal refused to feel sad about the past. “But if you think about it logically, as I have tried to do all these years, they were a small pack. They lived off the land which wasn’t always fruitful, and the alpha was the head of the pack. He could say the sky was green and others in the pack would go out of their way to prove that was true.”
“You didn’t see humans at all, didn’t go to shops, or get in deliveries, or…” Rocky trailed off as Mal shook his head.
“Back then I didn’t even know how far away the nearest town was, but we never had anything to do with anybody. The only humans that we saw were people who might have been hiking through the trails or hunting. They were usually lost. I remember the alpha used to grab a couple of his enforcers, and yes, they would stay in human form, but he would go and see them off, with bravado and big sticks and all that sort of carry-on.”
“I’m surprised that prick didn’t just knock them over the head and eat them.” Rocky finished his beer and put his can on the arm of the couch.
“As I said, it was a bleak time in my life and not something I enjoy thinking about. I was taught my whole life that I wasn’t worth anything.” Mal shrugged. “I guess I believed that for the longest time.”
It was Rocky’s turn to shake his head. “That can’t be true. I mean, look at how much you’ve done, how much you’ve achieved. When we were riding with Ra and the others, and even when we moved to Arrowtown, you’re the one who was always organizing things, keeping us all on track.
“If it wasn’t for you prodding us along to stay on top of our shit, the cupboards would’ve been empty, our dirty laundry would’ve buried us, and we’d have run out of gas miles from the nearest town. Face it, being organized wasn’t one of Ra’s skills or anyone else’s back in the day.”
“I felt I had to prove my worth. I had to prove that I could be useful to all of you.” Mal turned, resting his arm on Rocky’s shoulder. “If you think about it, I was an omega wolf who was riding with a tiger shifter, a snake shifter, two lion shifters, a bear shifter, and an alpha wolf shifter. What do you think would have happened if Ra or any of you really had thought the same as my pack alpha - that I wasn’t worth anything?”
Twirling a strand of Rocky’s hair through his fingers, Mal chuckled. “Because I was determined to prove myself, I gained confidence. You guys didn’t knock me down, you propped me up. You propped me up until I could learn to walk on my own two feet. Meeting you was the greatest thing in my life, but meeting Ra and Simon was a strong second. Do you remember that?”
Rocky nodded. “Those damn burgers pulled me in. I was so sure they wanted to fight us. I can still see that damn bridge in my mind’s eye. Ra and Simon kept cruising past on those bikes of theirs and then they just stopped one night when we were huddling under that same darn bridge. It was the burgers. All those burgers. Gods, I must have had a sore stomach for two days afterward, but I couldn’t stop eating. It was the most food I’d seen in years."
“I know.” Mal laughed. “I was terrified and all you were doing was stuffing your face with burger patties. I mean, no disrespect to you, but facing off against a tiger shifter and a snake shifter? We were toast if they wanted to fight us, but they didn’t – they became our family. I learned a lot from them.”
“It was me Ra kept drumming lessons into,” Rocky mock grumbled. “He’d swipe me over the head if he thought I wasn’t listening to him. I never saw him do that to you.”
“But see, by watching Ra and Simon teach you things, I learned them too. I would watch. I would listen, and by the time I got a turn, I already knew what needed to be done, so I would make fewer mistakes.” Mal stroked over Rocky’s hair. “You’ve got to admit, I’ve always listened better than you.”
“I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear you saying that seeing as you don’t think I listen to important shit,” Rocky said in a mock snooty tone which Mal knew was his way of teasing. “But yeah, that was pretty incredible, meeting up with Brutus, Lucien, Liam, not long afterward. Gods, we had some amazing times on the road, didn’t we?”
“It was fun, and we got to see a lot of places,” Mal agreed. “But I also think, back when shifters came out, I do believe Ra made the right decision in taking us to a shifter town. I know it took a while – I mean we visited so many different towns and places – but eventually, when we ended up in Arrowtown, it felt like home from day one to me.”
“Arrowtown has a certain charm, that’s for sure.” Rocky chuckled. “I bet you didn’t think I’d end up as sheriff when we first arrived there.”
“I didn’t think Ra would be mayor, either, but the town took us into their hearts and clearly believe in us, and now we have a solid home there. When you think about it, none of us really had a home. None of us had a pack, a clan, whatever it is snakes have, or in Liam and Lucian’s case, a pride. We’d all been let down in our own way. We’d all…we were all misfits, and yet we all came together as a found family. And look at us now. You and I are the last two to find our mates, and it turns out we were together all along."
“I still think that’s crazy," Rocky said, stretching out his long legs along the couch. “We all found each other and came together to create a family. But I still…I still don’t understand. The workings of that damned curse is just…just…it’s really fucking annoying. It makes me angry just thinking about it. In fact I’m fucking furious about it.”
Mal could feel that through their bond. “I’m not sure why you’re angry about it now. I understand what you’re saying. You’re angry because you see and feel what we have now, and we could have had that all the years we were together.
“But don’t you see” - Mal really wanted Rocky to understand – “we did have all those years together. The only thing that was different was that we weren’t sleeping in the same bed, and even then, sometimes we were when space was tight. Just not in the way we can now. But it really wasn’t a bad life, was it?”
“No,” Rocky said. “I’m not saying that. I just feel like we’ve been robbed. I feel like we’ve had all these years together, and yet we could have been truly together. I wouldn’t have been going off once a month or so, making a damn fool of myself, trying to make out I was more of a stud than I ever was. I mean, how ridiculous is that? What’s worse, I hurt you and I didn’t even know.”
“You didn’t make a fool of yourself because no one knew what you were up to,” Mal said with a chuckle. “However, that might change when our friends find out, and you know they will, because you can bet your bottom dollar Mrs. Hooper’s going to be asking you where you were going every time you disappeared. She didn’t know, and if there’s one thing that woman can’t stand, it’s not knowing something. But don’t you see, it really doesn’t matter.
“We were all doing what we had to do at any point in time. We all fit in the way we did together. Now we all have mates. You and I have got little nieces and nephews running around all over the place.”
“Some of them even flying,” Rocky agreed. “That Annabelle is a handful and a half.”
Thinking of their current living situation, Mal said, “I have been considering the idea about us having a home of our own and I do think that’s something we should do. Nothing like this place, obviously. But there’s not a lot of room in our current house where we can just sit and chill out, spending time alone. I like the idea of us spending quality time together, just you and me, especially now the house is getting so crowded. But we’re going to be visiting the packhouse often, you know we will.”
“It’s not a packhouse,” Rocky said. “Ra never agreed to our place being called a packhouse and neither did Seth.”
“Meh, maybe not, but you and I both know that’s what we call it.”
They shared a chuckle. Just that simple act was enough to warm Mal’s heart. “Do you remember what you said before about how we’ve come to this moment and good or bad, it’s made us who we are today?”
“I was channeling your zen.” Rocky laughed. “But yes, go on.”
“What happened in my pack was so common for omega wolves and although I didn’t learn about that until a lot later, but I left that pack because I didn’t believe I had any worth, remember?”
“Did you leave in the end, or…?” Rocky asked.
“I think my leaving fell into the not having a choice category,” Mal said. “They stopped sharing their food with me. I wasn’t any use. I wasn’t going to father any pups. I wasn’t as strong as everybody else. I couldn’t hunt like everybody else. When I left, I thought I would die, but I didn’t.
“But my opinions about who I was were formed while I was in the pack. Then I met you and learned that I could be better, that I could be different. When we started traveling with Ra and Simon, that idea that I could be more persisted. You guys gave me the space to be who I was or who I had the potential to be, and I’m really proud of the person I am now.”
Rocky squinted at him, making a face. “Does that mean…nope. I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’m saying you’re right in that if we’d known we were mates sooner our lives would’ve been different, but I’m not sure if it could’ve been better. We were so young, and you’ve got to admit, you were a headstrong idiot, and I was a timid little mouse back then.”
Rocky dug him in the ribs with his elbow. “Don’t you let Darwin hear you say that. You know darn well he’s very proud of his mouse status and he can be fricking vicious.”
“You’re not wrong about that, and there’s nothing wrong with you spending a few minutes and wishing things had been different between you and me. But don’t dwell on it. I think we’re really lucky. We’re both still breathing and there have been times it was debatable that we would. You and I have been friends from the moment we met. We created a family with our friends, and now we live in a supportive community where we can be ourselves. Life doesn’t get better than that.”
“Speaking of a supportive community,” Rocky said. “I’ll bet you five bucks Mrs. Hooper has a house for us by the time we get back to Arrowtown.”
“I’m not taking that bet,” Mal laughed. “I know she will have, and it will be exactly what we were looking for.”