Chapter 6
Oscar
Not even a kiss. I was trying not to dwell on the information that my mate had given me.
He’d never even kissed anyone. Ever. I felt terrible about that.
He was stuck with me. I most certainly wouldn’t consider myself the person to teach someone else how to kiss, let alone be their first at being intimate in other ways.
I was not the person Monroe should be learning these things from.
We had decided to go back to Timber Valley and pack up some of my stuff.
It was easy enough to get off the mountain, but once we were at the bottom, we were on foot for more than several yards.
It wasn’t that I lived incredibly far from the mountain—nobody did.
But it was cold, and Monroe wasn’t a shifter and didn’t have the heat of an animal to help keep him warm.
“Can you do magic down here?” I asked as we walked away from the cabin that the council had turned into the transport building off the mountain. It was a bit secluded, so it didn’t get a whole lot of attention, which was certainly ideal since so many came and went from it throughout the day.
“I can, why? My magic isn’t limited to any one particular place.”
“Can you, I don’t know, magick us to Alpha Forest’s house? Not inside it but in front of it? I live only just down the road from him. Well, and a block over, but it’s maybe a five-minute walk and not a thirty-minute one.”
“I can,” Monroe said. He reached for my hand, and seconds later, my stomach rolled, and we were standing exactly where I’d asked. I looked at the large house and wondered if Monroe would like to go in and see his siblings.
“Should we go say hi?”
Monroe shook his head. “No, we should go to your place and pack. Then we’ll go back to the new house, and after we unpack, we’ll have lunch and then head to the festival. Or does it start tonight?”
“It starts around lunchtime. But I think the majority of the activities are happening tonight.”
“Then we go on as planned. We’ll walk over to your place, pack some things for you, and then go back to our new house.”
I could do that. It would give me time to come up with a plan to figure out what to do about Monroe.
I’d never really been good at being forward with alphas.
Or, in Monroe’s case, a sire. Sure, some omegas were amazing at being forward, but not me.
I wouldn’t necessarily say I was shy, but I wasn’t a sassy twink either.
I gave Monroe’s hand a squeeze and started walking in the direction of the house I shared with my siblings.
That gave me pause for a moment, and I stopped, wondering how that was going to go down.
Would they be happy for me? I had no doubt that Joseph would be, but I had no way of knowing if Hailey would be or not.
Most likely not because I was going to be quitting at least one of my jobs and wouldn’t be able to give her everything she wanted all the time.
There was absolutely no way I would ever ask Monroe to provide things like that for her.
And like he’d mentioned during one of our many talks already, that wasn’t a healthy situation, and it needed to end.
He was one hundred percent correct about that.
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong,” I said, looking up at my mate.
We were still holding hands while walking down the street.
Luckily, the sidewalk had been shoveled, and I wondered if it had been done by the individual occupants of the houses on the street or if Alpha Forest had asked for volunteers from the pack to do it.
“Your aura is saying you’re upset. I can’t really sense your feelings too well yet, not until we claim each other, but your aura is worried, I’d say.”
Was he sure he couldn’t sense my feelings? “I’d say you’re doing a great job with reading my feelings. I am worried. I’m not actually looking forward to having another meeting with my sister this morning.”
“Well, if it’s going to be an issue, once we get to your place, I can use magic and put us inside in your bedroom. Would that help?”
I nodded. It would. I felt like I was already dooming this mating.
I’d had such a terrible morning with Hailey, and I just didn’t want to deal with her again.
The last thing I needed right now was for her to make the day worse.
It was supposed to be an amazing and wonderful thing—meeting your mate.
I wanted that for us, and if she pulled her usual act, it would mar our day.
We walked to the end of the block, crossed over, and went to the next road. We were in the fourth house on the left side, and when we arrived, I was a bit surprised to see the lights off at the house. My vehicle was still in the driveway though, which was a bonus.
“There’s nobody inside,” Monroe said as I started up the pathway to the front door.
“No?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him.
“No. There are no auras in the house. It’s empty. Could they have gone somewhere?”
I shrugged. “They’re both on break from school for the year. They’ll go back the beginning of the year, but they weren’t going anywhere until later, I thought. Obviously, I was wrong about that.”
I walked up the three steps to the front porch and crossed it to the door.
“This is a cute porch. I like the chairs,” Monroe said as he indicated the rockers.
They were currently covered in snow, and it was too cold to sit out here, but I thought about how I used to come out here and sit and cry silently after Hailey finally went to bed.
I didn’t know what switch flipped and how I’d gone wrong, but I couldn’t seem to get through to her.
I’d tried everything. I’d even resorted to working two jobs in order to spoil her, hoping it would help.
It hadn’t. It had only made things worse.
“You’re sad now,” Monroe said, placing his hand on my shoulder.
“Just wondering where I went so wrong. She sees a therapist, but I can’t seem to get through to her.”
“We’ll work it out together. You’re not alone anymore.
We’re a team now,” Monroe told me. He brought his hands to my face and cupped it, and I thought for a moment he was going to kiss me, but instead, he smiled before his hands moved from my face to my shoulders.
He took a step back, and I pulled the keys from my pocket and opened the front door.
Inside smelled like home, only it felt off.
“My room is upstairs,” I said, pointing to the stairs off to the right.
I went up the stairs with Monroe behind me, and when we reached my room, I was thankful that I was normally a tidy person.
My bed was made, and all of the dirty clothes were in the hamper, which was a relief. “How much do you think I should pack?”
Monroe smirked. “You don’t actually have to pack anything,” he said just before he winked. Once he did, I felt something shift in the room, and when I looked around, the room was void of anything that had been personal. I went to the dresser and opened drawer after drawer, finding them all empty.
“What? How?”
Monroe held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Now that I’m here, I was able to send all of your things to the house on the mountain. They’re in the bedroom there.”
“Seriously?”
Monroe nodded.
“Can you do that for my bathroom things too?”
“Of course. I just need to know where your bathroom things are.”
I took Monroe to the bathroom and indicated which items were mine. I watched as they disappeared and wondered just how easy moving was going to be.
“Is any of the furniture yours?”
“No. The house is a pack house and came furnished. It’s for new couples that are just starting out or families that have come here seeking sanctuary.
My siblings and I fit that description, not that they wouldn’t have helped us anyway.
Alpha Forest and Alpha War have been amazing about welcoming others to the area when the council has rescued them.
Even before that, from what I’ve heard.”
“I haven’t met Alpha War, but Alpha Forest and his mate have been nothing but amazing since I arrived. It has to be somewhat of a burden, I would think, to take in three complete strangers and house them with your family.”
“That’s just part of being alpha, I think. I don’t remember my pack’s alpha ever doing that, but he was always a bit of an ass. Us kids didn’t have a whole lot to do with them, except during runs and things like that when we had to, but I never really liked him much. Or the inner circle.”
“We didn’t have that type of dynamic in our village. Or any of them around either.”
“What is it like?” I asked as I turned and leaned against the counter.
“What? The village?”
“Yeah. And your realm. You said it was warm all the time.”
“Yes. It’s green, the weather is mild, but it’s very different than what you have here.
We don’t have phones or televisions, nor do we have the same foods.
It’s a bit of a shock to come here from there.
There are books that we all read because, since as long as I’ve been able to read, we’ve known it’s a possibility that we could be chosen to have a mate in this realm.
It goes over the basics that we can expect here, things like that.
I know about your world a little, but I look forward to experiencing it firsthand. ”
“I mean…I don’t know. I’m not sure I could live without a phone or a TV. But I’ve always had them. I guess if I grew up not having something, I wouldn’t miss it.” That still didn’t sound like the greatest thing, but I could see it from that perspective.
“Is there anything else you want sent to the other house?”
I thought about it for a moment and nodded. “Yeah. Follow me?”