Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Phoenix
I’d been awake for some time waiting for Emery to blink his gorgeous green eyes open.
I’d woken a couple of times through the night when he’d stirred, and I murmured to him gently until he’d settled.
I knew my wolf was settling his and wondered if his parents were hybrids?
Somewhere in his history, there had to be a wolf.
I would have to ask Esther if the shifter gene could skip generations, or—
“You’re thinking too hard.”
I smiled before I even focused on him. He was lying in my arms, tucked tight against my body.
He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, but I was naked.
Not that I was in a desperate hurry to bring attention to that.
Even though my body reacted instantly to his presence, I wanted more.
I’d gone to bed last night and simply waited.
I’d known his wolf would have to seek mine, but I wanted the human side of him.
I’d seen mates among the older members of the pack whose wolves were desperate for each other, but, as humans, were either totally indifferent or actually hated each other.
I never wanted that. I even wanted more than my dad had.
His and Mom’s relationship could best be described as cordial.
In the last ten years or so, my dad would disappear for a few days, and even though no kid wanted to think about this, I knew he was meeting up to help her through her heat.
I supposed it wouldn’t go on forever, though.
She-wolves, similar to regular human females, stopped having heats eventually.
I frowned. Wait, so that was females. Emery wasn’t.
Heats occurred so a female could get pregnant, so why had Emery had one?
That made no sense. They’d both mentioned blood mates, which I got, but neither of them had been clear.
I supposed I could ask Esther or my dad, but the thought of voicing the question to either of them made my currently semi-hard cock want to shrivel up and die.
“Is it a secret?”
I blinked myself back into the moment, then started laughing. I tightened my arm around Em and kissed the top of his head. “Sorry, spacing out. It’s been an interesting few days.”
Emery chuckled softly. “At least you knew you could turn—wait.” I could see the gears turning in his mind. “Can I do that now?”
I winced. “To be a hundred percent honest, I’m not totally sure. Female omegas can unless they are pregnant.”
Em poked me. “Well, sorry, but that’s obviously not going to be an issue.” He grinned, then tilted his head and gazed at me because I’d been unable to share the joke. Fuck, what would the pack say? “Okay, so how about you tell me what’s wrong?”
I glanced down at him and pressed another kiss on his temple, but that was to buy me some time. Where the hell did I start?
“Scratch that,” he said and pulled out of my arms. “I need to pee, and then you’re going to have to feed me.
I can’t do heavy conversations until I’ve had at least two coffees.
” I tried to keep the sigh of relief in that he wasn’t heading for the door, and I got up without it occurring to me that I didn’t have so much as a pair of briefs on.
He groaned. “Is this a wolf thing or a Phoenix thing?”
“What?”
“Being naked all the time,” he huffed out.
Taking a chance, I stalked around the bed to him until a certain part of my anatomy was nearly touching him. “Is that a complaint?”
His lips twitched. “Coffee first.”
Which wasn’t a no. He disappeared to use his bathroom and probably brush his teeth while I went into mine to do the same.
I wasn’t one to spend much time, well, none really, looking at myself in the mirror, but I paused after I’d wiped my mouth on the towel, and I stared at the non-descript person looking back at me.
Wolves didn’t go on looks, but I knew humans did, or at least there had to be an attraction first. What if Emery’s human side was more dominant, and I was a disappointment?
Black hair, gray eyes, a permanent shadow over my chin that appeared even when I’d only shaved an hour earlier and now didn’t really bother with.
I had muscles, sure, but I was an alpha wolf. The pack tattoos marked me as an alpha.
Emery was stunning. What did he possibly see in me?
I heard a noise in the kitchen and grinned. I imagined Emery was wanting coffee. I’d better go be his hunter/gatherer because my dad’s coffee machine needed someone with a barista degree to operate it.
Surprise kept me still for a moment as I entered because Emery was working my dad’s baby like a pro. “My dad’s gonna love you.” He looked up and grinned.
“This is the newer model, but my mom had one.”
“Your mom’s a coffee connoisseur?”
His smile fell, and he shrugged. “Not really. She just bought it because it was expensive.”
I wasn’t touching that comment with a ten-foot pole, or not yet, anyway. “What made you go into teaching?”
“Mrs. Temple.” He poured me a mug of coffee and pushed it toward me. I hopped onto one of the stools by the island. He doctored his own and brought it over.
“Is she a secret?” I teased, tossing his words back to him.
“She was my seventh-grade teacher.” He blew out a breath.
“I was going through a phase of basically being a brat for attention. I’d started skipping school and felt homework was a theoretical concept that didn’t apply to me.
I’d gotten worse all year, been in detention a ton of times.
Mom and Dad kept getting called in. Dad never bothered, but Mom turned up a couple of times.
” He smirked. “The second time, she was drunk, so Mrs. Temple never asked her again. She just devised her own punishments.”
“Like?” I said, completely enthralled.
“I still got detention, but instead of sitting in the classroom with her bored out of my mind while she graded work, she sent me down to the after-school club as a volunteer.” He shook his head, but a smile played on his lips.
“I didn’t have brothers or sisters, so I wasn’t used to spending any time with kids younger than I was, but that first session, there was this little guy who was painfully shy and would always take himself off in a corner to read or build LEGO.
They sent me to help him build something, and I was hooked.
” He grinned. “Not with LEGO, but just spending time with no expectations.
Nobody telling me I had to act a certain way or even build the equivalent of a space shuttle.
Eric had found this little LEGO dog, and he wanted a kennel.
“I mean, I know this now, but for the first time, I was liked just for doing something simple. It got so I started going most days even when I didn’t have to.
The teachers started trusting me, and I got to know the kids that needed extra help.
” He shrugged. “So that was it. I made a career out of building a LEGO kennel.”
“I’m sure there’s a lot more to that story.”
“But not before breakfast,” he scolded playfully and went to the fridge.
And gaped. He turned to gaze at me. “How many people live here?”
I chuckled. “It’s the pack’s way of welcoming you.”
“Really?” He started pulling out covered dishes and investigating, and soon, he had the oven on and was warming quite a few choices. “I saw how much you put away yesterday.”
I felt the heat climb my neck and wanted to groan.
“Can I help?”
“Maybe some bread if you want it. I was just going to put everything out, so plates, forks?” I obediently got everything out, loving the easy domestic vibe we had going on.
“What happens to your kids, then?”
I stilled. “Happens?” I cleared my throat, a little embarrassed at my slightly panicked voice.
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think you eat them. I meant school.” He frowned. “Actually, when can they shift?”
“It varies,” I said. “Adolescence. Some younger, particularly alphas.”
He paused. “Home school? I mean, that’s a pretty big secret to ask a ten-year-old to keep.”
“We used to have a pack school.” The words were out before I could bite them back.
“Yeah? What happened?”
This was the last conversation I’d wanted to start, but he needed to know. “We don’t have any kids at the moment.”
“At all?” He shrugged. “Sorry, I have no idea why, but I got the impression quite a few people, sorry, wolves, lived here.”
“Three hundred and seven,” I muttered.
He was just bending to the oven but stopped. “Three hundred and seven what?”
“Wolves,” I confirmed, my heart beating somewhere around my ankles.
“I didn’t just mean kindergarten,” Emery assured me. “I meant in general. Although maybe teenagers go to Minton High?”
He pulled out a few dishes and transferred them to the island where I’d set out some mats, then grabbed a bottle of water and waved one at me.
“Please.” My throat was so dry despite the coffee.
He came back and sat down and just looked at me expectantly. “Is it hard for shifters to get pregnant?”
I pulled at the label on the water bottle. “No, or it never used to be. Female shifters have similar biology to women, but—” I stopped, feeling my skin heat again.
“I work with seventeen female staff,” Emery said, dryly.
“The only guys are the principal and the custodian. I’m used to hearing about periods, cramps, the benefits of tampons versus pads, the varying methods of contraception, and I’ve seen Arthur Mackenzie’s testicles probably more times than his own mother.
” He waved off the question he was sure I wanted to ask, which would have involved the assurance that Arthur Mackenzie had better be no more than five years old.
“Around fourteen years ago, all shifter females stopped having heats.” Fuck.
“Periods. Like periods,” I ground out. “Except in shifter females, their heats are the time they do get pregnant, unlike…” I waved my hand, and he nodded gravely, but I was sure he was trying to keep his face straight.
Then he seemed to understand what I meant.
“Like, at all?”
I nodded. “We didn’t realize it was happening all over at first, but last week, our scouts came back from visiting other packs—”
“Where?”
“All over the country. You generally don’t get packs in built-up areas for obvious reasons, and humans will always outnumber us by the millions, but yes, there are many packs in the US and Canada.
A few dotted elsewhere, but mainly here.
We found out that this wasn’t a local problem limited to our pack, but a nationwide one.
To the point where I’m one of the youngest wolf shifter alphas that I know.
There are some younger wolves, but no teenagers we know of and certainly no children. ”
“I’m so sorry.” Emery reached over, and I clasped his hand gratefully.
“We know there’s a huge problem, and we’re trying to figure it out, but the lack of alphas is causing an even bigger problem.”
Emery’s eyebrows shot up. “Why? Can’t other people do your job?”
“Being an alpha isn’t just about giving orders. Anything but. I don’t know how to explain,” I added helplessly.
Emery didn’t let go of my hand, thankfully.
“I told you I did some background reading for the kids’ project?
” I nodded. “Well, one writer described the alpha wolf as the cohesive force that kept the pack together. That wolves are meant to live in packs and that lone wolves don’t usually live for long because it damages something in their psyche. ”
I nodded, immensely grateful he seemed to understand. “That’s true for shifter wolves, as well, and I don’t mean to make me out to be something I’m not, but a pack that doesn’t have an alpha doesn’t usually stay together for very long.”
“How come it took you twenty years to find out?”
“Because a lot of packs eschew modern technology. They’re mistrustful of humans. We would term them a closed pack.”
“Which isn’t necessarily wrong,” Emery said. “There are a lot of secluded communities all over the world, and that doesn’t mean they’re a threat in any way. They choose a different life and want others to respect that.”
I gazed at Emery. How did he make it so simple when different usually meant division? I wished there were a lot of human politicians that felt the same way.
We ate in silence for a while. I could practically see the million questions running around his head. After a while, he put his fork down and took a few gulps of water. “How do wolves know they’re mates? I mean, what if the female, omega, whatever you called it, doesn’t meet their mate?”
I winced. “Then a trusted male wolf would help them through their heat.”
“Really,” he said, but made no further comment.
I cringed. It sounded so bad described like this. “Females have their first heat when they’re twenty-five,” I rushed out, trying to make it sound better. “Unless they’re an omega, of course. Omegas only go into their first heat when they meet their alpha.”
I hadn’t realized what I’d said that time until I saw Emery’s expression. Or rather, a lack of one. His face could be set in stone.
“That’s what you called me,” he said evenly. “Your omega.”
I nodded, waiting for the next question, which I couldn’t answer.
“So if female wolves go into heat to get pregnant, and you said that just happened to me…” He tipped his head to the side, considering me. “Why did I have one then?”
I had no idea.