Chapter 2 #2
Father pulled away from Dad just enough to look over Dad’s shoulder at me.
“Konrad, I would have expected you to be asleep already.”
It took a great deal of discipline to keep from rolling my eyes. My dads weren’t bad parents, but they seemed to forget that I was not a child and was, in fact, over seventy years old.
“I was cleaning up in the bathhouse,” I told him.
“At this hour?”
I did roll my eyes that time. I was tired of being treated as if I was a child. I knew they were protective because I was an omega, but I was past the age of being old enough to have moved out and into my own house.
“It is not late yet,” I said. “Since you and the others have returned, I think I will spend the night with Elias.” His father hadn’t left because long ago he’d been severely injured during a fight, and he had a wing that wouldn’t allow for long flights.
“You will do no such thing. You are needed here to help with the twins,” Father said.
I grumbled under my breath but didn’t argue. I knew that soon enough they would be so wrapped up in one another that I would be able to slip out and down the way to Elias’s house.
I entered the bedroom I shared with my brothers, once more realizing how frustrating and wrong it was that I was forced to share a room with my brothers and wasn’t allowed most freedoms that others were.
As expected, it didn’t take long before the door to their room closed.
After that, it was only minutes before I heard the familiar sounds of them getting reacquainted.
That was all it took for me to grab a change of clothing and slip out of the house.
I loved my family. But I wanted more than this.
There was no reason I couldn’t live in my own cottage here in the village.
Elias and I had talked about building one, and we would share it.
We’d been shut down by my father though.
Two omegas living together couldn’t defend themselves.
That always had me rolling my eyes so hard I became dizzy. We were still dragons, after all.
I made it to Elias’s house and quietly knocked on the window of his bedroom. His face immediately appeared, and he pointed toward the back of the house. I walked around and was met at the back door by Elias.
“They’re back. We all heard them.”
I sighed as Elias stepped back to allow me to enter.
“That bad?” Elias asked.
“No more than expected. I’m just tired of being treated like one of the twins. I’m not eleven, you know?”
“There is a cottage next to the market that has been vacated. The couple have decided to move back to her pack, and it has been empty for several weeks now,” Norbert, Elias’s father, said.
“Really?” I asked, hopeful. Elias touched my arm.
“Yes. I’ve been to see it. It’s not far, and there are two bedrooms as well as a main room. It’s perfect for us. We could have our own place but wouldn’t be far from either of our parents.”
“Reinhold isn’t a bad alpha or father, Konrad,” Norbert said as he came to stand in front of us.
“He is set in his ways and feels he has to be overly protective since he has three sons, and although your brothers are alphas, you are an omega that garners quite a bit of attention from the alphas in the village.”
I nodded because I did understand. I’d noticed that as well.
Da had said it was my hair and eyes. They caught alphas’ attention.
I just wanted the ability to live my own life.
Elias and his parents got along swimmingly, but he only stayed with them because he was waiting for me to move out with him.
We had been planning this since we first started shifting when we were twelve.
That had been so long ago. We’d traveled twice, both times because we’d stolen off in the middle of the night in order to go searching for our alphas.
We’d had to admit defeat, though, and always came back. Why, I wasn’t exactly sure.
“Konrad, come in. I’ve heard the wings flapping just as anyone else. That means your dads will be at each other all night,” Etta, Elias’s mom, said. I smiled at her. She was a wolf shifter that loved her mate and he her. Then again, my dads loved one another as well.
“Hi, Etta. Thanks for letting me barge in like this.”
“Nonsense. The two of you go off to Elias’s room and enjoy your evening.”
I let Elias pull me back to his bedroom, and once there, I fell face-first onto the bed.
His was much harder than mine, but it was also newer.
By quite a bit, actually. Despite the injury that Norbert had suffered, Etta had come from what one would call a wealthy pack.
Her dad was beta, and they had long ago said they were more than ready to move closer to the pack and leave the somewhat archaic views of our village.
We were basically a thunder, only a few being non-dragons.
“How bad was it? Really?”
I rolled over, sat up, and shrugged. “It wasn’t terrible. But Father thought it was late for me to be up and wanted to know why I wasn’t yet in bed asleep.”
Elias rolled his eyes. I’d done that exact same thing not even half an hour ago. “Your dads are great, but I hate to say it, Konrad. They’re part of the reason why this village is stuck thinking ways from way back.”
I groaned. “I know. I’m ready, Elias. I don’t want to stay there any longer.
The twins are eleven now. It’s not like they have to be watched every moment of the day any longer,” I told him.
Elias’s response was a raised eyebrow. Yeah, he was probably right.
The twins were a handful on a good day, downright terrors on bad ones.
Today, I wasn’t sure what had gotten into them, but they were really wound up when I arrived home.
“If Kolton goes into heat again and ends up pregnant, are you going to move back in to help?” Elias asked. He pulled me from my thoughts, and I shook my head.
“No. I love my dads. Overall, they’re great, just a bit suffocating.
But I am tired of living my life for them.
The twins are a handful, and although I love them, I am tired of sharing a room with them and it being expected that I follow the same schedules as they do yet still be expected to contribute as an adult. ”
Elias grinned. “Good.” He bounded over to the bed and plopped down beside me. “It’s not yet half past eight. What do you want to do for the evening?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what to do. I loved the freedom that I had here.
Elias’s parents treated us as the adults we were.
If I was being honest with myself, Dad wasn’t nearly as stifling as Father.
He, too, was an omega and knew what it was like to be an omega and be seen as not equal. I hated it.
“I would say we could go out, but with the alphas returning…”
I shivered. Yeah, I didn’t want to be caught out and about. I knew that not all of the alphas that had been out with Father were mated. When returning from a week-long assignment, they usually wanted one thing, and Elias and I weren’t looking for that kind of attention.
“Read?”
I shrugged.
“Draw?”
I tilted my head from side to side.
“I know.” Elias got up off the bed and went to the small table he used as a place of drawing and writing. He came back with a book and an inkwell and quill. “We’ll decide what we’re going to do with our house. There was already some furniture in it, but we’ll need to figure out how to decorate it.”
That sounded perfect. Elias and I sat on the floor, leaning against the bed, and after he drew the current layout of the house, we decided where we wanted to locate things, what new furniture we wanted for the place, and what we were going to do to help make sure my alpha father didn’t insist on me moving back in with them.
It wasn’t uncommon. I was seventy and four.
Elias was only a few months younger than I was, and he still lived at home with his parents.
Our friend Wilhelm lived with his parents, but Lukas lived in a smaller cottage next door to his parents.
Then again, his parents had nine children, and they were simply out of room.
We excitedly made lists and diagrams and came up with ideas that we would have a small get-together every week with our friends. It was something that we were both eager to do but hadn’t yet been able to because we both were still with our parents.
When Elias and I both couldn’t stop yawning any longer, we put the book and ink away until morning. After blowing out the candle, we settled into bed.
“Night.”
“Yeah, good night,” I told Elias. I stared up at the ceiling through the darkness. I could make out the texture of the wood on the roof.
I lay there listening to Elias’s breathing.
It was different from hearing the twins.
There were two of them, and it sounded off at first. I knew I would have to answer to Father come morning, but I couldn’t bring myself to get up and walk back to my own home.
I knew that Norbert and Etta wouldn’t make a peep tonight because they were nice like that.
After some time, I finally felt myself start to doze off. I wasn’t sure how long I had been asleep, but an unknown noise woke me from my sleep. I listened for a moment, and when I didn’t hear another sound, I dozed back off.
When I realized someone was in the room with us, it was too late to call out because something was placed over my nose and mouth, and my brain became heavy and foggy, and that was the last thing I remembered.