Page 142 of Broken Bonds

That earns me another laugh. “Greatly appreciated, baby.”

I follow him to the ATV and see he’s tossed stuff in the short bed, including a case of neon pink spray paint, one of those marker sticks to draw lines on the ground with them, a stack of battered safety cones, and several rolls of plastic tape used to rope things off, or tie around trees, things like that.

“Do I even want to know?” I nod at the bed.

He glances back and shakes his head. “All I can tell you, but you already know some of this, is that it’ll be a mating hunt. Fortunately, we have a good system for running those so no one gets hurt.”

“Like I said, I trust you.”

I think he’s going to climb into the ATV, but he grabs me and plants one last kiss on me. “This’ll be okay,” he whispers. At that he departs, leaving me standing there watching him drive off toward the woods.

I shake myself as a ripple of trepidation tries to gain a foothold in my brain. I do trust him.

Frankly, I don’t see a future for myself that doesn’t involve Todd and living here with him.

I don’t see any future for myself without him in it.

I wouldn’t want one, either.

Thank the Goddess for hard, shitty—literally—work. Not to give you the wrong impression, because not everything I do involves cow shit.

But… Well, for fuck’s sake, they are cows.

I’m learning not only the barn operations, but they’re going to ease me into learning the milking and processing procedures. The common SOP for new guys is to train them from the ground up so they understand the entire operation and how everything fits together, and I’m fine with that. If the dairy processing part of things gets fucked up, people can literally get sick, so I don’t feel slighted in the least that I’m not hands-on in that yet.

Over the past several years, I’ve done my fair share of hard, dirty, even gross work. I’m not currently climbing through sewers, so I consider this a win.

I do get to apply my plumbing skills later that afternoon, though, when there’s a problem with the piping for the water supply to the milking barn. I quickly suss the problem, make the foreman a list of supplies, and resume my other tasks to wait for him to return with everything I need for the job.

“You don’t want to go to town with me?” he asks.

I don’t know how to handle this, so I opt for a modicum of honesty. “Jax told me to stay on the property, for now. You know, with all the other stuff going on. I’m not about to disobey him.”

“Ah! Sorry. Okay, let me make sure I have your cell in case I need to ask you questions.” We quickly exchange numbers, and I realize my burner phone’s address book is finally gathering something other than electronic dust.

One minuscule baby step toward building a new life. Or maybe a better analogy is laying a wafer-thin brick in place for the foundation.

He returns an hour later, and I work through lunch to finish the repairs, the guys bringing me a sandwich and soda so I don’t go hungry. Fortunately, it’s not a complicated repair, and I receive a slap on the back when the water’s turned on again and the operation is once again up and running.

I haven’t spotted Todd or the ATV as I work until after 6:00 and head to the house. His truck’s not parked there, but the ATV is in its covered spot. I take a long shower, resisting the urge to jerk off as I finally allow my mind to focus on the crazy start to our morning.

I hate my father for many things, but cutting me off from information about my basic physiology and the ability to talk to people like me—other male omegas—about it is pretty close to the top of the list. I bet this is similar to what people who grow up trapped in religious cults with no sex education feel like when they finally escape and realize there’s a larger world full of information that isn’t coated in shame.

Never again.

My father will have to kill me before I’ll ever let him drag me back to Atlanta. I hate to feel so fatalistic when I had the best morning of my life, but there are now only two options for my future: Todd or death.

Any time I let my mind try to insert logic into my soul, that maybe Todd and I had nothing more than the best sex of my life this morning, my body physically rebels against that. Like, I can’t even describe it.

It’s not even an “oh, I hope this works out” kind of trepidation. It’s like, at a cellular level, my body tells me there is no future without Todd in it.

He’s still not home by 7:00 when I make my way over to his kitchen.

Standing in the doorway, I close my eyes and deeply inhale, and…yeah. I can still smell us from that morning. I remember how he felt, how he sounded, every sweetly hot and sexy second of us crossing that point of no return.

I finally shake myself out of it and rummage through the fridge for leftovers. I don’t feel like cooking, and I’m not that hungry anyway.

Mostly because without other distractions, my mind also keeps replaying what Shawn said this morning at this same kitchen table. About triggering my heat and having a hunt.