Page 9

Mori

“You can’t stop there!”

I said before I could swallow the words down. I turned off the recorder before I captured myself sounding like a desperate ass. My Dern’s smell he was done for now. I knew the scent of a tired old shifter when I smelled it.

“I can and I did,”

Ormund said. “That is where Dern said to stop. He only agreed that we would tell you how we met and that has been done. Besides my mate is too tired for anymore of this nonsense.”

“Sheesh,”

I sighed, saving the file where I typed my notes before shutting my laptop. “Everyone is accusing me of trying to emotionally scar their mates today.”

“Eh, you’re too late to emotionally scar me, pup,”

Dern chuckled. “I’m sure you have lots of questions, though. Let’s see if I can answer them before you ask. Yes, they were really going to carve out my goodies without giving me any say in it. Yes, it had been done before and probably after me too. I don’t think omegas were as rare as we believed back then. I think mostly they were women and thus blended into the culture the packs wanted to build. I think alphas were probably around too, but they didn’t have anything extra to show up on scans. I think most guys would’ve been smart enough not to go to a doctor like I did but I wanted to do right by my parents.”

His face paled a bit at the mention of his parents. For a second, I wondered if he wondered if he’d see them again in the afterlife.

“I hope my grandparents have already moved on,”

I blurted out before I could stop myself.

“Me too. Them and my parents. I bet they have. Hopefully they got their shit together. Mori, I loved them but my dad was an abusive asshole. He wouldn’t let anyone else hurt me or Mom but he was an asshole and my mom wanted so badly for everything to be normal like the rest of the pack. I love them and I miss them. I haven’t been back to visit their graves since we let but that’s okay. They’re not there. We’ve both seen enough ancestors and other spirits to know they don’t stay at their graves,”

Dorn said and I nodded my agreement.

Dorn cocked his head and stared at me for a long time.

“Eh, you know a thing or two about reincarnation, don’t you? Not your own past life, but someone else’s. Yep. I see it all now. Ha! Good luck to him!”

“To who?”

Ormund asked.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll both be long gone before that comes home to roost. Not that it’s anything to do with us anyway. Though to all of them,”

Dern laughed and the laugh morphed into a cough. Ormund helped him take a sip of water and gave me a look that said I should be kind and excuse myself. I did exactly that because he looked like the sort who would rat me out to Othoni and we all knew how he felt about respecting our elders.

“Good night. Thank you, Dern. I’ll be back soon. Hopefully I can bring Teddy with me.”

“Don’t come back without him,”

Dern said between coughs.