Page 6 of The Bear, the Eagle, and their Wombat Omega (Omegas of Animals: SD #14)

Steve

I’d never felt more prepared or ready for an event than I did for this one. After spending countless hours checking and double-checking every detail, I was ready.

No detail was left undone. I used only the best vendors and kept everything simple enough that there was no room for error but made sure it was going to wow people.

I had one chance to make a good impression on the shifter community as a professional, and this was it. It was a chance I never thought I’d get, and one I refused to miss out on.

But then the morning of the event came, and with it, three emails from vendors saying there was an issue.

“That’s okay,” I told myself in the mirror. “We’ve got this. We can figure out a workaround.”

I called in every favor I had and used all of my resources, and one by one, I was able to fix them.

We’re doing this.

My wombat didn’t care about any of it. He was currently pissed at me, and I didn’t really blame him. All he wanted to do was get out and get some fresh air, and I’d been ignoring him for this job. I hadn’t realized how bad it was until this morning when the guilt was hitting me hard.

“When we’re done with the event tonight, I promise I’ll let you out, and we can run and play and take a nap in the sun. Does that sound good?”

He ignored me, still pissed. I should’ve been doing better by him. In times like these, I remembered that work wasn’t everything, but I quickly forgot again when a phone call came from someone in the kitchen at Animals.

They didn’t even say who they were, leading with, “The delivery truck with the desserts has a flat tire. They might not be here on time.”

A flat tire was not that big a deal.

“Tell me where they are,” I said.

And when they did, I nearly vomited. They were hours away. There were so many local bakeries and I had to go with the one that was trending on social media hours away. Were the people event going to be impressed and wowed by it? Only if I could get it here.

Four phone calls later, I had them back on the road. But they were going to be cutting it close, real close. I needed to have everything set up for them so they could go straight from the truck onto the table. Fingers crossed the traffic wasn’t too bad.

I grabbed a coffee and drove to the club, begging the Goddess to make everything else go smoothly. At this rate, I was going to end up going back to the convenience store and asking for my job, just to get away from this stress.

I parked my car and went inside to meet the setup crew. We’d gone over the plans before, but I wanted to triple-check before they got to work. Enough had gone wrong already. I didn’t need to add to the pile because I didn’t prepare the staff adequately.

And that’s when I discovered there were six call-ins. Six. I couldn’t even be mad about them. Four of them had to do with family medical issues, which was fair. And two were for new babies and, if I had a new baby, I wouldn’t be coming in either. But that meant we were shorthanded.

“Do you think you guys can handle it with a limited crew?”

The team lead, Winny, hesitated before saying, “We’ve got this. I’ve got backups I can call.”

“Please do.” Even if they didn’t have all the plans memorized, it would be worth it to have the extra people.

I helped get everything set up. Moving tables and chairs was the easy part, even with the missing chairs we discovered while doing so. The dessert table was ready for when that arrived, and the rest of the food displays were all organized as well.

We’ve got this.

There was a flash of light, and then everything went black.

Fuck. Maybe we don’t got it.

I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight, weaving my way back to the kitchen and hoping that this was all temporary.

The kitchen did have power. When I asked about it, I found out they had a generator, but it was only good enough for the kitchen. I didn’t love it, but it made sense. Losing their walk-ins full of food would be catastrophic economically.

I pulled up the app for the power company. They were aware of the outage and promised everything would be back up in a half an hour. Looking at the time, that gave us about a forty-five-minute leeway before the guests came. It was not ideal, but it was better than it could be.

“Hey, has anyone seen the band?” I asked the entire room, hoping somebody had an answer. According to my watch, they should’ve been there already.

No one had.

With my flashlight as a guide, I went back to the bar. “Has anybody here seen the band?”

They all shook their heads. Crap.

I checked my email and checked my phone for the third time before calling them.

They didn’t answer, which wasn’t a shock, but still frustrating.

Next, I texted them to send an email. Ten minutes later, still nothing.

Frustrated and unsure what else I could do, I pulled them up on social media, and that’s when I saw that they, too, were living in the land of car troubles.

Only, unlike the delivery truck, it wasn’t a flat tire. Their tour bus had caught on fire while they were driving. According to the post, everyone was safe, and really, that was all that mattered.

I sent them a text. Hey, guys, no worries. I’m glad you’re all okay.

It wasn’t the most helpful of texts. There were no words of wisdom or words of comfort that wrapped around you like a hug. I didn’t have the time or the spoons for that.

The lights flicked back on just when they said they would. I squeed for joy but quickly remembered I still needed to find a band. Celebrating would have to wait.

And then I realized it couldn’t be a band. Unless Animals had a secret in-house group, there’d be there’d be no way a band could get here in time.

A DJ would have to do. Didn’t Karma have a DJ on her list?

I dug through my photos to find the one I took of her list. Sure enough, there was a whole page of DJs, one with stars on both sides. It was the guidance I needed.

I called them, and not only did they answer the phone, they said they were on their way here anyway—so they might as well be the DJ. The charity was apparently close to their heart, and they wanted me to donate their fees to it.

All that was left was the desserts sitting in a truck on a highway somewhere.

Back into the kitchen I went, just as the truck pulled in.

They managed record time. I gave directions for the people who were plating it up, and wandered back out for one last walk-through.

That’s when I noticed the flowers weren’t here.

It was the final straw. My eyes filled with tears.

I’d worked so very hard and now was at the point where whatever happened happened. We were out of time.

The guests were already arriving. Showtime.

Usually at things like this, they trickled in slow, and there weren’t very many people for the first hour. But not here. The place was already packed.

Mates, my wombat insisted. Mates, mates, mates, mates, mates.

I inhaled deeply, the sweet scent tickling my nose.

Only…why did my wombat keep saying mates, plural?

It didn’t matter. Was he confused, or was this luscious scent a combination of them both? There was only one way to find out. I needed to find them.

And now—