Page 12 of Watcher's Omega

When I came out of the bathroom, I found a black fluffy robe and matching new slippers waiting on the bed for me. I slipped them on and padded through the house, paying extra attention to the family photos lining the corridor. Rhomas’s family was bigger than I ever imagined. Though, when you live as long as shifters do, people who enjoy having kids keep at it.

I stopped at a photo of Lee holding a baby while Bane stood behind him with his arms around both of them. That baby had to be Rhomas because the baby was clearly a newborn and the photo wasn’t taken in the hospital.

“Ah, you found me,” Rhomas announced and I jumped out of my skin.

The man crept around even when he didn’t mean to.

“That was the day they found me. My birthday is also Dad’s Wolf Day. The day he got his wolf back. It’s this whole big thing. See…. My dad was taken by a bad guy once too. A really bad guy and he was kept for a long time. It’s why Thomas had to die straight away. He’d already hurt Glenn really bad and a few others. He burnt off the top part of the building. Your stuff is okay and trained rescue workers are slowly moving out everyone’s belongings. I told them they could bring your and Glenn’s stuff here. I hope that’s okay. I didn’t know if you had another place. I know most people don’t have multiple houses.My parents don’t even anymore. Not really. They’re all lived in now by me or my siblings. Three of my siblings live at the Mage Street place because they’re professors there now.”

“Thank you,” I said, still staring at the photo of Rhomas and his adoptive parents.

“This is mom,” he said, tapping a photo a bit further down the hall. “When she passed away the funeral home got so weird. They asked if I wanted her pelt and I thought my sire was going to beat him black and blue. I still don’t think the funeral director realized that he asked me if I wanted him to skin my mother postmortem. Then he argued that most pets were cremated and we had to find someone else to do it. Eventually, I called Uncle Darian and asked if she could just be buried in her forest where she lived. That’s where she is now. Not far from where they found me. She has a little shrine and everything. The wild wolves visit her sometimes too.”

I balled my fist up ready to punch a funeral director too. How could they be so blind?

“Hey, don’t get upset. That was a long time ago and in the end she got laid to rest properly,” he said. “Though, my dads get mad every time someone brings it up. Ralphie and Frieda are buried out there too. They descend from one of my litter mates. Jolly does too. Frieda was his mom.”

“Has Jolly had puppies?” I asked and Jolly appeared back in the corridor as if I summoned him.

“He’s snuck off a few times with a shewolf. At first, Darian worried about dog DNA running in wild wolves, but you can’t really tell. Plus, before you ask, no I never planned for any of them to be a service wolf. Ralphie chose me and then Frieda didand then Jolly. I don’t think they think of it as a job as much as they consider it just being pack. Service wolf is just the name the pack officially uses because it’s in words shifters understand.”

After lunch, I had a quick video chat with Glenn who was still very sleepy and then the pack called to tell me our stuff would be there in the morning, but might still need a bit of airing out. We had just started making our way back to the bedroom when the phone rang again and it was Glenn’s parents. I told them that he was okay and the attacker had been put out of everyone’s misery. His carrier cried in relief and his alpha ranted on about calling pack security to complain. I told him to go straight ahead and do that because they were more prepared for his complaints than I’d ever be. Whatever their issues were, they’d have to work it out with him when and if he felt up to it.

With my mind on anything except mating, Rhomas gave me a tour of the house which included fourteen bedrooms counting ours, plus two offices, a library, and a billiards room. There was also a playroom and a family room that wasn’t the living room. I was sure I’d get lost in the house but at the same time it was easy to imagine our children one day roaming these halls. Maybe we’d put up a big Yuletide tree in the living room but since everyone probably went to Lee and Bane’s for Yuletide, maybe we’d be the ones to host New Year’s Eve parties and then we could all go up the mountain to watch the ball drop. All the thinking I did about our future pups reminded me that our claiming vows were still only half-completed.

“Does it hurt you?” I asked Rhomas as we walked hand in hand down one of the longer corridors that would lead to our bedroom if we took two left turns.

“Not physically. It’s a little swollen but it doesn’t hurt. It’s just something noticeable. It feels like there is a scratching inside my brain. It’s as if someone is in there scratching out secret messages on the walls and shuffling through my thoughts but I cannot decipher the messages. It’s as if I’m reading a language I know but all the letters have been scrambled.”

“That sounds painful,” I said.

“We did what we needed to do. You were undergoing something very frightening and for all the things I’ve learned to do, being in two places at once isn’t one of them yet.”

“Yet, huh?” I teased and bumped him with my hip.

“Perhaps one day I will. You never know what us wild borns are capable of,” he laughed.

“That sounds as if it would either be thrilling or terrifying.”

“For you it would be thrilling,” he smirked, turning toward me. I turned to face him too and found myself with my back against the wall. He looked down at me, resting one hand above my head and cupping my chin with his other hand. He kissed me softly as I leaned against the wall, letting it take my weight. Rhomas’s warmth radiated through me like a warm blanket as my lips parted beneath his, inviting his tongue inside. It twirled around my own and I let myself get lost in him. His scent surrounded me, forcing my thoughts onto him with every inhale.

It was hard to believe we’d known each other less than twenty-four hours. Logically I knew I’d lived without him. That’show Glenn and I ended up on the burning roof but breathing in his scent while his tongue lapped at mine made that feel almost impossible.

I brought my hands up and rested them on his shoulders. They were broad and muscular and I reveled in the strength that radiated from him. Phantom fur brushed against my flesh as if his wolf was trying to say hello. His wolf too suffered from the half-opened link. Until our claiming vows were complete our wolves weren’t able to clearly communicate with each other either.

My wolf nuzzled against my ribs, trying to reach out. He could feel Rhomas’s wolf, but I wasn’t sure it worked the other way around.

Rhomas’s hand disappeared from my chin and stroked up and down my throat. I leaned my head back against the wall and his mouth found my neck. He kissed up and down it, marking me as his territory. His mouth lingered down to the neck of my shirt and then he dropped to his knees. A scorching blush spread across my face as he looked up at me. Only he didn’t go for my pants. Instead, he pushed my shirt up and kissed my belly. He nuzzled against my bare flesh, scent marking me. His five o’clock shadow played against my belly and I ran my fingers through his thick fur-like hair. He turned his nose into me and breathed in my scent as his arms wrapped around me.

I bit my lips to swallow the wolfy whimper that threatened to crawl out of me. I was slick and all the pressure was making me hard too. Need pulsated through my blood as Rhomas nuzzled lower down to my crotch. My dick strained against the sweatpants prison as he rubbed his stubbly cheek up and down my shaft.

“You smell so good,” he murmured against me and my blush deepened, spreading out to my ears. “So good.”

He rubbed his face all over my crotch until I was ready to beg him to just let me take my pants off. He might not have read my mind, but scent and body language don’t lie. His hands rubbed up and down my thighs, caressing me through my clothes before circling around to cup the globes of my ass and knead his fingers into them as he nuzzled me. He was hard too. His arousal flooded over our claiming link even as he took his time tugging down my pants to realize no one thought to give me underwear and all mine were at the house.

A drop of pre-cum had already formed on the head of my throbbing dick. Rhomas kissed it away before nuzzling me again. A moan bubbled over my lips, and I ran my fingers through his hair again, scratching them over his scalp. He pinned my dick against my body and kissed up and down it before repeating the journey and tickling me with his scratchy day old stubbleI ground against his face until his tongue found my shaft. My hands dropped to his shoulders as my knees shook. This wasn’t the first time someone’s mouth found my dick, but everything was more intense with Rhomas. Maybe it was just the true-mate response or perhaps it was because he spent the last five minutes nuzzling me into a frenzy.

One of his hands disappeared from my ass to cup my balls. He slid his palm over them, gently massaging the textured skin of my scrotum. I was going to melt right into the hardwood floors if he kept that up. A second later, his fist closed around my shaft and his tongue licked tiny, teasing circles around my tip. He looked up, met my gaze, and held it as he teased me. Another moan crawled out of me, and I was never so grateful to have a wall to lean against.