Just An Omega

Five

When she got into the car with Carmichael he knew that something was bothering her but she just couldn’t force herself to tell him what she had overheard. She sat beside him as he drove her home in silence. So many times she was on the verge of breaking down but she held her piece. He tried one last time to get Danelia to open up about everything but she couldn’t be coaxed into talking.

As soon as she stepped into her house she went directly to her bedroom to change and grab her car keys. She didn’t need to be home for another two hours and she just felt like getting away.

She drove and drove until her tears blinded her and she pulled over by some all night diner. She thought about calling someone just to make herself feel better, but really what she wanted was a first hand account of how to deal with her mate situation. She doubted Mr. Junk could have helped her anymore than he had plus she didn’t want to involve him anymore than he already was. So she ended up calling the one person she knew she could talk to, her Uncle Arlo.

She needed to know what she was getting herself into. On the third ring, the line picked up.

“Hello,” Arlo answered.

“Uncle Arlo… I wanna know what happened. Why don’t you shift anymore?” Danelia blurted.

After a brief pause, he asked, “Sweetheart what is this about?”

“I need to know,” she pleaded.

Arlo took a big breath to collect his thoughts. “I met my mate, Kathereen, when I was seven years old,” he began. “Our mothers knew each other and we were neighbors. One day she fell off her swing set and scrapped her knee and when I heard her crying, it called to a part of me I didn’t know I had. I leaped over the fence separating our yards and I picked her up and carried her over to my house. I don’t know what I was thinking, I just wanted to end her pain. I wanted to make her feel better. When I got into the house, my mom and grandmother rushed to where they heard the crying come from. When I told them I felt like I had to take care of her they shared a look, they knew she was mine even before I did. Years passed and somehow I made sure I was every where she was, even unconsciously. I would go for a walk some days and would end up at playgrounds or walking past her friends’ house where she had play dates at. Since the pack we lived in kept close tabs on the children what I was doing didn’t nearly creep folks out as it would now days. Once she hit puberty, I didn’t need to go wherever she was. She was always around and once we shared our first kiss, she fourteen and I sixteen, we were inseparable. She was so smart and so caring. But believe me she could turn mean if she wanted to. That’s why I just called her my Kitten, she was soft and furry but still had claws. The day of graduation, we got married and started our life together. We had discussed kids and decided that if they came then they came.”

He paused and Danelia could hear the hitch in his voice. The change meaning that the most emotional part of his story was about to begin, “She was nearing her third trimester. Everything was going great. We had the nursery set up and bed built with the little stuffed animals in every corner of the room. It was pink, we were gonna have a little Kathereen. We were gonna nick name her Junior cause Kitten thought that is was unfair that only men could name their boys after them and call them Junior,” Arlo gave a sad chuckle at the memory. “I was nervous and anxious to be a father, I would try my best to love and provide ….and protect my girls. But I failed.”

At this point in the story Danelia could feel his hurt and the utter helplessness to do anything about the past. “The contractions came outta no where. We were watching Price Is Right and one just hit her so bad she cried out. I was loosing my mind, yet even in her pain she managed to calm me down enough for me to get us to the hospital without incident. We got there and it seems like as soon as she lay down on the bed she dilated the full ten centimeters. She pushed and pushed while I held her hand. She was in so much pain and there was nothing I could do about it. The doctor got the baby out…but she was blue and…she didn’t have no heart beat. Then Kitten, she… she started hemorrhaging so bad the nurses shoved me outta the room…they couldn’t stop the blood at first. And by the time they found out where it was coming from she had lost too much.”

Danelia didn’t need to hear the rest of the story cause she had been told by her grandmother the rest. After Kathereen and baby Kathereen died, a huge piece of Arlo died with them. He left after the funeral and didn’t come back until fifteen years later when Danelia was two years old.

She didn’t remember many things when she was little but somehow she could still remember seeing her uncle for the first time. She was sitting on the floor playing by herself while all the other kids were running around. Even then she didn’t have any friends and when Arlo’s eyes landed on hers she looked up into his haunted and pained eyes and she reached out and latched onto him as if her life depended on it. Every time she thought about seeing him that day, she always cried at the memory, without any explanation. Now she knew why, “What was it like, the pain I mean?”

“Unbearable. My wolf…he wanted to die himself. Didn’t see no point in living.” Danelia knew this to be true as well. Every werewolf knew that without your mate, the reasons for living just weren’t very phenomenal.

“I was enraged that this would happen to me. I was angry at the world. I done some things I aint proud of,” he confessed. And Danelia could read between the lines of his hurt. He had gone Primal. They were wolves that gave into the wildest of their natures when they shunned their humanity. Danelia was at first shocked that her loving, caring uncle could turn mean.  She couldn’t picture it happening because he was just too wonderful a person to even imagine as a…monster. But what he was telling her was the truth. She knew it to be because her uncle would always give her the truth when she asked for it.

“I was uncontrollable and at my end but a small part of me wanted to live. So I fought back. I took back my humanity and that’s when my wolf deserted me.”

“So you don’t feel him at all?” Danelia asked.

“Only when I reach my boiling point. Which I try my damndest not to do.” Thus why he settled outside the town limits on his own ranch. The further away from people’s idiocy the less likely it was that he would ‘Hulk out’ and become that Primal again.

“Lia, sweetheart, what’s going on?”

"Uncle Arlo...I think I'm gonna need your help."