I was still floating on a bit of a high when I kissed Dex’s cheek and tucked the last of them into their Uber. Darren was already gone for the night, so I locked the bar behind me and headed around to the employee parking lot. The single light in the small parking lot had been shot out by vandals a few days earlier, so the only light came from the cloud-dimmed moon, but that was more than enough to make out the three state police cruisers parked beside my car.
As I approached, two officers -werewolves, from their scents- stepped forward, one to each side of me.
“Otto Nielsen, you have the right to remain silent.”
~*~
Seven years later
Dex
“This is a really bad idea,” Corbin was a fairly recent transplant to Unity City but already a close friend. He grabbed the back of my shirt as I rattled the metal gate blocking the driveway, testing to be sure it would hold my weight.
“It’s not,” I disagreed. “The intercom is probably broken or Otto would have buzzed us in, I’m sure of it.”
“He has the gate locked,” Mitch pointed out. “That means stay out.”
I huffed. “If the intercom is broken, he probably doesn’t know we’re here,” I insisted. “You don’t know Otto or you’d know that he wants to see me! It’s not like there’s a sign sayinggo away.”I finished the sentence in a threatening growl for comedic effect.
“Ter-bear,” Taylor was speaking slowly, like I was a member of his kindergarten class. “That’s actuallyexactlywhat theno trespassinganddo not entersigns mean.”
I blew out a raspberry at him. “You just don’t get it,” I huffed. “I haven’t seen Otto in forever! He’s finally back and I want, no, Ineedto see him!”
“But Dex, if Otto doesn’t want to see anybody, that should be up to him, shouldn’t it?” Stupid Mitch and his stupid logic. “You’ve tried calling, left a note, and mailed him a card, right?”
I’d also sent an Edible Arrangement, but Mitch didn’t need to know that, so I just nodded.
“Then, if he wants to see you, he knows where to find you, right?”
I sighed, staring through the bars on the fence at the roofline barely visible behind the overgrown trees. I knew Mitch thought that the booze was why I was so anxious to see Otto, but that wasn’t it. My stomach had been balled up in a knot since word got out that Otto's sentence had been commuted and he was coming home. I wasn’t sure why, but somehow I knew that it wouldn’t go away until I had a chance to see my old friend, to touch him, to reassure myself that he made it through his unfair incarceration unscathed. To convince him that we belonged together. To resume traveling together down the path I’d been stalled on for the seven years that he had been gone.
“Fine.” I let Taylor pry my fingers off the cold metal of the bars and lead me back to Corbin’s car, sliding in obediently when Mitch opened the door. “I guess all I can do is wait.”
~*~
Therewasmore that I could do than just wait and hope that Otto got in touch. I just couldn’t do it with my killjoy friendsdead set on talking me out of it. I knew they meant well, but they didn’t understand that Ineededto be sure Otto was okay. So, when I returned to the old iron gate after the moon rose, I went alone and on four legs.
The fence was a daunting sight to my human side, but my bear just took one look at it and hustled up and over without a moment’s hesitation. He stopped for a minute on the other side of the gate, digging our claws into the soft soil and breathing in the deep aroma of the rich, fertile soil before ambling down the gravel drive that led to the house.
~*~
Otto
My parents were gone when I was released from prison, killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver two years into my sentence. A local management company had preserved the house while I was away, but the smaller, more personal tasks waited patiently for my return.
During one of those tasks, beginning to try and reclaim my mom’s rose garden from the overgrowth of weeds, the sound of voices from the driveway security gate caught my attention. I wasn't quite sure what Dex and his friends were arguing about, but he was wrong about one thing, my intercom wasn’t broken. Everything else in my fucking life was, but the intercom was fine.
Dex’s confident assurances thatof course Otto wants to see memay have fallen on deaf ears with the people standing outside the gate, but they burrowed into my chest and made my heart stutter.
Ididwant to see Dex.
Badly.
You could even say desperately.
But commuted sentence or not, I’d still come home a convicted felon and that meant there was no place for me in decent company. Not socially, anyway. If Dex wouldn’t protect his own reputation by steering clear of me, I’d have to do it for him.
All of my resolve and good intentions could only go so far in protecting the reputation of an Omega who didn’t seem interested in protecting it himself. Why would I say that? Point of evidence one was the smallish brown bear sauntering down my driveway in the moonlight later, completely oblivious of my presence. Oblivious, at least, until the wind shifted and I saw Dex’s shiny black nose start wiggling overtime when he caught my scent.
