“Ma, I should already be there. How am I going to explain to the council that I’m late because my mother couldn’t let me move away?”
Ma’s face scrunched. I looked to Dad for help.
“But you’re our baby.”
I sighed. “Ma. I’m not a baby. I’ve lived on my own for decades. I’ve been to medical school. I’m actually over a century old. How is that a baby?” I glanced at Dad again but saw I was going to get no help from him and gave up. “I’m not doing this,” I told them. “I love you both, but you have to get over the fact that I don’t want to live in Maine. My mate isn’t here. If he was, don’t you think I would have found him by now?”
“You’ll never find an alpha if you go off to Montana and seclude yourself on that mountain.”
I rolled my eyes. I was the baby. True. I was the youngest of eight children. And the only omega. The. Only. One. How that had happened, I wasn’t sure. I had seven older brothers, and every last one of them was an alpha just like Dad. “I love you both, but I’m going,” I said as I grabbed my coat from the peg on the wall by the door.
“Really? Just like that?”
I didn’t even bother to answer because I had been doing this for the past hour. Ma wouldn’t let go. I loved her immensely, and she truly wasn’t a bad person. But she didn’t want to “let go.” I’d already talked to Cameron since he was the brother I was closest to, and even with him being an alpha, he had gone through the same thing with Ma. She just didn’t want any of us ever move away. Ever.
I pulled my coat on as I walked down the front pathway toward my SUV. What Ma didn’t know was that all of my things had already been packed and loaded into the moving truck. All I had to do was put my SUV onto the car carrier and leave. I didn’t want my goodbye to my parents to be like this, but Dad was just trying to avoid upsetting Ma more than she already was. I understood that, but she needed to let us go.
Out of the eight of us, only three had found their mates because Ma screeched like a banshee every time we tried to even go on vacation. When I was at college, it was hell. Thankfully, back then, there were no cell phones. But still.
I stopped beside my SUV and looked at my parents’ house before I climbed in. They lived on pack lands, and although Ma had trouble letting go, I would still miss her. From afar though. I took a moment before I slid behind the wheel and started the vehicle. It was cold and snowy, and although I was a shifter, I still got chilled at times. I was odd like that. As far as I knew, going to Montana wasn’t going to be much different in the winter.
Did I think I was going to meet my mate out in Montana? No, not really. There was always that hope, but I wasn’t holding my breath. I would love nothing more than to have a mate and start my own family, but when I turned ninety and there was still no mate to be found, I’d decided to apply to medical school. Nomate there either. I found plenty of men to spend time with, and I wasn’t going to complain about that, nor did I regret it.
I shook my head. Okay, maybe Weston. If I were being honest with myself, I did regret him. But only because he was such a ginormous ass. Unfortunately, he’d hidden that until after I’d invested a good deal of time in a relationship with him. It was on me because I knew he wasn’t my mate, yet I still entered into a relationship with him.
Once I left my parents’ neighborhood, I drove to the little town we lived in and stopped at the post office. I grabbed the letters that I had already written, because somehow, I knew that Ma would be like this, and Dad would be…well, Dad. He adored his mate, and when it came to the children, he refused to go against her. I shook my head before I pushed the button to roll the window down and drop the letters into the blue outgoing mailbox. They would get them in a couple of days, and by that time, I was going to be several states away.
It wasn’t necessarily the best time to be driving from Maine to Montana, but I didn’t wish to wait any longer. Ma had been increasingly insistent on parading eligible alphas around, and although I knew her heart was in the right place, and the hope was that one would eventually be my mate, I was over it.
With the letters dropped into the box, I pulled away and headed toward my house. There were just the basic essentials left inside, and it wouldn’t take long to finish packing everything up. This was it. I was finally leaving for what felt like forever. I was feeling a bit nostalgic on the drive through our town. It wasn’t all pack. We actually had quite a few humans in the area, and although that was never an issue for me, I knew it bothered some in the pack.
But I was ready for a new adventure. I wasn’t old by paranormal standards, but I was also ready to set out and do something on my own, away from my family. I would be thefourth son to move away, and it was no wonder with how Ma got. We all loved her but also understood the way she became so hyper focused on us and making sure we were all right there with her wasn’t healthy.
I drove through the town’s streets, and when I finally made it to the house I’d lived in for the past five years, I expected to feel a sense of sadness, but instead, I felt excitement. Was I happy about driving twenty-five hundred miles to Montana? No. But I was going to enjoy the new life I knew I would have. I was going to make the best of things, and hopefully, at some point, I’d get the chance to go on vacation and meet the sexy alpha of my dreams.
I sighed, thinking about the possibilities. It would be amazing to meet a sexy bear shifter. He’d be all big and full of muscles, and…yeah, best to not get too excited or ahead of myself. Honestly, I didn’t care what species my mate ended up being. I just wanted to meet them at some point in the fairly near future if at all possible.
I pulled into my driveway and parked. After I sat in the SUV for a moment, I took a deep breath and went out. It was supposed to snow later this evening, and most likely, that meant I would be driving into the snow, but hopefully, it wouldn’t be too serious, and I wouldn’t have any issues. This morning didn’t go how I had planned, but I wasn’t surprised about that. I was expecting Ma to have another argument about me leaving the area.
I hurried to the house, and after I unlocked the door, I entered an empty house. Everything was already loaded and in the moving truck that was sitting in front of my house. All I needed to do was pack up the last of my things in my bathroom and then load up my SUV, and I would be on my way.
First thing I did was walk over to the counter and drop my house key there with the others. I wasn’t returning, and thehouse wasn’t a pack house, and I’d decided to sell it. Even if things didn’t work out with the council, I knew it was time for me to move away for my own happiness. I loved my parents, but Ma was overbearing, and Dad simply allowed it.
After the keys were all sorted, I grabbed the cold drinks from the refrigerator and ice packs and placed them in the cooler. It took all of five minutes to finish packing up my suitcase and get everything loaded into the moving truck. This would be so much easier if I had magical powers, but I wasn’t a warlock, and despite the council having several, I wasn’t offered relocation services. So, I was driving across the country.
I should have already been on the road and almost there, but I let Ma hold me up. That was on me, and I was going to apologize to the council and hope for the best. It wasn’t an excuse, especially since I was over a century old. I had done much better when away at college and medical school. There were definite hard boundaries while I was away, and unfortunately, she had stomped all over those once I was back within minutes of her. That was my fault, and it was something I wasn’t going to do again.
It took me close to half an hour to get my SUV loaded onto the car dolly, but once that was complete and I quickly cleaned up one last time in my soon-to-be former house, I was on my way. It wasn’t ideal to leave in the afternoon, but I would get as far as I could and start fresh in the morning. I had intended to take four days to get there, and that would be four very long twelve-plus-hour days, but now it was probably going to be four painful sixteen-plus-hour days if I wanted to make it there in only four.
I had no doubt that I could do it. I’d done longer shifts in medical school—we all did. I just didn’t care for the fact that I was starting my new position with the council late. As soon as I stopped at a hotel for the night, I would reach out to my pointof contact at the council and let them know I was on my way but running behind. I didn’t foresee it as being an issue, as I didn’t have a hard-set start date. But I felt bad because I had said the first week of April, and it was already the second.
I made it to the border before I started second-guessing myself and how I was leaving. I called Cameron, and it seemed as if he had been expecting me because he picked up right away.
“You’ve left, right?” he asked in greeting.
“Yeah. I just crossed into Canada. I’m trying not to second-guess what I’ve done, and I keep telling myself I’m doing the right thing.”
Cameron sighed. “You’re doing the right thing. Well, except maybe going through Canada in April. Did you not watch the weather?”
