Emory almost refused, just as he had the past several Fridays when Christopher offered to stay late with him in the office. Hewas really reaching the end of his rope, though. His shoulders slumped, and Christopher pulled up a chair.
They spent the next five hours and four boxes of Chinese food fighting with spreadsheets and making several calls to various site managers. It seemed like the errors were completely outside of the site's control. A cruise ship had docked at the port and then lost power, resulting in delays for several weeks. Of course, the managers had failed to inform Emory of this, which Christopher pointed out none too gently over the phone. By the end of the night, Emory had a round-trip ticket to Anchorage and a throbbing headache, but at least he had a plan.
He should have rememberedwhat they say about the best laid plans: they lead straight to hell. Or at least, Emory’s version of hell, which consisted of being stranded in an airport the night before Fall Harvest, drowning in angry messages from nearly every woman in his family, as well as the site manager Emory was supposed to have met with that day.
Emory stared glumly down at his phone as yet another message appeared in the family group chat. Lion prides were primarily made up of one male, the alpha leader, and a series of alpha, beta, and omega female or nonbinary relatives and their mates. Alpha male relatives were welcome, at least in the more progressive prides like Emory’s, but they typically left to start their own prides or families. His cousin Jonathon was the first-born alpha male in their pride, but he had left in the middle of the night when Emory was a teenager. The story was distorted through the aunt and uncle grapevine, but from what Emory had surmised, his departure hadn’t been amicable.
After his father died, Emory became the de facto alpha leader of the pride, a position he had never wanted. When he was younger, he had sometimes wished he would be one of the rare cases of an alpha being fated mates with an alpha leader of another pride. If that happened, he would be forced to integrate into their pride. If he found a lion shifter mate now, they would have to join the pride he now somewhat ran with his mother. He could, of course, end up fated mates with anyone, of any gender or shifter species, but it was much rarer for an alpha who was already in leadership to find a fated mate who would disrupt the hierarchy of the pride.
His phone flashed again, this time with a message from Christopher, inviting him to his family’s house for a birthday brunch that Sunday. He would have to check with his mother, but he loved spending time with the chaotic water shifters. He would have to do some groveling for missing dinner since there was no way he’d be able to get to Alaska, do the meetings, and return the following evening.
The clock on his phone reminded him he had been sitting in the same position for over two hours, and his lower back quickly confirmed this. He decided he might as well check with the airline’s help desk again to see if they had managed to get him on a new flight.
He began scrolling through emails, color-coded based on severity and urgency, and got in line behind seven or so other shifters. He tried to concentrate on an email from his CFO, Clint, but his attention was diverted by a familiar scent.
At least, it was sort of familiar. It reminded Emory of the air at Christopher's family's beach cottage. Salty yet fresh. It was also a little sweet and full of promise, like the first day of summer.
He scented the air, trying to gauge where the smell was coming from without being too obvious. His lion was pacingaround, causing a fluttering in his chest not unlike when he missed the last step on the stairs at his mother’s house.
He tried to focus on his email, but his lion kept forcing him to look around, gauging whether the smell was getting closer or farther away. After a few more sniffs, he determined it was coming from in front of him. Perhaps from someone in line?
The man at the counter called for the next patron, and as they all shifted forward obediently, Emory caught a flash of ginger hair. He didn’t have a specific type, so there was no reason for the hair to elicit such a visceral response in him, but it almost felt like seeing a long-lost friend or a relative returning from overseas. His heart rate picked up, and he had the strange urge to let his lion canines come out.
Was he getting sick? That was just what he needed. If he got the whole Anchorage office sick, he would never forgive himself. He glanced back down at his phone, considering just rescheduling this whole doomed trip, when he heard a soft voice somewhere ahead of him in line.
“You can go ahead. I’m…not feeling too well all of a sudden.”
The two patrons in front of Emory quickly stepped forward, blocking Emory’s view before revealing the ginger-haired man. Emory could immediately tell he was an omega—his alpha sense of smell made omegas easy to distinguish. He was also giving off the telltale earthy smell of testosterone. Emory’s lion longed to shift and get a better whiff, but Emory quashed that.
Instead, he focused on using hishumaneyes to learn more about the man. He was around a head shorter than Emory, who was pretty standard-sized for a lion. His father had been well over six feet, but Emory hovered right under six. The man’s hair would probably have reached down to his shoulders in length, but because of the spring-like curls, it poofed up around his head in a sort of halo effect. It also wasn’t a standard ginger color, having some much darker undertones that hinted at beingrelated to his shifter beast. Not all shifters’ hair colors reflected their inner animal, but for a lot of land and air creatures, it did.
A draft of warm air drifted down from some heat vent above and wafted the man’s salty-sweet smell toward Emory. When it hit him, it was nearly overpowering. While his lion began to salivate, Emory tried to keep his brain engaged and focused, and he noted that the man might actually be a sea creature.
All of this happened in under three seconds, just enough time for the man to slowly lift his chin and make eye contact with Emory. The moment he did, Emory’s world tilted.
His vision swam as the floor appeared to lift towards him and then drop back down, almost like a child’s teeter-totter. The man in front of him seemed to be similarly affected, swaying in place. Were they experiencing an earthquake? Or maybe some sort of gas leak?
The omega stumbled a step forward, dropping the heavy backpack he had been carrying over one shoulder. Unfortunately, he continued his forward momentum, tripping over the discarded bag, and Emory’s hand shot out on instinct to grab him.
As soon as the skin of Emory’s hand touched the man’s wrist, the room snapped back into sharp focus. It felt like when he was a child, and he would wear his father’s reading glasses, wanting nothing more than to be exactly like his role model. The glasses would distort the world, making everything hazy and wavy until he removed them, and the world would appear sharper than it had before.
That was how it was now, everything in sharp, almost surreal focus. Emory would have sworn he could see the individual dust particles in the air. But more importantly, he could now count every single freckle on the man’s adorable face. They crested across his cheekbones and over his sharp nose. Some of them appeared to be almost concave, while others were varyingshades of brown and tan. Two particular freckles sat right above the left corner of his lip, and Emory was struck by the absurd urge to kiss them.
He snapped his eyes up to meet the shifter’s and noted they were an almost fluorescent blue that swirled and roiled like the surface of the ocean. Now, whether that was a trick of the light or due to the intense emotions flashing across them, Emory couldn’t say. Some of those emotions mirrored Emory’s, including confusion and surprise. But there were others Emory couldn’t quite decipher. Could it be…hope? That warm, shimmery feeling slowly ballooning inside Emory’s chest?
Gods, when was the last time he’d felt hope? Way before his father died, that was for sure. Recently, the only thing he’d had to hope for was a workday filled with only one disaster and to find that exact right position in bed to let him get a few hours of sleep before it started all over again the next day.
Right now, though, he felt like he could take on the world. Like anything was not just possible, but probable.
“H-hi,” the man stammered, his cheeks turning an endearing shade of pink as he looked up at Emory through his lashes. His voice was soft and a pretty tenor.
“Hello,” Emory breathed, not sure where his own voice had gone. Possibly wherever his common sense had disappeared to, because he felt himself slowly pulling the man in closer.
The man didn’t resist. In fact, he shuffled an awkward step forward, untangling himself from his bag and then practically throwing himself at Emory.
Emory released the man’s wrist and wrapped him up in his arms. His lion roared so loud, Emory cringed, pulling the man tightly against his chest. With shocking strength, the man wrapped his arms around Emory’s back and squeezed him even tighter. His lion roared again, and his canines descended into Emory’s mouth.
“You’re—”
