“Oh shit! He’s coming over here, isn’t he? Crap, I’m a mess! Do I look a mess?” Lily asked, suddenly sounding panicked as Aidan began to head their way.

“I’m sure you look fine,” Kyle said, stomach turning as he wondered if he could get away without being noticed.

An escape wasn’t likely though, since everyone around them was paying attention to Aidan and wondering exactly where he was heading. That, and he knew Lily would probably rip his arms off later if he took off now. If Aidan really was coming this way, he would be trapped by the dictates of their society. During a Showing, if an alpha wanted to see a specific omega, then that omega had to present themselves. The omega didn’t have to necessarily be agreeable, which would be sorely tempting if Lily wouldn’t have been standing there the whole time.

When one of their elders stopped Aidan to talk to him, Lily breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Oh thank Gaia, I was not ready for that. Geez, I didn’t think he and his pack would be arriving for another hour or so. I was kind of hoping to sober up before then.”

Kyle however, downed the remainder of his drink in one go and grabbed hers. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time. It looks like he’s got everyone and their grandmother trying to chat him up. The prodigal son returns.”

“Don’t sound so bitter there Kyle,” Lily said wryly.

“I’m pretty sure I have a right to be a little bitter. Wouldn’t you?” he asked her.

There was a troubled expression on her face, but she didn’t argue with him. When it came to the difference between him and Aidan, it was as many miles apart as their village was from the sun. Aidan came from a well-respected pack, whose lineage had boasted several proud leaders and warriors over the generations. His pack had sponsored him until Aidan had struck out on his own, taking a small pack of his choosing with him to fight in the border skirmishes. The last Kyle had heard, the alpha had celebrated enough victories to have earned him the respect of friend and foe alike. Since he’d left, Kyle had also been hoping that every time he heard the alpha’s name in passing he would stay out there on the borders, if not be killed in some battle far away.

“Well, he’s going to be busy for a while, if he even bothers to look my way,” she said, switching topics in a heartbeat.

“He’s more likely to look at you than me,” he told her, glad it sounded like a statement and not a source of relief.

“Oh, come on. You’re not that bad a choice,” she told him.

“I’m packless, and my original pack lived in the shadow of the shame from my uncle’s indiscretion even before I came of age. I don’t really think that’s going to be slapped on a golden platter and used in a positive sense. Do you?” he asked her.

“Well, you might not think much of yourself but I sure do. So quit putting yourself down in front of me before I kick your ass in front of the whole sept,” she warned.

From her normally happy demeanor and emotional sensitivity, you’d never know there was one hell of a fighter under that smile of hers. Kyle wasn’t easy prey for someone who wanted to fight him, but he didn’t relish the idea of actually trying to fight Lily in combat. It was one thing to spar with her; it would be a painful endeavor to try to fight her, particularly if she was actually trying to hurt him. He had yet to give her reason to come after him, and he wasn’t about to start tonight.

“Oh, come on. I know you’re proud of me but that’s what friends do,” he told her.

“They also smack them upside the head when they’re being stupid. Is this one of those times?” she asked him, eyeing him seriously.

“Let’s just get a drink, and you can fawn over him, okay?” he said, trying to waylay her before she warmed to her threat.

“You can get a drink. I want to stay sober just in case he does come and talk to us,” she said, sounding nervous all over again.

It gave him the chance to slip into the crowd and disappear, one of the many, rarely mentioned benefits of being shorter than other people. He hadn’t liked the fact that Aidan had recognized him from a distance. He liked the idea that Aidan had wanted to act on it and come over to talk to him even less. So long as he kept Lily busy and occupied with her own rambling thoughts, he might be able to maneuver them around the celebration area all night and avoid Aidan’s attention completely.

“I mean, I know it’s been years and everything, but damn did he get bigger or what? And hotter,” Lily wondered aloud as they reached the booze table and Kyle snatched up a mug to replace his empty one.

He followed her gaze and grunted in grudging agreement. Aidan had left shortly before his eighteenth name-day, eager to strike out on his own and prove himself. He had grown a few inches since then, and would tower over Kyle as much as, if not more than he did when they were younger. Kyle was pretty sure the alpha had also gained an additional seventy-five pounds, all of which seemed to be muscle. There was nothing boyish in his face any more. What little baby fat he might have once had having melted away to leave a strong jaw and well-defined features. Most of the packs around here were either dark haired and dark eyed, or fair haired and bright eyed, but Aidan’s family occasionally bucked that trend, and Aidan was apparently the one chosen to do just that. Just as when he was younger, the alpha kept his jet-black hair cropped short, and the green of his eyes, which had Lily babbling away about new moss, hadn’t lost its hard and dangerous look.

Yeah, the guy had always been good looking, and age and battle had done nothing but enhance his looks. Kyle couldn’t tell what they were, but he could see the edges of tattoos peeking out from beneath Aidan’s clothes. There were also several new scars on his tanned skin that showed up in the firelight of the bonfires and torches as he passed. Aidan hadn’t just led his pack into battle, he had apparently fought more than enough skirmishes to earn himself that many scars, some of them looking far older than others.

“Oh Gaia, there Kim and Ace go,” Lily complained with a roll of her eyes.

Kyle watched the two omegas, who were a year younger than Lily, approach the alpha eagerly. Both of them came from decent packs just as Lily did, and were expected to find themselves a good alpha who would choose them. He hadn’t been lying to Lily when he’d said it had been a few rough years for the Showing. Kim and Ace were both good choices for an alpha. Both were at the right age to be picked, since tradition dictated that youth equated to a stronger pack. Both of them offered not only the ability to breed and bring new blood into a pack, but they weren’t picky about who their bed partners were. Willingness to sleep with either gender was a desirable trait in a society that found itself beholden to the whim of their more animal nature. It was another mark against Kyle’s desirability as a prospective member of a pack, that he would only sleep with males.

“If you weren’t over here hiding, you’d be trying just as hard as they are,” he told her with a smirk.

She glowered in his direction. “You really are an ass sometimes, you know that?”

He motioned toward Aidan with his mug. “Then go talk to him, if I’m wrong that is.”

Turning back to grab another mug, he froze when he heard her say. “Well, he shot them down so fast they’re sulking. Now he’s heading this way, so I guess I gotta put up or shut up, huh?”

It was Elder Sky he heard first as Aidan’s entourage approached. “We can get you a drink if you wish, and then you can take in the rest of the omegas, as you see fit, of course.”

Aidan’s voice had gone even deeper, and had a faint, gravely edge to it as he replied with disdain. “If they’re anything like the ones I’ve seen so far, then the standards of the sept have gone down while I was away. When I was invited to pick an omega or two, I was expecting it to be an honor, not to choose your leavings, Elder Sky.”

The insult went ignored as Elder Sky sighed. “Well, I hope that perhaps after some time, you’ll find one that reaches your standards. I know you have been searching for an extra addition or two to your pack. If you shouldn’t find anything to your liking, then that is simply the will of Gaia.”

It wasn’t quite an admonishment for Aidan’s blatant lack of respect, but Kyle wasn’t surprised. Alpha’s were expected to be arrogant, and it was tolerated to the point of self-abuse by septs when an alpha was practically a legend, as was the case here. From the sounds of it, his time away had done nothing to disabuse Aidan of his notion of superiority or to diminish the sheer size of his ego.

Lily tensed beside him. “Hi, Aidan! I’m Lily. I don’t know if you remember me. You sometimes hung out with my sisters, Rose and Leaf.”

The advance of the group stopped as Kyle assumed Aidan paused to take in the sight of her. “Yeah. You look like them, though they were the ones who followed me around. Did your parents just look outside and whatever plant or plant part they saw first ended up being your names?”

Kyle closed his eyes and breathed in deeply as he felt Lily start to wilt. “They were just…just really big on choosing as natural sounding names as possible. They believed in sticking true to our roots as people of Gaia.”

“Maybe they should have called their last child Roots then,” Aidan snorted.

“I’m sure they would appreciate the suggestion,” Lily said in a high-pitched, almost wounded voice.

“And I continue to be impressed Elder,” Aidan said dryly.

“A drink first?” Elder Sky suggested hastily, probably to head off Aidan from saying anything else nasty.

“Well I would, but it appears someone else is in my way. Is this omega oblivious like the others, or just deaf?” Aidan asked, sounding casual.

Trying to tamp down his anger, Kyle turned toward Aiden with a forced smile on his face. “No, no, just getting my drink before you got yours is all. By all means, drink up.”

Aidan’s brow rose slightly, his eyes widening in recognition. “Well, if it isn’t my old friend…Kyle, right?”

Kyle swore he could hear his teeth grinding together. “That it is Aidan. Were you getting a drink or not?”

His attempts to step to the side were stopped in their tracks when he heard Aidan chuckle. “Sure, but I’d love it if you stayed a while and talked about old times with me. I haven’t seen someone from back in the day that isn’t almost ancient now.”

“Maybe another time? The Showing is all about moving into the future, not dwelling on the past, right?” Kyle asked, trying his hardest to avoid having to stay here longer than his self-control would stand.

“Aw, it’s been years since I’ve been back home. It’d be nice to talk about the good ol’ days,” Aidan said, and Kyle could have punched the smirk right off his face.

“And what good old days were those, Aidan? The ones where you terrorized and beat up anyone you knew you could get away with beating up? Or the ones where you spent every day enacting a new way to make my life a living hell simply because you were older, bigger, stronger, and knew you would get away with it?” He heard himself snap, drawing the attention of every single person within hearing distance.

The smirk on Aidan’s face flickered briefly, but his brow remained raised. “Is that how you remember it?”

He didn’t know if it was the alcohol or just years of repressed anger that kept him talking, but Gaia did he keep talking. “Because that’s how it was. You were a bully and an asshole, Aidan.”

Aidan laid his large hand against his chest in what Kyle presumed was supposed to be a wounded gesture. “Is that anyway to address an alpha, a hero of the people?”

Kyle snorted, raising his glass as if he were making a toast. “Here’s to you then, Aidan. The biggest asshole this sept has created in probably a dozen generations. You were a prick as a kid, and it looks like you’ve somehow managed the feat of becoming an even bigger prick now that you’re an adult. So here’s to your achievements of getting into a bunch of fights and managing to win them. And here’s to you coming back to rub it in everyone else’s faces, because Gaia knows it must have been real hard to be the best when you had the best of everything from the start. So cheers, asshole. May Gaia make you strong and may Luna guide you, preferably to the bottom of the lake.”

Lily gaped at him as he downed the entirety of the mug he’d grabbed from the table. Hers wasn’t the only look of shock around him, but Elder Sky’s was probably the funniest. The old man looked like he was about ready to have a heart attack right there in front of everyone. That, or maybe he was trying to figure out how he could strangle Kyle without causing an even bigger scene.

It was Elder Sky who recovered the quickest though, pulling himself up haughtily. “Are you quite finished, Kyle?”

Kyle slammed his mug down and snatched up another. “Yep! By all means, get your drinks and enjoy the rest of your night.”

He stormed his way through the crowd. Before Lily managed to catch up with him he was about the same distance away from the gathering as he’d been when he’d first found Mags. No one had bothered to try to stop him, and the mixture of shock and amusement he’d seen while leaving the table had only fueled him to keep going. It wasn’t like he’d necessarily broken any laws, but it was generally understood that an omega didn’t chew out an alpha publicly, especially a venerated hero.

Lily grabbed his arm to stop him. “Holy shit! Are you nuts?”

Kyle tried pulling his arm free. “I don’t know, am I?”

“You said you’d be nice!”

“Yeah, that was before he was an absolute dickhead to everyone in sight, and then to cap it all he had to go and be a dickhead to you, okay? My promise didn’t extend to showing him courtesy when he’s being a complete arrogant jerk, okay?” he snapped at her, finally pulling his arm free.

“That’s sweet, but you just shot any chance you had of getting anyone to choose you in the foot. You know that,” she told him, sounding exasperated.

“Are you telling me you didn’t want to tell him off when he made fun of you, your sisters, and your parents?” he demanded.

“Well yeah, but I felt like I might burst into flames if I told the Aidan off in front of everyone. Did you see Elder Sky? I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head,” she said with a faint snicker.

Kyle frowned when he spotted Mags still sitting on her stump, grinning at him. “Yeah well, he can yell at me later. We both know he lives to yell at me for not being some happy omega that’s thankful they’re even letting me stay here. Screw that. They let me stay because I’m the only one who can put up with Mags being crazy, and will probably be a shaman after her.”

“Won’t stop him from chewing you out later,” she warned him, even as she grinned.

“Let him. He never does anything but that when he comes after me,” he snorted.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she asked, glancing toward the village with a frown.

“Please, everyone is just going to ignore me for the rest of the night after that little display, and you know it. There’s no point in standing around getting drunk by myself in a crowd. I’m better off getting drunk at home alone. I’m not going to stand here and make you talk to me when no one else will. You still have a chance to have some fun and maybe score yourself a Choosing, okay?” he told her, not wanting her to argue with him right now.

Lily bit her lip, looking torn. “Is it really good for you to be alone right now?”

“What? I got it out of my system. Hell, I feel a million times better, even if it means everyone glares at me for a moon or two,” he said, waving it off.

“And if he decides he doesn’t like what you said, and you’re off by yourself without anyone to back you up?” she asked, still sounding worried.

He rolled his eyes. “He’s a bastard, but he’s not stupid enough to come looking for me when everyone’s got their eyes on him. Hell, they’re probably watching him more than before, since they’re all going to be so busy trying to make up for how rude I was. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, you don’t mind if I stop by afterward, do you?” she asked.

“I’ll keep an eye out for you, but if it ends up anything like last year, I’ll find you passed out in my garden again,” he said with a snort.

“I’ll make it to your front step this time, I promise,” she said with a laugh, waving as she trotted back to join the celebration.

He might be destined to be alone and annoyed for the rest of the night, but he was glad his friend wouldn’t necessarily have to do the same.