It had been a very, very long time since I’d woken up as satisfied as this. It made me wonder why I’d waited so long since the last time — but not for long. Although I could tell from the distinct lack of body heat that Dylan had already left, his scent remained behind. I buried my face into the pillow. Being alone, I didn’t have to worry about hiding the self-satisfied grin it forced onto me. I could just throw myself into the way it made me feel.

I wondered if he knew what he did to me. Maybe a little, after last night, but I’d have to throw myself fully at his feet to communicate the full effect it had, and thankfully my ego still prevented me from anything as obvious as that. Still, part of me already felt foolish for imagining that I didn’t need this in my life.

Even my bones felt contented. I was seeped in it — and right now, it felt as necessary as oxygen.

I shifted halfway, fur rippling up and thickening over the tattooed lengths of my arms, then down the curve of my back. Wolf senses liked Dylan’s scent in the pillow even better than the rest of me. Eyes closed and face-down, I felt myself getting hard against the mattress. Even just the memory of him would be enough, but those blankets made me feel surrounded. It was more than a memory. It was a favor left behind. I could close my eyes and almost imagine he was underneath me, writhing and coming like an omega possessed.

He wasn’t the only one. I hadn’t knotted in years, and still wasn’t sure what had my body feeling that way this time.

The idea that he’d vanished on purpose hadn’t even entered my mind. Perhaps it was arrogance, or perhaps an alpha just knew, but it was clear that last night hadn’t disappointed him. If anything, he probably had to run and open his store. When I finally sat up from the pillow, still half-hard as I thought of him, I caught sight of his phone on the bedside table and smirked.

He seemed like an organized guy. Granted, I still didn’t know him that well, but only on a technicality; I didn’t know the meaningless tick-boxes of information. Blood type. Star sign. Favorite color. It was the important stuff that was slowly sinking into me. Even just that first day at SeaTac Tat, his hand in mine as I tattooed him, I felt that I’d seen a part of his soul. In any case, I was willing to bet it wouldn’t be long before he realized his phone was missing. Once he did, he’d call — and the sound of his voice would probably have me stiff and ready all over again.

Damn it. It was a good thing it was my day off at the parlor today. Already, I knew that Mark and Oscar were going to read the satisfaction all over me, and they’d torment me for it.

When the phone rang, I rolled over with a smirk on my face, pulling Dylan’s pillow over my face. I grabbed his phone, forcing both of us to wait for the count of three before I couldn’t any longer, and answered the call.

“Hey, Houdini.”

“Jack, I’m so sorry. I was so late, and I-”

“Easy,” I said. Even the beat of silence had me wrapped around its finger. It was silence with him in it. “I get it. If you’d stayed a second longer, you would never have wanted to leave.”

“Well, almost,” he said. In the playful, sarcastic tone of his voice, I heard a little kernel of truth. Or was that wishful thinking? “Anyway, I feel bad. I wasn’t planning on pulling a vanishing act. I just didn’t realize the time. Forgot to set an alarm.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

I could practically hear him blushing over the phone. Eyes closed, I nosed up further into the pillow, letting it serve as a proxy for the heat in his cheek a few blocks away.

“How’s your head?”

“Not so bad. I’ve had a lot of water.”

“Good,” I said — then left a deliberate gap, slow-paced and suggestive. “So. Last night was… really fun.”

“It was,” Dylan agreed. “And I know I’m supposed to be playing it cool, but I don’t think I have it in me. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there this morning.”

“I’m sorry you’re not here right now.”

“Jack...”

I let him trail off, imagining the flustered form of him at the counter of his store. Imagined how embarrassed he would be to have thoughts like these, maybe even with customers milling around. No — scratch that. He wouldn’t make a call if there were people there who might need his help.

Even so, it made for a pleasant picture. My flower-scented omega and the pink tint in his cheeks. Why wasn’t it too early to call him mine?

“Anyway,” he said. “I shouldn’t stay on the business phone too long. Somebody might come in, or they might be trying to call — but can I come by the parlor and pick my cell up later?”

“Day off today,” I said, stifling a yawn against the fur-covered back of my hand. I lifted the pillow to look at it, half-shifting back and forth to watch it flicker in and out of being. “So no can do. But I can swing by and hand it over, if you want.”

“Really…?”

“Sure. I offered.” I rolled my shoulders back, finally dropping my free hand to my chest and sinking down into the bed. “I’m just being lazy so far.”

“Keeping the nest warm?”

“You want me to go there and talk about this, while you’re at work?”

“No,” he agreed quickly. “Okay. No, I don’t. Yes, please bring it to me if you’re passing by.”

“I’m going out of my way,” I said, only partly teasing. “I’m doing this just for you, as a favor.”

“How will I ever repay you?”

I laughed at the dryness in his voice. He was such a set of contradictions, slipping between sincere concern that I shouldn’t put myself out for him, and the kind of mild sarcasm that could only be a refuge for a nervous omega — almost like a double-bluff. No, you don’t make me nervous. Can’t you hear me joking with you?

Even so, he’d given me the perfect opening.

“I have a few ideas.”

“I really have to go.”

I laughed again, sitting up in bed. The sheets gathered around my waist, slipping down from my shoulders — smooth again, now that I was in full human form. “Alright. I won’t torture you. But I’ll see you with your phone… uh. Sometime today. I don’t know when.”

“Thank you, Jack. I appreciate it.”

“No trouble. Take care; be good.”

It took me a little while to pry myself out of the comfortable cave of the blankets, and the smell embedded into them, but the promise of seeing the man who’d put it there was eventually enough to stir me. I dragged myself into the shower, washing away yesterday’s sex and exertion, and emerged like a new man. Tugging my hands through still-damp hair, I turned my head from side-to-side in the mirror. A couple of bruises, but nothing that would show above the collar.

I wasn’t sure he’d be able to say the same. Had he noticed yet, after dashing out so fast? I wondered how many well-to-do customers had come in to buy their flowers and seen the purple blushes I’d left scattered on his neck.

Hope he won’t mind…

Even though I hadn’t known him long, instinct told me we wouldn’t have issues about small things like that. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Whatever this thing was between us, it was still young enough that we could assume whatever we liked about each other. We didn’t have enough evidence to confirm or deny the perfect pictures we were building in our minds; it just felt rosy and reckless, diving headfirst into a new person that seemed, somehow, to be an ideal fit.

If I spent a few spare seconds thinking about it, I knew it couldn’t be that simple. For one thing, we’d met in pretty emotive circumstances. No matter how keen he’d come across so far, and no matter how the universe seemed to sing when we slept together last night, Dylan was still a widow. He would still need time to get over his ex-husband.

Could you call a husband an ex, if they had died instead of left?

Either way, I was ashamed of myself for feeling jealous. I didn’t believe that partners owned one another, especially once relationships had ended — but if anybody was an intruder here, surely it was me.

I had been planning on trying to wait a while longer before I headed out. The rules were stupid, and as a 34 year old man, I ought to know better than to follow them. Still, part of me clung to the idea that I’d ‘seem desperate’ if I arrived too early. How either of us could ‘seem desperate’ after the level of desire our hormones had driven us to last night, I wasn’t sure, but I still couldn’t shrug it off.

I buried the part of me that felt it wasn’t worth risking this fledgling, might-be relationship by breaking the rules, even if I thought they were stupid. That part of me was wrong, and didn’t know what he was talking about.

Besides, this was hardly a relationship. We’d had a good, fun date, followed by some admittedly pretty spectacular sex. There was nothing more to it than that.

Right?

However, all of this planning fell apart as I sunk into my armchair and switched on the news. A reporter, standing in front of Seattle General, was enlightening the anchor on how quickly the local cases of ‘Wolf Flu’ had developed.

I didn’t need any more motivation than that. Apparently, the rules were to be damned; the universe had made my decision for me. Shutting off the TV immediately, I stood up from the armchair and picked up my keys. Only then did I pick up Dylan’s phone from the bedside table, turning it over in my hand. It spent his life in his pocket, usually, and you could tell. It had the definitive floral edge of his scent.

It felt surreal that I was about to head to the source of that.

It didn’t take long to walk to Dylan’s place. Strange, really, how our businesses could be only a couple of blocks apart. All this time we’d been passing each other in the streets and failing to look up at the right moment. Crossing the street at the wrong time. Sitting behind each other in line at the traffic signals, drumming our fingers on the steering wheel instead of looking in the rear-view mirror and…

And what? I shook my head, trying to push out all this serendipitous, romantic bullshit. Hadn’t I just spent time thinking about how early it was to be framing this entire thing as a relationship of any kind? It was barely even romance. If the thought of seeing him right now was putting a skip in my step, it was probably just at the thought of his face as I took off my clothes, or the way his collar bones caught his blushes first, or the way his nose wrinkled at the V’Gan menu, or…

Wait.

...Shit.

I tried not to think about any of that cutesy bullshit as I stepped through the door of Blessings, peering around the store for any sign of its proprietor. Although the bell above the door had rung out loud and clear as I entered, there didn’t seem to be anybody behind the counter — or making their way out from the back room.

Maybe he was on a call. I shrugged, taking a moment to pace around the small area of the shop. It wasn’t a huge place. You could easily fit three of Blessings inside the tattoo parlor. Even so, Dylan was making great use of the space. No surface sat uncovered by flowers; even the walls had shelves and holsters installed to carry more product. To turn over this much fresh stock and still turn a profit, he had to be pretty busy.

It was impressive, really. Still, this wasn’t a formal visit. I took myself out of business gear, leaning over the counter and peering behind it, just in case.

“Hello? Phones for Omegas delivery service…?”

Still no answer. I took a glance over my shoulder and stepped behind the counter, spreading my hands over the cool walnut surface. Sure, it was forward, but I figured he wouldn’t mind. You couldn’t feel fussy about a man standing behind your desk after the kind of intimacy we’d shared last night. It wasn’t as though I was rifling through financial documents.

I wouldn’t do that.

But maybe I’d risk taking a more thorough look around. There was still so much about this omega I didn’t know. Here, enveloped in the natural origins of his scent, I couldn’t resist the urge to track down a couple of new details about this man I was getting to know. Maybe somewhere there would be a hint about his interests — a mug with his favorite band’s logo on it, for example. A ticket stub for the opera.

He just kind of seemed like a guy who’d enjoy the opera. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t find that particularly attractive, but in Dylan it seemed cultured and new.

No doubt about it. I was screwed. As far as I was concerned, this was on Oscar and Mark. Maybe on the idiot who needed Mark’s emergency tattoo assistance, too. If not for him, then Dylan would already be a forgotten figure, if I ever saw him at all.

My stomach flipped. Maybe there were other trains of thought to follow. That one wasn’t having the comforting, distancing effect that I had hoped for. If I wanted to unpick the stitches of this burgeoning commitment, I was going to need to try harder than that.

It was then that my eye fell on a really good excuse to walk away right now.

On the door leading to the back office, there was a young child’s drawing, framed with care and hung neatly at eye level. Two wolves together — one small and tawny, and the other large and gray. In case that wasn’t easy enough to interpret, some adult had kindly added labels in clear, fine print: Josie and Daddy.

I swallowed, taking a few steps closer to the door. Getting closer to the picture wouldn’t change it, but I didn’t know what else to do. If Dylan had a kid, then things had to change. No matter how hard I’d tried to ignore the mutterings on TV recently, even just before I’d headed out of the apartment today, there was no denying that lunitis was a rising problem again — or ‘Wolf Flu’, as the news had taken to calling it.

They could call it whatever they damn well liked. I knew those symptoms, and I knew how fast it could spread. How it could decimate an entire pack, save for a few survivors who were supposed to consider themselves lucky. Sometimes, humans dismissively called it ‘shifter parvo’, and not for nothing. If anything the cruel comparison was a little too weak. Where some dogs stood a chance of recovering from canine parvovirus, few wolves ever pulled through from lunitis once it had you in its grip.

I swallowed, hard and heavy. Children were especially susceptible to lunitis. After my history, and the history of my pack, could it really be safe for me to be around Dylan’s pup? I hadn’t died from the disease, and didn’t know whether I was a carrier, but with such a deadly illness, not knowing could be just as much of a risk as knowing for sure. I could feel my heart stutter in its place, somehow both sinking and pounding, and filling me with a resignation that bore down surprisingly heavy.

One date, and it felt like this to think about calling it quits.

I barely noticed when the bell rang. So deep in thought, its meaning didn’t register, and I only turned at the sound of a familiar voice.

“Can I get a bouquet of violets, a potted orchid and one abandoned cell phone, please?”

Still reeling from the shock of my discovery, I turned to face him, but couldn’t pull up a convincing smile in time. “Hey,” I greeted, but even as I spoke I saw his eyes dart between me and the door. It didn’t take long for him to surmise what had happened.

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. That’s… my baby girl. That’s Josie.”

He sounded hollow. If I didn’t know better, I’d think even his daughter’s name made him feel empty — but he stepped behind the desk too, standing beside me to admire her drawing. He reached up with a hand, fingertips trailing down the side of the frame. There were no smudge marks on the glass; he must have taken good care of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I should have told you, huh?”

“Nah. You don’t have to tell me everything on day one,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets, and hoping I sounded convincing. I did believe it. If he’d come out with every intimate detail of his home and family life the second we sat down at the restaurant, it would have been too much to handle. Nobody wanted that as they were trying to get the feel of a person. The point of a first date was to learn the rhythm of conversation with them, and the taste of their spirit.

If you ended up talking about kids and family? In my book, you were doing something wrong.

Even so, part of me wondered whether I’d already put him and his pup in danger. When he next saw her, would he be carrying the ghost of a disease that she’d never encountered before? Nobody had worked out how the illness spread yet, but I pictured it sneaking between us in my bed, invisible in my bloodstream as it moved into his. My mouth felt dry.

“You know, I get it,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looked smaller than usual, shoulders hunched and head pointed down at the floor. “Kids are a lot of baggage to agree to, and… we only just met, so…”

“Oh, hey. No. It’s not like that.”

Dylan’s head tipped up, his eyes slightly narrowed with confusion. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” I insisted. Inside me, a battle raged. Why wasn’t I agreeing with him that a kid was too much responsibility for me, or that it wasn’t what I was looking for right now? It would have been the perfect out, and yet here I was struggling. Couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I wasn’t interested any more. I could see what that would do to him, and I didn’t feel capable.

It made me feel weak in the way only an omega could. An alpha could build muscle ‘til your body couldn’t fit through the average door, but the thought of harm coming to an omega under your protection would still unman you in a heartbeat.

It had been a very long time since I’d felt that. Certainly, I could never recall feeling it about a new man so quickly before.

Could be that I was getting old, and my instincts were trying to raise the stakes — trying to force me into mating with this omega while I had him out of fear that another would never come along. I’d rather believe that than the alternative, no matter how likely it seemed.

Especially now there was a kid involved.

Dylan cleared his throat, shifting between his feet. “It’s just… you know. The way you were looking at her drawing. I figured...”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “No. Sorry. I was a thousand miles away. Just keeping myself busy until I could deliver this.”

I pulled his phone out of my pocket. As I handed it back, I knew I ought to resist the temptation to touch him, but I was weak. I made sure our hands brushed together — and took the blush that sprang immediately to his face as my reward.

“Sorry,” he said, slipping it back into his pocket and turning away as he tried to recover, as if he wasn’t the same color as many of his roses. He wasn’t very good at pretending. “Thank you. I hate that you had to bring this for me — and that I was out when you arrived. I just didn’t expect you so soon.”

“You didn’t keep me waiting long,” I assured him. “Besides, it’s nice seeing where you work. Your flowers are… really pretty.”

It could be difficult for me to make such soft words sound sincere. By nature I was so dry and rough and sarcastic that it made many of my kind words seem like a joke. I was ready to explain myself and insist that I was serious, but the smile on Dylan’s face suggested that he already understood.

Of course he did.

“Thank you,” he said. No trouble hearing the sincerity there. “I’d offer you one to tuck into your lapel, but...”

“I have a reputation to uphold,” I said. The twitch in the corner of my lips was the only hint I was teasing, but again, Dylan seemed to pick it up anyway. “You can’t be decorating me with… bluebells, or whatever.”

“Do you see bluebells in here?”

“Uh...” I scratched the back of my neck, turning from side to side a few times for show. “So. They’d be blue.”

Dylan snorted, nudging his elbow into my side. Even through my jacket, my body responded to the contact with a rush of interest. Couldn’t I just bend him over the desk, right here?

“They are blue,” he confirmed. “And I don’t stock them. I just order them in for weddings. But I could hook you up with a plumeria. Or maybe a chrysanthemum.”

I pointed, altogether too pleased with myself. “I’ve heard of those.”

“And can you point them out?”

I folded my arms, leaning back against the desk. “Listen. I’m not here to do your job for you, Kapernit. If you lost your chrysanthemums, you’re going to have to find them yourself.”

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

My heart tugged in his direction as he smiled, and the light spread to warm his eyes. Even knowing about his kid, and knowing that I should probably walk away, a big part of me wanted to scoop him up right here. We didn’t even have to screw on the countertop, so long as he knew who he was coming home with. So long as he wanted that.

It wasn’t my fault. My mouth and my heart led before my brain could catch up — and the wolf was right there with them.

“Look. I know this is soon, but…”

“Tonight?”

I blinked, cut off by his eagerness. I couldn’t help the smile spreading across my face. “Well. I was just going to ask if you’d see me again in general, but if you’re that eager…”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I kind of am.” He shifted his weight again, hands fastened together in an awkward fidget. If not for the bright, happy look on his face, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was terrified. Maybe he was; maybe we both were, jumping ahead into this. It seemed like both our instincts didn’t want to give us a break.

Still — I’d had worse instincts in the past. No matter what the complications may be, he was a really nice guy. Not nice in the sense people sometimes meant it as ‘boring’ or ‘unremarkable’, either. He was genuinely sweet and wholesome. I liked the way his feelings filled him up, no matter what they were, and how he expressed them.

I wanted more of that. Maybe it was selfish. Maybe we’d just have to be careful.

I just couldn’t say no.

“Tonight, then,” I said, nudging my foot across the floor to bump into his. He beamed down at the contact, nudging his own foot back into mine. “Sure.”

“Okay, good,” he said, somehow shyer now that I’d agreed. “And since it’s my turn to direct us, I think I know where I want to take you.”

A few beats, then he leaned over to a nearby bucket with a reluctant kind of guilt, like scratching an itch he’d been resisting for too long.

“By the way. This is a chrysanthemum...”