Thunder was, well, thunderstruck at the sudden change of attitude coming from the omega. Up until now, the other man had been pleasant enough, if a little awkward. That awkwardness had been cute, just enough to make it obvious that he was a little bit off in his footing.

He had thought they were having a nice conversation. It was a good interlude, a break from his ponderings over his current job. He was still in the planning stage, the beginning stage of brainstorming based upon the information given to him. His mind always whirled in the middle of this stage, like he was swept up in a hurricane. Even when he was doing something else, like talking on the phone, or eating, his mind was working away in the background, figuring out the problem.

Sometimes, it was tiring. And frustrating, when no good ideas came to him. When that happened, a distraction was welcome, though there were few things fully capable of occupying his interest at such a time.

This omega had been one of them.

From the moment Thunder saw him walking up, he knew they were going to end up talking. He knew that partly because he planned to start a conversation anyway, however brief it turned out to be, but he also knew that because of the way the omega kept looking at him once he noticed Thunder was there.

He’d called the omega over, and the closer the man came, the more Thunder started to think he’d made the right decision.

The omega was tall and slim. He had appeared to be that way from a distance, but Thunder hadn’t realized just how tall that actually was. They were nearly eye-to-eye.

The omega wore tight jeans, which really accentuated the shape of his hips, the length of his legs. There was an odd lump in his pocket, which at first Thunder mistook to be an erection. Upon figuring out that wasn’t the case, he cast aside his interest in that particular area. There were far more important things to be looking at.

His black hair was in the style of a fade, which was worn swept up on top of his head. Not a single strand was out of place.

His eyes were gray, almost silver when the sunlight hit them.

And his voice, his voice was the best part of all. It was sweet and musical, flouncing easily through the words.

He really wasn’t Thunder’s type, but Thunder had already started wondering whether he should change his type. Because, damn. A tall, adorably awkward omega with silver eyes? What was there not to like?

Until just now, after he had given the omega his name. The other, younger man went pale, his face robbed of its lively color. His lips pressed together flat and firm. His eyes had gone dark, nearly black. His sweet voice dropped into a bitter snarl, full of far too many emotions for Thunder to make sense of. Anger, sadness, betrayal.

Such a strong reaction, all because of his name.

Maybe I did something in the past? I did kind of think he was familiar.

Thunder looked a little harder at the fuming omega, who was furiously awaiting an answer to his question. There was really no one aspect of his appearance that seemed familiar. It was more of an overall sense that he got, an impression of knowing this person.

“Seems like you know who I am,” Thunder said, “but I have no idea who you are.”

“Of course you don’t. It’s been a few years now, right? You’ve forgotten all about me,” the omega said. His voice was tight, laced with pain and displeasure. For some reason, though he didn’t know who this omega was or why he was so mad, Thunder felt terrible. His chest tightened in response to what the omega said. His heart twisted. This wasn’t a person who deserved to be so upset.

Saying out loud that I didn’t know who he was was more hurtful than he realized.

Thunder waited, staying quiet.

The omega tossed his head, jerking away. His hair stayed perfectly in place. “Does the name Abraham ring any bells?”

I should have known.

The pain Thunder felt in his heart intensified, strong enough to steal his breath. He had put aside their failed romance around the same time as it ended, though it took much longer for him to fully get over it. He had really, truly been in love with Abraham.

Unfortunately, at the time, Abraham was underage.

Thunder hadn’t known that until it was almost too late.

“I… I kind of forgot you lived here. You could have gone away to college. It’s a big city. How was I supposed to know I was going to run into you?” He searched for reasons, tossing them out, hoping one of them would stick and make Abraham stop looking at him like that. “What are you going to do, Abe? Go to your pack? Have your brother interfere again?”

Abraham flinched as if stung. “I never asked him to do that.”

“You never should have lied.”

“Everyone lies online!” Abraham snapped. Far from being pale, his face was now red with rage.

Thunder grabbed the notebook he’d slid over to Abraham and closed it. He stuck the pen inside the spiral, then placed everything on top of his laptop. He didn’t want to have to leave, but he would be ready if it was necessary. The last thing he needed was this confrontation.

“Most people lie about their weight or height or how big their dick is,” Thunder said. “They don’t get on dating apps and lie about being legal.”

“It wouldn’t have been a big deal if we’d waited,” Abraham said. His lips twisted sourly.

“I wanted to wait!” Thunder said. He placed both hands down on the table and leaned forward over them. He stared hard at Abraham, trying to make him see how unfair he was being. “I would have waited for you until you were ready, until everything went right and we could be together. You had all these excuses all the time, and I believed all of them. I would have waited. It was you who got tired of waiting. It was you who wanted me to come by when I was in the area. That was all your idea. I agreed because I wanted to. Of course I did. I loved you! How could I resist the offer to come and have you in my arms for real? But the idea was yours!”

Even thinking about it now, how close it had been, made Thunder shudder on the inside. His spine crawled with revulsion at the idea that he had nearly been tricked into taking advantage of someone who wasn’t old enough to legally consent.

Thunder had no idea if that dating app still existed. He couldn’t even remember the name. He had joined because he was a 30-year-old man in the prime of his life and he was looking for potential fuck buddies. He never lied about his intentions. He was always traveling around to new locations in search of work, and had been doing so for over a decade at that point. He wanted a little bit of sexting, some online foreplay, maybe a meet-up whenever he was in the area of someone who was willing.

He’d signed up with the username Thunder8888, because Thunder was his nickname from his high school football days, his work pseudonym and brand, and that alone wasn’t enough characters.

For a few weeks after he signed up, he got only spam and trolls. Then, from nowhere, was a cryptic message from a user named HonestAbe, who had no profile picture, but whose profile claimed they were 18.

“I know what you are,” the message said.

Thunder had, of course, replied, asking what the other man meant.

“You’re a shifter,” was the reply. “I can see it in your eyes. What kind are you? I’m a wolf. Omega.”

It hadn’t started out as anything sexual. Hell, from the beginning, there was no inclination that Abraham wanted to date. They had talked, become friends, and suddenly friendship had blossomed into something so much more intense.

Abraham asked for pictures. Thunder gave them.

He didn’t ask for any in return, not wanting to pressure an omega who was likely to be shy. It was a damn good thing he had been so sensitive, because looking at pictures of Abraham back then and getting off to them would have made him in possession of child pornography.

“You could have gotten me arrested,” Thunder said. “I’m lucky your brother believed me.”

Abraham had convinced Thunder to meet him when he came to Alabama for work. Thunder agreed. The drive would have been two hours or more, but he had been so excited about it he hardly cared.

Then, shortly before Thunder was to leave for Alabama, he found his inbox full of messages from a person using Abraham’s account. The person called himself Cain Savage, and proclaimed to be Abraham’s brother. The messages started angry, then devolved to bewilderment and frustration as Cain must have looked back through the previous conversations.

Thunder really was lucky that Cain had been so understanding. Cain explained to him that Abraham had lied about his age. He was not 18, which was the age of consent in Florida. He was barely 16 when they had first started talking.

Everything made sense, then. All the excuses Abraham made about not being able to talk at certain times, or send pictures, or go meet him sooner. He was a high school student who knew he couldn’t disappear from his home without causing a panic.

Cain was even willing to give the two of them a last -supervised- conversation to say goodbye.

Thunder denied the chance. He had been too stunned, too betrayed. His love for Abraham had been real and to have it all torn down so suddenly was more than he could take. He forced himself to move on as fast as possible.

But, things changed. He was tired of moving on. He hadn’t lied a few minutes ago when he said he was wanting to settle down.

“He shouldn’t have stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong,” Abraham said, sullenly. He folded his arms across his chest. Thunder was hit by how young that posture made him look.

“Are you even 18 yet?” he blurted out.

“I’m almost 19 now,” Abraham snarled back.

Thunder sighed, placing his head in his hands. “You acted like you didn’t recognize me.”

“I didn’t,” Abraham said. “You’ve trimmed your beard.”

Thunder resisted the urge to smile. He’d had a pretty wild, untamed look going on there for a little bit. Even though that was only a few years ago, freelance work like what he did was considered an anomaly, something hippies did when they didn’t want to do actual work at an actual company. He had wanted to look the part and discovered he had more success when his potential employers thought of him as a crazy genius who would think outside the box to solve all their problems.

Now that freelancing of many varieties was more common, the trend had shifted towards professionalism. Thunder wasn’t too sad to see his crazy beard go, even if maintaining his current look took more effort.

“And anyway, it’s different. In pictures versus real life.”

Their online relationship had been conducted mostly through text. Messages on the app, emails, and so on. They’d spoken a little on the phone. Thunder had never thought anything was odd about Abraham’s voice. It had sounded pretty much the same as it did now. Light and musical.

They had not face-timed on their phones, or used a webcam, or anything of that sort. They had not seen each other moving, breathing, living, until right now.

The moment was not as magical as it could have been.

“I get what you mean,” Thunder said.

“How come you didn’t recognize me? My voice or anything?” Abraham asked. Then, he laughed. It was tense-sounding, but soft.

“The weird thing is, I thought you felt familiar.” Thunder shook his head. One of the many things Abraham had going for him was that he was good with words. He had a way of getting his message across. Abraham had described himself before, so it was possible Thunder had recalled those descriptions in his subconscious upon seeing him.

Either that, or their souls had connected before through the distance, and responded to each other now that they were closer.

He didn’t want to deal with the ramifications of that thought, that his soul had been waiting all this time for Abraham to reappear. Wolves in the wild mated for life. A wolf shifter’s soul bonded ferociously with another, and only time and effort could convince it to love someone else after that.

For all that Thunder had had other encounters with men after his breakup with Abraham, none of them had ever felt right for him. And that was a problem, considering that he wanted to settle down.

Thunder hesitated. He looked over at his notebook, then back at Abraham. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for what you’ve done, for what you almost did.”

“You broke my heart, too. You didn’t even say goodbye to me.”

“I’m going to be here in town for a while. I’ve got a lot of possibilities for work here. Do you want to leave the past behind?”

Abraham stared at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

He didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t know what he was doing. All of this was wrong. None of these words should be coming out of his mouth.

But, it felt so, so right in his soul to give this offer.

“We could try again now that you’re an adult. I’ll want to see some ID, though,” he joked. “We could start over, have some fun while I’m here. If you want.”

For a moment, Thunder saw and sensed raw, open hunger inside Abraham. The omega was torn, his thoughts in turmoil with his better judgment.

Thunder’s hopes rose.

Then, Abraham shoved away from the picnic table, standing up. He stumbled a little over his own feet, his former grace gone. “No way in hell are you getting another chance with me, Thomas Paulson. You left me.”

“You gave me no choice!” Thunder pleaded. Being referred to by his real name stung in a way it shouldn’t have. He had always been Thunder to Abraham, ever since their first real conversation. He had come to think of himself in those terms a long time ago, but it was only when the word came from Abraham that it felt right.

“You could have said goodbye instead of just leaving me to face my brother alone.” Abraham backed away, then turned so he was speaking with his back turned to Thunder, shunning him. “He’s thought that I’m a fuck-up ever since.”

Judging from the conversation he had with me, he thought that way before.

Thunder didn’t say that out loud, but something must have shown on his face because Abraham shook his head and walked away. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

I wish I felt the same.

Watching Abraham leave was one of the worst things Thunder had ever experienced. His heart twisted itself into knots in his chest, constricting tighter and tighter with every step the other man took away from him, following the walking path around a curve and eventually disappearing behind a line of trees. Thunder was able to catch flashes of him through the branches. A swinging arm here, a flash of dark hair there. Then, he was out of sight.

The bottom seemed to drop out of Thunder’s stomach. His constricted heart plummeted. He dropped his head down into his hands and groaned, wondering how the hell he was going to deal with this encounter.

He should have remembered that Abraham lived in Pensacola. Maybe some part of him did remember and had wanted to come just in case something like this might happen. If that was the case, it only added to his disappointment.

An online relationship was something Thunder could not quite explain. There was excitement and longing and lust. Texts sent in the middle of the night were like captured whispers, offering sweet sentiments. Nothing in the world compared to the realization that there was someone out there thinking about you at 2 a.m.. That they cared enough to recognize a joke you would like and want to share it.

Good morning messages were nicer to wake up to than coffee.

Glimpses of conversation throughout the day were little presents, never predicted, always appreciated. Thunder’s heart had always surged with joy whenever he received one, even if it was as simple as Abraham saying he was bored.

On the flip side of the coin, there was also the possibility of grief at any moment. Everything would be going along smoothly and then something would happen to drive it home that they could not do as normal couples did, and reach out to each other.

And there was also a sense of trepidation.

Thunder had been very aware of that and maybe that was why it had taken Abraham’s urging to finally get him to agree to meet up. There was a sort of pattern involved in dating online. Specific times to talk, specific phrases, certain spelling mistakes. There was an intimacy involved in the ability to know all about someone just from the words they wrote. And that was the problem.

Real life was different.

Writing was different from talking.

The connection they had online might not translate over into real life. It was frightening to think that a relationship spent so long developing could unravel in much the same manner. It was easier just to stay in the pattern, to rely on the familiar even if it caused heartache; at least the heartache, the grieving over the distance, was an established pain.

What Thunder was feeling now was a new, sharp sort of pain that he had never encountered in his entire life. He couldn’t just grin and bear it, he had no idea how to combat it.

His connection to Abraham had allowed him to recognize the omega before they were even face-to-face but that was about the limit. Their shared past online meant nothing in the physical world.

“Dammit,” he sighed, very softly. He turned and grabbed his notebook, flipping it open to the page where he’d left off. Work would distract him. It always had in the past. He could shove aside this encounter and get on with his life.

He looked down at the sketches on the page. Trees. The path Abraham had walked away from him.

He shoved the notebook away again, then dropped his head in his hands once more. Sunlight and shade mingled on the back of his neck, cool and hot at the same time.

He was getting so tired of wandering. Each new place he went to, chasing work, he hoped he would be able to settle down for real. He wanted to have a house, a mate, a child or two. He was ready for the next part of his life.

However, in each place, he found himself finding no real reason to stay. The urge to get back on the road would hound him, making his spine crawl, until he set out for a new destination.

It seemed like Pensacola was meant to be just another waypoint, a stop on his journey to nowhere. He couldn’t imagine sticking around in this city for the rest of his life, not when there were bad memories here.

I’m wasting time sitting here.

The thought of work turned his stomach. Standing up, Thunder grabbed his supplies and tucked them under his arm. He cut across the park to avoid following the same path as Abraham, not wanting to step where the omega had. Even that was too much closeness.

The short, springy grass felt good under his shoes. He picked up his speed and broke out away from the trees. The sun warmed his back.

By focusing on these things, he felt almost normal by the time he got back to his car.

Thunder was the proud owner of a 2012 Hyundai Veloster. It was an abysmal color, an orangish-yellow, like dirty mustard. He absolutely hated it. It hurt his eyes.

However, the wacky color ensured he had never had his car stolen. No thief would want a vehicle so easily identifiable. In that same vein, he never lost the car, either. There were always dozens of black, white, red, and blue cars in any parking lot, but his was the only yellow, standing out like a sore thumb.

Aside from the color, it was a good little car. He’d actually bought it new the year it came out and it had been with him ever since. Like an old dog, it no longer went as fast as it used to. It wasn’t as responsive. There was always something new failing, some ailment to fix. However, he continued to take care of it and probably would until it was on its last legs. Then, he supposed he would take it to the junkyard to be put down, mourn for a bit, then pick out a new one.

Maybe by that point in time, he would have a permanent address.

Sighing, Thunder opened the passenger-side door and placed his work things on the seat. Shutting the door again, he went around to driver’s side and climbed in.

There wasn’t a whole lot of room inside the car, but that was okay. He traveled pretty light. Wolves don’t carry luggage, after all.

Sticking the keys in the ignition, Thunder heard the engine catch, then settle out into a steady, purring rhythm. Absentmindedly tapping the steering wheel, he glanced over his shoulder and backed out of his spot.

A silver van swerved right behind the rear of his vehicle, nearly crashing into him. Thunder slammed on the brakes, heart pounding. He was in plain view from either side, so he could only pin this on distracted driving.

I don’t know how she didn’t hear me, though. This car is so loud.

The hideous color of his vehicle made him smile, as it always did. In fact, with adrenaline surging through his body, he almost felt good again. The sensation wouldn’t last long, but he would enjoy it while it did.

He backed out of his parking spot with no further incident and headed for home, which was currently a hotel room in a low-end establishment not too far away from the park. He had chosen that hotel in particular primarily for the proximity to the park, and also because the cost was cheap and the rooms were relatively clean.

He had his own pattern. Most landlords were not willing, or able, to rent out to someone who had literally just arrived in the area. Thunder always hunkered down in a tolerable hotel for a bit until he could find a place with a little more permanency. He preferred very short leases, a few months at a time at the most. If he could get someone who would accept a weekly payment, even better.

When he got back to his hotel, he picked up his things and headed inside. A blast of too-cool air hit him and he shivered a little.

“Hi, sir,” said the receptionist. “How’s the weather out there?”

“Pretty decent.” Thunder paused. “You might consider heading out to that park if you have time. Bartram.”

“Wish I could,” she said. She peeked at him from underneath round glasses. “I have an exam coming up I need to study for.”

“Study outside.” He held up his laptop, showing her that he had done more or less the same as his suggestion.

Her smile was patient, if a little sad. “I’d just end up enjoying the day instead of getting any work done.”

Thunder laughed. “To tell you the truth, that’s kind of what happened to me.”

The receptionist smiled a little more. “Then, you’re a bad influence. Have a good afternoon, sir.”

“And you.”

The hotel had two floors and no elevator. The stairway was cramped, but just as suitably clean as the rest of the place. There wasn’t a cobweb or speck of dust to be found, and the stairs themselves looked freshly vacuumed. Artwork lined the walls, offset on either side so no two pictures were ever parallel to each other. His first time coming up these stairs, he thought they were all photographs, but they were instead hyper-realistic oil paintings. Each one was signed in the exact same way. Though Thunder couldn’t read the signature, he hoped whoever the artist was, was getting the recognition they deserved.

He had a very real appreciation for art, of course. That was the world in which he had chosen to make his career. He had done many things, from creating webcomics, to painting caricature portraits at fairs, to reproducing images of beloved pets. Just as he had to said to Abraham, if someone needed something done, he would do it.

Most of his steady work was set in the world of logos and designs. Whenever someone needed a symbol to represent themselves and their business, they came to him. He listened to their ideas, worked out some preliminary sketches to guide the next stage of work in the right direction. After that, it was all about refining until he reached what the client considered to be the perfect result. It didn’t matter if he liked the piece. It didn’t matter if all of his suggestions were rejected. He did the work as he was told, and he got paid for it.

That was what he was in the middle of doing right now, and why he had come to Pensacola. Through the various business connections he had forged throughout the years, he learned that this city was very likely to see an influx of new businesses. Start-ups were always eager to cash in on tourism. Whether they succeeded or not was none of his concern. His designs could not make up for terrible business practices.

He was working on a logo for a company which had recently come up with a way to produce surfboards in a way that was considerably greener than methods in the past, using recycled natural materials. Thunder had absolutely no idea how that worked, or how successful the boards were. The only thing he really knew was that the boards were absurdly expensive. There was no way to mass-produce them. Each one was technically an original model, crafted by hand.

They were more like art pieces. The thing about art, as he had discovered, was that original, expensive pieces were a waste of time. A vast majority of customers didn’t want to shell out a fortune on a modern Mona Lisa. Rather, they wanted a nice, affordable complement to their current living room style, which would look good over the fireplace.

This was a company almost certain to fail. It fit all the criteria.

But, none of that was any business of Thunder’s. He was just making the logo, which they wanted to reflect the eco-friendliness of their absurd surfboards.

Thunder sat on his hotel bed, then opened his notebook yet again. He stared down at his sketches of trees, then flipped to a fresh page.

The empty lines mocked him.

Sighing, he flopped over onto his side and let his head sink deep into the pile of too-soft pillows. A nap would hopefully clear his mind, so he could get back to work.