Vicious Traditions: Alpha & Omega by J.L. Aarne

Author:J.L. Aarne [Aarne, J.L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: J.L. Aarne
Published: 2020-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

5

Sam didn’t become the omega of his pack overnight, but his downfall could be traced back to one single event. A single moment. A single decision. A choice made between heartbeats which changed everything that came after.

It happened on a Sunday early in December. It didn’t feel different from any other day. Sam got up early in the morning like he always did, leaving Owen asleep in their bed, and went out to sit on the hill slope outside the main house to watch the sunrise. He wore a long wool coat his mother had given him a few years earlier and carried a thermos of hot coffee and he sat in the dark as the sky turned from black to deep blue and the birds all around began to sing. It was a little chilly and the wind gusted every once in a while, so cold that it cut through his warm coat like a knife.

The sky had started to turn purple where it touched the mountain tops when the wind carried Owen’s scent to him. Owen sat down on the ground beside him and for a minute they didn’t say anything. Sam poured coffee into the cup top of the thermos and passed it to him, and Owen sipped it before he gave it back.

“You should have woke me up,” Owen said.

“You were sleeping, I didn’t want to bother you,” Sam said.

Owen nodded and they watched the sky change to a lighter blue, the clouds lighting up with the first touches of rose pink, lavender and salmon orange. The clouds that day were in a strange jittery checkerboard pattern across the sky and as they changed to such shining colors, the whole thing became a vast carpet unrolled above them, going on for miles.

“Every morning,” Owen said. He watched Sam’s profile in the growing light of the sunrise. “Every single morning, even when there’s eight feet of snow out here, you come out and watch this. Then every night, even in the summer when the sun doesn’t set until nearly midnight. I get it, it’s really pretty, but… every single time.”

“Every time is different,” Sam said with a shrug.

Owen turned his gaze up to the sky. “It looks kinda like water, don’t you think?”

“Kinda,” Sam said. “Like waves. It’s like the ocean, maybe.”

“I’ve never been to the ocean.”

“Neither have I. But it’s like… It’s so big. It’s so great. And it’s like, no matter who you are, you have to feel so fucking tiny looking up there at it, right? I bet even the president or the queen of England or whatever they’ve got now, I bet even they’d feel like nothing next to something like that.”

“If they ever bother to look at shit like that.” Owen smiled and lightly jostled Sam’s leg with his own. “So, what? You come out here every morning and watch the sunrise because it keeps you humble?”

“No, but it helps,” Sam said. He smiled, too and drank his coffee. “Mostly I just like to watch it.

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