“We’ll stop by the house first, and I have to talk to the pack. Explain the situation.”
I rolled my eyes and refused to look his way. That didn’t stop him. “Don’t say anything. I can handle them.”
That was all I could take with my mouth shut. “You’re acting like you’re doing me a favor! I’m not some dog you found in the street, and you have to… to…” I waved my words away.
This was going to get annoying soon. Dad always made sure I could speak Swedish, but since his passing, I stopped practicing. After all, who am I going to talk to? But I didn’t like to be limited like that. I needed a full vocabulary if I was going to tell Anders off like I wanted.
“You’re not some dog I brought in,” he replied between his gritted teeth. “But Karl is a sore spot for many people. Especially for the pack.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off. “It doesn’t matter what you think and what you were told. Karl left his pack, which is not something people accept around here. There’s a lot to unpack, and you have to be respectful of how we do things.”
Anger coursed through my veins. I had to close my eyes and count to ten because, while I didn’t like it, he was right. It wasn’t right to disrespect their culture. But man, it was hard to be understanding when I knew very little about what had happened.
For that alone, I took a deep breath and swallowed my preconceived notions before carefully speaking again. “Can you explain to me how this whole thing works?”
A beat of silence went by. Anders glanced at me and back at the road. “Karl never talked to you?”
I shook my head. “He was sick,” I said, hating to talk about that time in our lives. “I thought he was delirious for a while. Then I found a few of his memories—”
“Memories?”
I nodded and looked at the window and the beautiful countryside stretching in front of us. “I found a small box with pictures and stuff. And a picture of my grandmother and her… husbands?”
Anders nodded. “They still live there. You can meet them if you like.”
I had no idea how to answer that. I didn’t even know their names. Dad mentioned a few stories, but they were distant characters in a book; there were never any palpable details. It was only when I held that picture in my hands, a woman with the same shade of hair as my dad and four men around her.
Mom and dads.
The plural of that sentence took me for a loop, and for a whole week, I was convinced it was my Swedish that was bad. I got it wrong, but at some point, I had to accept that my grandparentswere polyamorous. So I had four grandfathers? That was a lot to take in.
“Dad never talked about anything until the days before his death. He said about alpha and omegas, but I really didn’t think it was true. But then I found the picture… and then you called.”
He said nothing. The silence made me fidget, my heart beating fast and hard, and I ended up looking his way just to find his brows knitted close and his knuckles white from gripping the wheel.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
I liked to know everything. “Just tell me. I can’t just come to a new place, and on top of everything, not know what’s going on.”
“It’s not about anything.” He let out a long breath. “It makes me angry that Karl hid from you what you are. I know he could tell you were an omega. If not at your birth, then after puberty.”
“What difference does it make?”
If looks could kill, I’d be dead now. Lucky me, his stare was quick, and ended in a second when he was back looking ahead to the highway.
“Omegas are rare these days, and he knew that when he left. That’s why he left,” Anders offered.
“What do you mean?”
“Did he ever tell you why he left us?” he asked. I could tell by the cords in his neck that he hated this conversation as much as I did.
“He said he wanted more out of life.”
It was fair. Why would anyone blame someone for leaving their small town? My dad didn’t want to live and die in the same place. He traveled a lot, and it was during his travels that he met my mother. We used to go to many places and enjoyed life until my mom died when I was ten. After that, Dad tried, he really did, but traveling wasn’t the same without her, and I agreed.Soon, every hotel, every new restaurant wasn’t an adventure but torture for us both.
“It wasn’t that,” Anders spat, interrupting my thoughts. “There were no omegas anymore. Everyone was mated, and Karl knew we were going to be alone for life. That’s why he left.”
