3. Tuft

Istopped by the cafeteria to grab lunch. Today"s fare was Cobb salads and deli meat sandwiches. I didn"t know what Axel would want, so I grabbed enough food for four humans. Two salads, four sandwiches, two apples, four bags of chips, and a choice of chocolate pudding or cheesecake for dessert.

I hadn"t been able to sleep last night after I received Priestess Alma"s text asking me to meet Axel for lunch in the gym. The room was spacious enough it would keep my scent from overwhelming him, and there was a table big enough for the meals I brought. While I waited for his class to finish, I had time to set it all out on the banquet table like the feast it was.

Instead of barging in like any old alpha, I heard a knock at the door. I was disappointed to see Priestess Alma, not Axel.

"His class is running a little late," she said, though I could smell Axel on her.

"He doesn"t want to see me."

"He"s scared," she said. "He"s been through a lot these past few months, and then he was pulled here to Ignitas before his time."

I didn"t know his specific situation, but I had heard similar ones from the new omegas. It was August back on Earth, time to start a new semester of school or a new job. I didn"t want to be insensitive to Axel"s needs.

"How is he adjusting to being an alpha?"

"I"ve seen alphas take it better," Priestess Alma admitted. "But I"ve seen worse. Weld was one of the worst, if you must know. He showed up and tried to take over. If Lark would have used his magic to put him in his place, things might have been different."

She shrugged. "I"ll let Axel explain his situation when he arrives." She turned toward the door, and I could smell him there, too.

"Here he is, now." She took my hand and dragged me to the double doors.

My alpha stood tall, his shock of yellow hair bright in the fluorescent overhead lights of the gym as he walked inside. He wore a sweatshirt with a sports logo on the front and a pair of well worn jeans that hugged the curve of his ass. Then he turned, and I got a glimpse of the bulge in his pants before I forced my eyes upward, only to find his eyes wandering over my body, as well.

"Hello, Axel," Priestess Alma said, jarring his attention back to her. "You two haven"t been properly introduced."

Excuse me? I introduced myself just fine, thank you very much, but I shook Axel"s hand and said something banal and pleasant before Priestess Alma left us alone in the gym together.

"Sorry I"m late," Axel said. "I didn"t want to come."

His honesty caught me off guard, and I snorted a laugh. "I guessed as much. We"ve all gotta eat. I stopped by the mess and grabbed some food."

"Thank you." He leaned toward me and sniffed my neck, but then he was gone, halfway across the room before I could move again. His proximity had rendered me completely immobile.

"May I have the roast beef?" he asked when I finally joined him at the table. "It"s my favorite."

"Yes, please. Take whatever you want." I had picked through the selections with rejection in mind. If Axel hadn"t joined me today, I would have taken all the food back to my room and crammed what I couldn"t eat into my dorm refrigerator for later.

"Ooh, and the chicken salad?" He looked so delighted, I couldn"t say no, even though that had been my first choice.

"Sure. I"ll have the ham and the turkey." I shuffled the food onto the two plates I"d grabbed, taking notes on what he liked. Corn chips and fake cheese seemed to be high on his list of favorites.

"I also got you a salad," I said, picking the closest one and adding it to my plate.

"I"ll save mine for later," he said.

"Not big on salads?"

He laughed. "No."

"If you"re going to throw it away, I"ll take it back to my room."

"Oh." He smiled, and I swore I was going to fall over in a dead swoon. He was absolutely gorgeous. I already thought alpha kobolds were attractive in that "I could eat your human form" way. My fated mate was far more attractive than any other to me, even Weld.

"Sure," he said. "You can take it."

"Thank you."

We sat on opposite sides of the table, but I caught him leaning toward me and sniffing a couple times. I could smell him, too, but I didn"t want to be that obvious.

I almost died of embarrassment when he handed me my sunburst yellow pocket square after using it as a napkin. "I think this belongs to you."

"It does. Thank you." That didn"t explain how he"d ended up with it. It had mysteriously disappeared after Priestess Alma"s visit the other day.

"Priestess Alma brought it to me yesterday." Axel wouldn"t meet my gaze. "Our sense of smell is stronger as kobolds, huh."

"Yeah." I leaned back in my folding chair.

"Do you like how I smell?"

He looked so open and vulnerable. I couldn"t resist telling him the truth. "Yes." I hoped I wasn"t drooling out the side of my mouth. I gobbled a handful of chips to hide any outward signs of attraction.

"This is all so new to me," he said. "I"ve never wanted a guy before. I can"t even say I"m attracted to you. You smell nice, and my body reacts to you, but I?—"

"There"s no rush," I said. "You still have a tail, so it"s not like we can act on our mating urges."

Ugh. Me and my big mouth. Why did I say the words "mating" and "urges" in the same sentence? Axel was going to think all kobolds ever talked about was mating. I"d thought that when I first arrived, anyway. All those classes about the history and identification of fated mates were a little off-putting, to be honest.

"Look," I said, hoping to cover my faux pas, "I want to get to know you as a person. What did you do for fun back on Earth?"

"Fun?" He frowned at me like I"d said a foreign word.

"Yeah! Like, I draw and make art for fun. I used to go on nature walks on Earth, but we couldn"t really do that around here." I grinned. "I"d love to go for a walk outside the fortress with you sometime."

"Sure." He frowned at me. "Merritt mentioned something about not being able to leave the fortress. How long have you been trapped in here?"

I laughed. I wasn"t trapped … or was I? It had been nice to leave the fortress with Weld, but we still weren"t allowed outside without an accompanying alpha or beta, for fear the dragon would swoop out of the sky and either eat us or carry us away. I"m not sure which Priestess Alma believed was more likely, but she"d threatened both.

"I"ve been here for about seven months."

"Do you like it here?"

"It"s a lot, at first." My throat clicked when I swallowed. I"d forgotten to grab us drinks, but there was a case of water along the far wall. I excused myself to grab us each a bottle.

I wanted to be up front with Axel. I didn"t want him to think I was a cheater, but he needed to know about Weld. I bided my time and waited for him to take the first swig of his water before I spoke. "I mated with another alpha when I first arrived."

Axel studied me for a moment, and my cheeks heated another degree each second he stared without speaking. "I thought it was wrong for an alpha to force himself on an unclaimed omega."

"He didn"t force himself on me." My voice was low and full of gravel, more like Weld"s than mine. "We talked about how the kobolds were dying out. Until the day you arrived, we were expected to mate and nest in the grotto beneath the fortress. Weld had worked in the tunnels growing our food every day, so he and the other farmers saw what Priestess Alma refused to believe. The dragon fire had gone out. The heat rising in the vents couldn"t rival sunshine and fresh air above. Weld only wanted to continue our race."

Axel snorted. "Sounds like the kind of bullshit my fiancée tried to tell me about having a kid. I didn"t want kids at all, but she was all like, "Who"s going to take care of us when we"re old," and …" he trailed off. "Her family had some really sick bullshit going on. They made her feel like she was worthless if she didn"t have a kid."

"That"s awful." I felt bad for her, and for him, if he hadn"t wanted kids before she"d gotten pregnant. I rushed on to show his fiancée and I had nothing in common, not our feelings about pregnancy, at least. "Weld made me feel special. He said I was an innovator, like him. We didn"t need fate to decide who could mate whom. We chose for ourselves."

Axel nodded. "Did you love him?"

"Gods, no." Even though he wasn"t here, I tried to remove the sting of my words with a grin. "He"s a great friend, don"t get me wrong, but he"s intense. Always going on and on about saving the world. It"s admirable, but I"d rather focus on what"s good."

"Good?"

"Ignitas is a beautiful place." I pointed to the arched ceilings far above us. "The architecture in the fortress is stunning."

"Architecture?" Axel shook his head. "You"re too fancy for me."

"Psh. I studied building design at the community college. I am not fancy. We were poor, and that was the best we could do."

Axel nodded. "Poor. Yep. That we have in common. Weird, isn"t it? You always hear about people having to pay a ton of money to adopt, but I didn"t understand how my parents could have afforded it. I guess they didn"t ask too many questions when someone showed up on their doorstep with a lizard baby."

I laughed. "At least you had a cool name."

"Your real name is Tuft?"

"Yup." Might as well get the teasing out of the way as soon as possible. Weld had laughed at me for days. "I went by Taft on Earth. Imagine having a dead president"s last name as your first."

"I"m sorry." Axel didn"t look the least bit sorry, but there was something sweet in his smile. He didn"t have the same glint in his eye as my bullies. He examined my bare forearms resting on the table, now that I was finished eating. "Were you an athlete?"

"Not a chance. My human body was a limp noodle. Couldn"t run, jump, or swim."

"Merritt said that was part of the changeling spell." Axel shrugged. "None of us were strong humans, so we wouldn"t give ourselves away."

"Would have made high school a lot more fun, though." I would have killed to be good at baseball, tennis, anything really.

Axel grinned. "Do you have kobold sports teams?"

"No." I frowned as I thought it through. "Now that you mention it, we could put something together. The alphas play basketball in the gym, but now we have the outdoors. We could set up some volleyball courts, a track, tennis!"

"You said Weld goes to Earth. Could he bring us some equipment?"

"I"ll ask him."

He growled, surprising us both. "I don"t think I like the idea of you going near any other alpha." He glanced down at his elbows, where his defensive spikes were now sticking through the fabric of his sleeves. "I"ve never been possessive. I"m sorry."

"No worries." I didn"t want to offend him, but my fragile omega heart was cheering. My alpha wanted me, and he didn"t want me to be with anyone else. Axel didn"t know much about being a kobold yet, but I was grateful his instincts aligned with mine. I wanted to belong to him alone.

"This could be part of our courtship," I said. "I"ll poll the omegas to see if they want to participate in outdoor team sports. You can see if there"s interest from the alphas. We"ll meet up again to share our results."

"Tomorrow?" he asked.

"I"d like that." I extended my hand across the table, and he shook it. I missed the closeness of the dance floor meetups, but I wanted to go slow this time. Being a kobold wasn"t all about mating. It could be about forming community and having fun. I wanted to show Axel just how much fun it could be.