I Was The Only Omega In The Beast World-Chapter 148: CP: I Want To Live With You

Lucas was quiet for a moment. Then: "The pack has been without a Lord’s mate for generations. I waited four years for you. I would have waited longer. But the bond—it changes things for wolves. More than it might for serpents or birds or fish."

"Mer," Zale corrected mildly.

"Mer," Lucas acknowledged. "The pack knows what you are to me. They know the bond exists. But they don’t know what it means for them. For the territory. For the future."

Alex understood, suddenly, what Lucas wasn’t saying. "You need something permanent. Something that tells the pack this is real."

"The sanctuary is permanent," Lucas said. "That helps. But there’s a difference between neutral ground and home. Between a place where wolves are tolerated and a place where the Wolf Lord’s mate lives."

"You want to live here."

"I want to live with you." Lucas’s voice was steady, but there was something in it that hadn’t been there before. A vulnerability he’d kept hidden behind four years of waiting and three weeks of careful integration. "The pack has a territory. Good territory. I can lead from there. But the bond—I feel it strongest when I’m close to you. The others feel it too. It’s... distracting."

Alex remembered what System had said, months ago, about bonds and proximity. About how separating mates was physically painful. How the need to be close wasn’t just emotional—it was biological.

"You should have said something," Alex said.

"I was waiting until this was settled." Lucas’s eyes moved across the site—the pool, the ridge, the meadow below. "Until you had something to offer that wasn’t just asking."

"I’m not asking you to give up your territory."

"I’m not asking you to give up anything. I’m asking—" He stopped. "I don’t know what I’m asking. The bond is new. I’m still learning what it means to be mated to someone who has three other mates. Who has children who need him. Who is building something that isn’t just for wolves."

Alex took his hand. Lucas’s fingers closed around his automatically, the way they had in the cave when Alex was trying to save his life.

"The sanctuary has room for you," Alex said. "It has room for all of you. That was always the point. Not a place where wolves visit—a place where you live. Where you come home to. Where your pack knows they can find you when they need you."

Lucas’s grip tightened. "That’s—"

"Not charity. Not asking. It’s what I want. What we want." Alex looked at the ridge, the pool, the meadow. "I’ve been running for a year. Building something that might last. And I realized something on the way back from the lion territory."

"What?"

"That I’ve been treating home like something I’ll get to eventually. After the next threat is handled. After the sanctuary is built. After I’m done being scared of what happens when I stop running." He turned to face Lucas fully. "I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to be home now. With you. With all of you. While we’re building it. While we’re figuring out what it means to be us."

Something shifted in Lucas’s expression. The careful composure he’d worn since the wolf territory attack, the restraint of a lord who had learned to want things quietly because wanting loudly made you vulnerable—it cracked, just slightly, and Alex saw what was underneath.

"You mean that," Lucas said.

"I mean it."

Lucas pulled him in—not gentle, not careful, the way he’d been since the bonding, like he was still afraid Alex might disappear if he held too tight. This was a grip that said I believe you and I need you and I’m not letting go all at once.

"Good," Lucas said against his hair. "That’s good."

From somewhere behind them, Sally’s voice: "Are they kissing? Are we having a moment? Should I be documenting this?"

"Don’t document this," Alex said, without pulling away.

"Why not."

---

The surveying took the rest of the morning.

System directed operations with the calm efficiency of a project manager who had been waiting for this moment for months, laying out grid coordinates and foundation measurements and material estimates with a precision that made Alex’s head spin. The snakelings, who had initially been enthusiastic helpers, gradually lost interest in favor of exploring the ridge, the pool, and the meadow with the relentless curiosity of children who had been cooped up in temporary camps for months.

"They’re happy," Naga observed, from where he was coiled at the edge of the pool. His scales had shifted to a color Alex had learned to read as contentment—deep green shot with gold, the way sunlight looked through leaves.

"They’re free," Alex agreed. "They’ve been waiting for this too."

"The caves," Naga said. "Leo’s caves. They’re high. Defensible. But the approach is steep. The cubs would need to be careful."

"They’re good climbers."

"They’re good at climbing things that aren’t mountain faces. The ridge is different."

Alex looked at where the snakelings were currently scattered across the lower slope. Ripple was in the stream. Sterling and Onyx had found a rock formation that seemed to require extensive discussion. Siddy was still somewhere on the upper ridge, his voice occasionally drifting down with reports of caves, interesting rocks, and—once—something he thought might be gold.

"We build paths," Alex said. "Safe routes. Places where they can climb without risking a fall."

"That’s—" Naga paused. "That’s what Granite did. For the cubs. When they were small enough to need watching every moment. He built them a safe space to learn."

Alex remembered the cave, those first desperate weeks in the mer-tribe, the way Granite had carved out a space for six tiny serpents who had no one else. The way he’d made a home in a place that wasn’t his, for a family that wasn’t his species, without ever being asked.

"Granite built more than a safe space," Alex said quietly. "He built them a childhood. While I was gone, he was there. Every day."

Naga’s coils tightened slightly. "He never said—"

"Granite doesn’t say things. He does them."

They were quiet for a moment, watching the snakelings explore the land that would be theirs. The land that Granite had helped secure by walking back into his tribe’s territory, by negotiating terms that gave the sanctuary access to bear resources, by being the steady presence he’d always been.

"He’s coming back," Alex said. "To the sanctuary. He’s not staying with his tribe."

Naga’s expression flickered. "He told you?"

"He told Sally. He said—" Alex paused, remembering Sally’s words that morning. He said the cubs need someone who stays. And he’s been staying for four years. Why would that change?

"He said the cubs need someone who stays."

Naga made a sound—not quite a laugh, not quite anything else. "The cubs have several people who stay."

"That’s not how Granite thinks about it."

"No," Naga agreed. "It’s not."