Ulysses wasn’t wearing a uniform, or even an outfit that looked like something a normal mechanic would have on when getting down and dirty with a broken car. There must have just been something about him that drew the random man to pay attention to him.
“I guess I’m still an employee. Haven’t been officially fired yet, and Brody didn’t act weird around me or anything. So, I guess I’m good. I said yeah, and the guy started talking about this problem he was having with his Buggy.”
“Buggy?”
“Yeah. Dune Buggy.” Sensing Robbie still had no idea what he was talking about, Ulysses pressed onward. “Those vehicles you see on the beach sometimes, looking like golf carts on steroids? That’s a Buggy.”
Robbie was actually not much for the beach himself. A curious person might wonder why he continued to live in a beach city, instead of moving away to a location that better suited his own tastes and preferences, and the reason was that he had connections here. Family. Family friends. A business. Associates. And so on. He would have no problem transferring his business connections over to a new city, and he could surely make more friends in a hurry.
He just didn’t want to. He felt as if this was where he belonged, whether or not he chose to go to the beach and get sand in a thousand mysterious creases on his body that he hadn’t even known he had.
That being said, it wasn’t like he had never been to the beach at all. It had been much more fun to go when he was younger, let loose with his friends upon the sugar-white sands by parents that had more trust for the world than there was today. And there had been parties in high school that he attended, though he never touched the pilfered alcohol or cigarettes when there were any available. In fact, he had spent quite some time under scrutiny by his friends, as they blamed him for the times when they were busted.
He was a tattletale, but only for their own good.
Even to this day, he would attend trips to the beach for a learning experience for the kids, or eat lunch at a meeting with parents at a restaurant overlooking the shore.
He had seen many odd things in his time as an infrequent beach-goer. All sorts of people, odd pets taken out for a new experience, paragliders, kiteboarders, and, yes, Dune Buggies. They looked to him like they were a mishmash of parts more suited to an apocalyptic environment than a suburb on the edge of one of the most modern countries in the world. Welded tube frames, broken and salvaged parts. The few he had seen were painted with sleek designs, but no amount of paint could disguise the salvaged look of the things.
“Oh,” was all he said out loud.
“Yeah.” Ulysses nodded. “I’ve worked on a few Buggies. There’s not much difference between the way they and a custom bike are built. I told him what I thought was wrong, said if he couldn’t fix it on his own in five minutes then to bring it in. He seemed like he had a vague idea of what he was talking about, unlike a lot of people you get in here. Maybe he’ll manage it on his own.”
“That was very nice of you,” Robbie said, almost murmuring.
“Nice nothing. I knew something he didn’t. No reason not to tell him what I thought.” Ulysses shrugged, bringing his attention back to his food. “I’m not one of those stuck-up know-it-alls who won’t say what their secret is when it comes to their work.”
They made the rest of the drive in relative silence, with only the sound of their eating between them. Robbie’s thoughts whirled around inside his brain, until they were a knotted and tangled chain with no real beginning or end. He was a Möbius Strip, unceasing and uniquely twisted.
Robbie had thought, at the time of their breakup, that he was the only one in their relationship with passion. He knew now that he was wrong.
Ulysses had passions. He was a mechanic, a knowledgeable soul with special skills he had come by through hands-on learning and trial and error. He had pursued what he wanted, and now when he talked about those things, his exterior guise melted away to reveal that animated man Robbie had seen out in front of the shop. He became a different person when he was immersed in sharing what he loved.
All this time, he had been under the impression that he was the only one growing up. He had made a career, while he assumed Ulysses was only going to stay in the same place, playing with machines like that.
In reality, this was a career for Ulysses. They were not as different as he had thought they were.
He had been judgmental and that was wrong.
The urge to apologize came over him, so strong that he was already opening his mouth to let the words spill out. Only when he was halfway through the first syllable did he realize that Ulysses would probably have no idea what he was talking about. And even if he did, there might not be any use in bringing it up right now. They had just gotten through a rather civil conversation. There was no need to ruin it.
So, Robbie transformed what he was about to say into something that resembled a convincing yawn.
They pulled up finally in front of Ulysses’ house. The alpha reached out to the door handle, pushed it open, and then seemed to hesitate. His mouth worked, his expression indicating he was trying to find the right way to saw what was on his mind.
Eventually, he grunted out, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Robbie said quickly.
Ulysses shook his head. “I meant it, though. So you’re just going to have to live with it. Thanks for the ride. I’m pretty sore even after sitting for so long. I’m not sure how I would have made it on my own. I was being pretty stupid.”
“Not stupid,” Robbie said, very quickly. He didn’t necessarily believe anyone in the entire world was stupid, unless they simply refused to listen to reason and didn’t want to continue to better themselves in life. “Just stubborn. That’s actually a pretty good quality, when you really think about it.”
“Is it?” Ulysses smiled broadly, looking genuinely pleased. The careless look he had, which could often be so frustrating, suddenly parted like a break in looming storm clouds. The effect was beyond dazzling. The lines of his face were illuminated in full as if from within, accentuating their fineness. “I guess I’m going to keep being stubborn, then. Thanks, Robbie.”
Now he had been thanked three times by a wolf who would previously never have even dared to consider the possibility of being indebted to someone. Wonders never ceased.
“You’re welcome,” he said, very softly.
He didn’t know if Ulysses heard him, because the alpha was already getting out of the van. He had a little more difficulty than getting inside, and Robbie once more had to hold back on the urge to offer help.
Eventually, Ulysses managed to right himself and then turned back to start gathering up all the bags of food. “You’re sure I should take all this?”
Robbie tried to head away the tears of gratitude as they rose up in his eyes. The last thing he needed right now was to cry again, not when things were going so smoothly. “Go ahead. I bought it for you. No way I could eat all that.”
A flicker of relief crossed Ulysses’ face. There was no telling what he was eating, or how difficult it was for him to move around and prepare his own meals in this condition. Having an easy meal or two that he could just grab straight from the fridge was going to make things easier on him, at least for a little bit.
The look didn’t last long, as Ulysses soon crushed it and pulled his usual sleepy, disinterested look over his face once more. He managed to gather up all the bags and took them inside. He must have taken to leaving his door unlocked, because he had no problems at all with opening it and getting in.
There was nothing left for Robbie to do but head back to the daycare. He had one on the east side of Pensacola and one on the west, and he tried to divide his time evenly between them, switching locations every week or as necessary. Today he was in the east.
His drive to the repair shop, then to Ulysses’ home, had taken him further away from the daycare than he normally went under his own volition. He had a bit of a drive ahead of him, with nothing to occupy him
but his thoughts.
There were quite a few thoughts still inside him, questions that had yet to be answered. He’d been satisfied, surprised, and delighted with the amount of information given to him thus far, and he still wanted more.
And he would get more, because now he knew that feeding Ulysses was the key.
5
A couple weeks passed, and they did so with no real speed. Days plodded along like the heavy, lumbering steps of an elephant heading for a watering hole: there was a goal in mind, a destination, but rushing to get there would only be detrimental.
Ulysses was not the type of person who enjoyed waiting around for things to happen. He didn’t care about anticipation or payoffs or any sort of nonsense like that. He wanted immediate results.
Unfortunately, this was the one aspect of his life where he had to be the exact opposite of his normal self to get those results. He could try and try to push himself, to pretend like everything was normal, and all that would earn him was twinges of stabbing pain and a general, all-encompassing soreness. The morning after his attempted walk to the repair shop, he woke up so stiff he could barely move. It was like coming to in the hospital all over again, the paralyzing fear that he might never be able to walk again. Only after a long, steamy hour standing in the too-hot spray from his shower head had he regained some semblance of mobility.
After that, he tried to take a dreaded taxi cab. The fare was abominable, and he never tried that again.
That left riding the bus, although that was enough of a hassle on its own. Buses were never on time. They were always late or early, they were crowded, and disgusting. His wolf senses were far more powerful than that of a human’s, which allowed him to intimately experience the unique scents brewing in each and every bus. Were humans even aware that they stank? Pervasive body odor was his number one complaint, as far as scents went, but even the clean humans stank. They doused themselves in powerful colognes and perfumes, covered their hair in layers upon layers of stiff, sweet-chemical sprays.
Then there were the smells of food, rotting and fresh mingling in a decidedly musty, unappetizing way. Occasionally, the back of a bus would reek like urine, bile, or other things even less desirable.
There was a time when he nearly sat on a bloody straight razor, still glistening and wet.
The whole process was terrible and distasteful. He endured it anyway to keep from inconveniencing Robbie any further.
He wasn’t blind. He had seen the way Robbie’s face lit up when he’d been thanked, and the relieved joy which flowed throughout him when he had been given permission to ask his questions. For some reason, he found that he liked how easy it was to make Robbie happy. It had been annoying before, and now it suddenly seemed endearing.
The omega would drop everything to help someone if they asked for it. He would go out of his way to do something, probably at the cost of his own sanity if it came to that.
He could have easily been a convenient, free taxi system for Ulysses. All he had to do was ask and he would have his wish granted.
That would have been selfish, so he didn’t. Robbie had work and other responsibilities. He could not become a slave to someone else’s whim, no matter how eagerly he would have done so.
However, Robbie often chose to inconvenience himself. He seemed to have gotten the idea in his head that Ulysses was going to starve without his assistance, so he stopped by every two or three days with a container of food. He didn’t even try to pretend that oh, he had made too much, or that he didn’t like what he’d made and thought Ulysses would. No, it was quite clear he was making extra food he didn’t need, specifically for the express purpose of giving it anyway.
These gifts ranged from entire casseroles, to supplies for making sandwiches, to an army of cookies that had to have been homemade. He was eating well and really, he did appreciate the ease of it all. He hardly had the patience to cook these days.
As time went on, he did start to feel better. Progress came in tiny increments, usually as an absence of something that he had just started to get used to. His wrist and ankle stopped hurting, only twinging whenever he moved too fast or bent at too extreme of an angle. Breathing no longer hurt and neither did bending over. Most of the time, anyway.
His endurance was nothing like it used to be though, and he definitely lacked his former strength. Maybe he was wasting away, stagnating here in his home with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
It wasn’t that he disliked his house. He didn’t have much in the way of personal belongings, since he had been moving around from his own place, to the garage, and then back to another place all his own. He wouldn’t have known how to decorate, anyway. All the same, the house was cozy. One bedroom, a living room, a separate kitchen, and a dining room. The walls were shades of butter and cream, which caught natural light quite nicely. The windows weren’t very large, though there were more than enough of them to make up for that fact.
The neighborhood was a little sketchy, but Ulysses knew all places had their dark sides. Nothing was perfect in life. There would always be drug dealers and abusers and generally dangerous people, even in the most upper class of neighborhoods. Here, for the most part, everyone kept to themselves. And they especially didn’t bother Ulysses. He was too tough for them to want to make enemies with him, and it wasn’t just because he rode a motorcycle.
Well, maybe it was partly his status as a biker. And his muscles helped to deter any trouble that might come his way. But, it was more than that. He was a wolf, a wild animal in the guise of a human. The humans in the neighborhood could sense danger around him, in the same way as they might bask in their disgusting perfumes. Something primal inside them warned them not to cross a predator, and so they left Ulysses alone.
So, not the best place to live and not the worst. He would take it.
He just didn’t want to take much more of it. The urge was in him to roam, to pace his territory, to move and become one with the rhythms of the world, and he no longer had a way to do that. He had to rely on the rigorous structures of the human world to get him from Point A to B, and he despised that.
It was with this urge, this impatience, this desire to leave his house, that he returned to work halfway through the third week after getting in the wreck. He had no idea if he would be fired immediately upon setting foot in the shop. He hoped not. He reached out to Wheeler, the man for whom the shop was named, and had not received much of an answer. Wheeler only kept saying that they would talk about everything when Ulysses was able to come back.
There were other things which drove Ulysses to return to work, namely the fact he wasn’t getting paid. If he was going to continue to not be paid, he wanted to know it so he could reach out to unemployment and get something figured out.
He took the bus, leaving his house early so he would have plenty of time to make it to the stop. The bus took him only a few blocks away from the shop, which he crossed with no real difficulty even though a week ago he would have been winded at the end of it all.
His heart knocked painfully against his chest as he crossed the parking lot and came to stand in front of the doors. Memories about talking with the businessman came back to him, bringing faint echoes of joy and confidence. It might be a long time before he was able to feel like that again.
Someone approached the door from within. He couldn’t see them because of the tinted windows, covered in advertisement posters and decals displayed deals on tires and engine parts, but he could certainly hear their footsteps.
The door opened. A man with a wide, homely face held out his arm to keep the door open, then offered his other hand. “Hi! Welcome to Wheeler’s Repairs! It’s nice to have you here with us today.”
Ulysses didn’t shake hands with him. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled up at the man, who towered over him by almost half a foot and would never let him forget that fact. “Very funny, Brody. I haven’t been gone that long.”
“Long enough,” Brody said, laughing. He steppe
d back, though he continued to hold the door open for Ulysses. “It’s been almost a whole month! I was starting to think you were dead, the way you weren’t answering your phone.”
“My phone has been a bit iffy,” Ulysses grunted, stepping inside the shop. He had, either subconsciously or accidentally, chosen a day of the week where the shop had very little activity. Most people tended to put their car troubles off as long as they could, choosing to wait for the weekend when they wouldn’t have to worry about missing work. The parking lot had been pretty empty, and the interior of the shop was similarly dead.
“You always say that.”
“It’s always true.” Ulysses went over to the counter and leaned his hip against it. A twinge of pain shuddered through his bones before quieting again, an encouraging sign as far as he was concerned.
“Man, that’s bullshit. Your phone can’t always be on the fritz.” Brody let the door slip shut, then folded his arms in a mocking imitation of Ulysses’ posture.
“It’s true if I say it’s true, numbnuts. I’ve probably got a dud phone. They can’t always be perfect, not even when the robots are making them.”
The truth was he had received every single one of Brody’s calls and texts, and had just been ignoring them. He hadn’t wanted to accidentally be told anything he wasn’t supposed to know.
That being said, shifters were infamous for having troubles with technology. Something about their presence could cause electronics to go haywire, resulting in wasted money as everyone had to go out and constantly buy new cell phones and laptops. There was no choice not to continue purchasing such things either, as the human world made them more or less a necessity.
Older electronics held up better, having less finicky parts.
Brody came over to where Ulysses was leaning against the counter and stood beside him, though he kept a couple feet between them. Brody was one of those men who firmly believed in maintaining a strict no-homo boundary between himself and his friends. Touching had to be minimal. Crying had to be nonexistent. And he would rather die than use the urinal right next to another man in a bathroom, even if the place was crowded and that was the only free one.
Taming The Alpha: A Wolf Shifter Mpreg Romance (Savage Love Book 3) Page 7
