Omega Blues (Gay Romance)

Chapter Fifteen: The Whole Band Back Together

Matt

Nearly a month after Chop had her bite, we played our reunion gig.

It hadn't been long since our tour, but the weeks had felt like forever when I was missing one of my friends and didn't know when she'd be back. Plus my fingers grew calluses from the strings, and just a few weeks without practice left them soft and useless.

I dirty-joked about it with Bren on the phone. "My left hand's all soft and warm, you should feel it."

"I'd like that." Voice low and rasping, rumbling so it nearly distorted over the phone line. "I can hardly wait until I see you again."

Before I could fit in a flirtation, or hint that I should come up to visit him on the weekend instead of studying, he said, "You're practicing so hard. I'd love to see your gig."

After a compliment like that, I couldn't exactly offer to blow off practice to be with him. So I had to settle for dirty talk and imagining I was with Bren instead of alone in my room with my soft-skinned hand and very hard prick.

I was starting to feel like I could have either Bren or my friends, but not both at the same time. On my next break I was definitely going home to spend some quality time with Bren, even if we got invited on a tour with Led Zeppelin themselves.

Our first gig back together was the weekend before the full moon, a month after Will had bitten Chop and turned her into a werewolf.

Chop loved being a werewolf, and I tried to remind myself that my turn would come soon and I shouldn't be jealous. Will was biting Liv a few days after our gig and, although he hadn't said so, I figured he'd be biting me the next full moon. If he bit Liv a month after Chop, of course he'd bite me a month after that.

Chop made me more excited than ever about becoming a werewolf. She'd always been a genius with guitar solos, practicing scales for hours until her fingers were nimble like sparks of light flashing over the strings. She loved fast-paced punk and metal and enjoyed nothing more than creating amazing guitar solos to add to our songs. They had always been incredible solos, but now she was a werewolf she had gotten even better.

"Check this out," she'd told me once in practice. "Before, the fastest I could pick was about ten notes a second. Now I can do fifteen! The fastest in the world is about twenty-one. I think I'll be able to beat that with enough practice."

"Wow," I breathed. "You'll be the best guitarist in the world!"

Rebel, draped in her wolf form over one of our practice speakers, gave a cough.

"You and Rebel will be the best," I corrected. To distract from the awkward moment I asked, "Does it feel different?"

"It's pretty much the same," she'd said thoughtfully. "Except more so. Everything's more intense, and I feel stronger."

"Wow!" I said again.

"Except that it hurts to be so far from home," she added. "And when Will went up last weekend it felt like I had a cold the whole time, just because he was away from me. I think it would be the same if Rebel was far away. It's not terrible, but it definitely wasn't as great as I feel when I've got everyone around." She'd beamed around at us like her smile could make up for the scary words.

But it was easy to forget the scary stuff when we were up on stage and Chop was shredding on guitar, sounding better than ever. The small blister that had formed on my fingers had now grown into proper callouses so I was feeling like a real bass player again.

Life was back on track and it was like Chop had never left. We played seamlessly, hitting every beat on time together.

Will was totally Will, charming the whole audience while he sung. Even though I knew now that he was an alpha werewolf with freaky-cool leadership abilities, it was still fantastic to play beside him and see how he could get a crowd pumped and enthusiastic. Not that they needed too much help tonight: half the audience were fans who'd seen us playing around town last year and had missed us while we were on tour.