Page 2 of Omega's Triplets

But it won’t always be like this,she thought firmly.One day, I’ll be mated to someone, and I’ll have a whole litter of babies to look after. I’ll be the most important person in the whole pack. Maybe my mate will even be the new alpha. That was an exciting thought. If she was mated with the alpha, she could help him make decisions for the pack. She could help make the rules, instead of just being subject to them.

She knelt in the grass and set the baby down. Immediately, Evelyn set off on hands and knees to explore the wide lawn, her tears forgotten.She’s not a crybaby, Maddy thought, somewhat resentfully. Nora didn’t appreciate her own baby. Evelyn just wanted the freedom to roam and play, to discover new things. She was bored.

Maddy could relate.

“You know what it’s like, Evelyn, don’t you,” she said, flopping on her stomach on the grass and watching her charge crawl around her. “You don’t like being cooped up in that house either.”

Evelyn did not respond, of course. Maddy rolled onto her back and gazed up at the sky.

“Someday, you and I will go somewhere,” she told the baby. “Someday, we’ll get out of this place. We’ll leave it behind us for good. Maybe we’ll even leave Los Angeles. Would you like that? There are thousands of other places in the world. When you get older, you’ll be able to read about them, but reading isn’t the same as seeing them in real life.” She sighed. “I want to be a mother someday, I really do, but sometimes, it seems unfair that that’s theonlything I’m supposed to do. Nora whines a lot about it, but at least she gets to go out on dates with her husband.”

Evelyn had discovered a ladybug and was trying to pick it up. She ignored Maddy altogether.

“Everyone says I should stay in the house because it’s not safe to go out,” Maddy said. “Buttheygo out all the time, don’t they? It isn’t fair. I may be an omega, but I know how to take care of myself.” It was true. Part of her daily fitness regimen, which was as strictly adhered to as her diet, included self-defense training.

“What do I need self-defense for?” she had asked Nathaniel once. “I never go out. I never meet strangers. I’m not going to be attacked.”

“You need it because you never know what kind of situation you might find yourself in,” he had said. “We do our best to keep you safe and protected, but you’re an omega, and that makes you a target.”

“A target for what?”

“Bad people,” he had said shortly, and left it at that.

Maddy had never met anyone she would have consideredbadin her life, though. Her packmates were wealthy and held good jobs in the community, a thing not many shifters were able to do, she knew. Most shifters werewildand lived off the grid in messy little packs that she wouldn’t have cared to associate with. They might be cruel to her, she knew, but Nathaniel’s pack never was. She knew exactly how lucky she was to have been born into this family, to be raised in this sprawling house where she was safe and cared for and wanted for nothing.

But if only she could getoutsometimes! It was absolutely maddening.

Maddy whiled away the morning hours with only Evelyn for company, wondering what the others her own age were doing today. It could go one of two ways, she supposed. It might be that they were stuck in lessons, preparing for the jobs they would one day have to go out and get to help support the pack. As omega, Maddy would never be required to get a job—her only responsibilities were to stay healthy and to bear litters of children someday. And while it did please her to be spared the homework assignments and exams the others had to worry about, she sometimes wondered whether she might not enjoy learning to do something and contributing to the pack in some other way.

It was also possible, she knew, that today was not a school day. If that were the case, it was likely that everyone near her own age would have been given shopping money and taken downtown. They would come back with bags bursting with new clothes, nail polish and makeup, books, treats Maddy would never be allowed to eat—all kinds of wonderful things. And while a few of her friends usually remembered her and brought something back for her, which she did appreciate, it was very different from being able to go to the store and pick out whatever you wanted yourself.

Around noon, Leanne came outside with another tray, this one bearing lunch. She had been given a fillet of salmon over a corn and lentil mixture and a bowl of spinach and kale with just a hint of dressing. Leanne also had a bottle for Evelyn, which Nora had prepared and sent out. “Don’t you think it’s about time you brought that baby inside?” she asked, hands on her hips.

“She likes it out here,” Maddy said. “She has to spend all her time inside, with Nora complaining about how much she cries. She deserves a break from that, doesn’t she?”

“Well, maybe she does,” Leanne allowed. “Eat everything on your plate, all right? I’ll be back for it in about an hour. No hiding your kale in the bushes, now. You know it’ll be sniffed out if you do.”

“I know, I know.” Maddy hadn’t bothered with hiding food she didn’t want to eat in the yard in years, but it seemed to her that no one was ever going to forget she had done it when she was younger. Of course, hiding food was ridiculous in a house full of wolf shifters. Hidinganythingwas ridiculous. Sooner or later, someone was bound to shift into his or her animal form, and once they had, they would know immediately what you’d done.

She sat on the grass, picking at the salad, taking slow bites of the fish, which was the only thing she’d been given that she really liked. Lentils and spinach were tolerable, but kale was appalling. Maddy thought she would rather have pulled up tufts of grass from the lawn and eaten that.

She finished everything on her plate, eventually, washing down the last few bites of kale with great big gulps of water, and carried the tray over to the patio for Leanne to collect. She knew she ought to think about bringing Evelyn inside now. The baby had rolled onto her back on the ground and was examining her own feet, and Maddy knew her well enough to know that this behavior usually led directly into naptime. Was that true for all babies, she wondered, or was it just Evelyn? She supposed she’d find out when the next member of her pack had a child.

“Hey.”

The voice was unfamiliar. She spun around. A boy was sticking his head over the top of the privacy hedge.

“Who are you?” she asked him. He wasn’t a member of her pack, and she rarely got to meet anyone else, so any interaction with a new person was interesting. The boy looked to be a few years older than her, maybe in his late teens. He had a rash of stubble across his chin, but he still had the lean, wiry look of a boy who wasn’t yet a man.

“Who areyou?” the boy returned.

That caught her by surprise. It was rare that anyone talked back to Maddy. They weren’t allowed to show disrespect to her, after all. She was their omega. “I’m Maddy,” she said. “Are you here to see Nathaniel? The front door is on the other side of the house.”

“No,” he said. “I was just passing by and I... I heard you.” There was something she didn’t like about the look on his face when he said that, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She suspected he was lying. But why would he lie about that?

“I was talking to Evelyn. The baby,” she said.

“Your sister?” he asked.

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