Page 3 of Omega's Triplets

“Sort of.” The true answer was no, of course—Nora was not Maddy’s mother, she was far too young—but Maddy knew better than to share the details of her living situation with a stranger. You couldn’t exactly go around telling humans that you were part of a wolf pack.

“Come over here,” he said.

She edged over toward the hedge. “You can’t be that tall,” she said. The hedge had been planted around the property the year Maddy was born, and it now reached over the heads of even the tallest men in the pack. “How are you doing that?”

He laughed. “Haven’t you ever climbed it?”

“Climbed it?” It had never occurred to Maddy that the hedge could be climbed. She wouldn’t have been allowed to do it, she knew—if Nathaniel had known she was thinking about it, he would have forbidden it. But she had never asked him, and that left her free.

“Give it a try,” the boy said. “Find thick branches.”

She found one near the ground and boosted herself up, gripping the leaves above her to keep her balance. It was nothing like climbing a tree—the hedge shook precariously beneath her—but it held, and she was able to keep her balance. She climbed higher.

Before long, she was face to face with the boy, and closer than she’d ever been to a person outside her pack. He smiled. “Now we can talk properly,” he said.

She glanced over her shoulder, checking on the baby. Evelyn had tucked a thumb into her mouth and fallen asleep. “I’ll have to go if anyone comes,” she said.

“Are you expecting anyone?”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly one.”

“My house mother will be out soon to get my lunch tray.”

“Your what?”

“My mother, I mean.” She could have kicked herself.House motherwasn’t something ordinary humans had. She didn’t even know whether other shifters had it. It was an honorary title, given by Nathaniel, to the oldest woman in the pack, who acted as surrogate mother to all the others, whether their natural mothers were around or not. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy, hoping to distract him from her mistake.

“Brendon.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m seventeen.” He tossed his hair self-importantly, as though seventeen were the most impressive thing anyone could be. Maddy felt like laughing. Anybody could be seventeen. Almost everybody would be, at some point. What was the big deal?

He leaned in. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Maddy said, feeling a strange thrill she couldn’t quite explain. It was like excitement, but with just a pinch of dread. There had been something in his voice just now that she wasn’t sure she could trust.

He leaned in. Despite herself, Maddy leaned closer to him.

His mouth very near her ear, he whispered, “You’re an omega, aren’t you?”

Startled, Maddy jerked back.

She almost fell off the hedge, and would have landed flat on her back, but Brendon’s arm shot out like a snake. He caught the front of her dress and pulled her back toward him, his smile now edging toward a sneer. “You are,” he said. “I smelled it on you as I was passing.” He shook his head. “An omega, out in the yard alone. Unwatched.”

“I don’t need to be watched,” Maddy said, although she was wishing very much right now that she had a chaperone with her. She was suddenly deeply afraid. “I know self-defense. I’m allowed to be out on my own.”

“Are you?” Brendon said. “Are you really?”

And before she could answer, before she could even think to scream, he had jumped backward off the hedge, hauling her over the top. Her face scraped along the twigs as she went over, and she felt the heat of her own blood, and then the sidewalk was rushing up to meet her. She felt a sharp burst of pain, and then the world around her faded to black and to silence.

In the private backyard, now alone except for the empty lunch tray by the door, Baby Evelyn stirred and began, once more, to cry.

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