Page 39 of Omega's Triplets

Why had she been so unable to resist him? She had been sure, just yesterday morning, that she would not be having sex with any of these men any time soon. When she’d first seen Mark in the forest, she’d felt fear, not attraction. And then something tiny but crucial had changed, slid into place, and all she could think about was getting him inside her.

“You should be mad at me too,” she said now. “I was there too. I did it too.”

“That’s different,” Harley said.

“Why is it different?” she demanded. “Is it because I’m an omega, and omegas can’t control themselves?” This had been a frequent taunt from the Death Fangs. They liked to stand outside her cage and tease her with the possibility of release before backtracking, telling her they knew that if they let her out, she would be all over them.

But Harley looked surprised. “Of course not,” he said. “I know omegas aren’t like that. My mother was one.”

Maddy felt immediately ashamed. She had known his mother had been an omega. “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean anything...”

“It’s different because you’re not my brother,” Harley said. “Because you and I never agreed to anything.”

“What did you and Mark agree to?”

Harley hesitated.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“We said that when we did sleep with you, it would be sort of...by mutual agreement,” he said. “That we’d wait until we all felt the time was right, so that we could do it together.”

“Together?”

“Not, like,together,together,” he said hastily. “Not all at once or anything like that. Just all in the same timeframe, so that we could have the best chance of all of us getting you pregnant.”

“I wouldn’t have done that anyway,” Maddy said. “I don’t even know if I want to have one man’s children, let alone three.”

He looked at her in silence for a long time.

“Are you thinking I’m a waste of an omega?”

“Well,” he said, “probably not in the way you assume.”

“What does that mean?”

“It just means that you should have been born a beta,” he said. “You really seem to hate being an omega, and everything associated with it.”

“I don’t...hate it.”

“No?”

“It was fun when I was a child,” she said, sitting down in the armchair opposite his. Someone had built a fire in the fireplace, and it flickered pleasantly, the wood crackling as it burned. “I guess that figures, though, doesn’t it? Omegas don’t have any responsibilities as children. And I lived with a good family then, a kind, loving pack, so nothing bad ever happened to me. The worst thing in my life was that I wasn’t allowed to eat chocolate cake or go to the mall with the other children.”

Harley frowned. “Why weren’t you allowed to eat chocolate cake?”

“Well, you know,” she said, “health restrictions.”

“What?”

“Everything I ate—everything Idid—had to be healthy. Because I had to keep my body in prime condition for bearing children.” She gave him a funny look. “Is this news to you or something? It’s how the Death Fangs guarantee that all their omegas are healthy for the auction.”

“By never letting you eat dessert.”

“I mean, it wasn’tjustthat. They let us out of the cages to exercise several times a day—what?”

“They kept you in cages, forced you to exercise, and restricted your food?” He looked sick. “That’s how they kept you healthy? Fucking hell.”

“I mean, most of the girls did stay pretty healthy.”

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