Page 48 of Omega's Triplets

He sat down across the table from her. “How have you been settling in?”

The question felt so strange that she laughed, and after a moment, so did he. “I’m fine,” she said. “But I guess you probably know that already.”

He nodded. “I guess I probably do.”

“Are you all still fighting?” she asked.

He bit his lip. “You know we are.”

“I just...feel badly about it,” she said. “Everyone says it isn’t my fault, but I feel like it is. I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s not your fault,” Jamie said. “It’s our fault. All three of us. We’ve been looking ahead to having you here with us for a long time. We’ve been looking forward to passing along our genes. And now, you’re here, and we’re doing it wrong.”

“Are you...?” she hesitated. “Are you and I still going to—?”

“What, have sex?”

She nodded.

He sipped his coffee. “I thought about it,” he said. “It’s not like the imprint is a requirement. Actually, everything I’ve read indicates that it’s really rare. So, we could go ahead, if we wanted to.”

“I would do it,” she said. “If that’s what you wanted.”

“You would?”

She nodded. “I wasn’t sure about you three at first, but...I don’t know. Things have changed. And given the way things have been with Mark and Harley, and the fact that I know all three of you wanted to have a litter together—”

“I thought you weren’t in favor of that.”

“It’s probably going to happen at some point anyway,” she said. “Considering how often they—”

He held up a hand, as if saying that he didn’t really need to know.

“Anyway,” she said, “you should be included. If that’s what you want. And I know that’s what you’ve always wanted before.”

“Yeah,” Jamie said, “but I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“It seems like...well, no offense. But it seems like we’d be forcing something that shouldn’t be forced. Harley and Mark imprinted, and I didn’t, and I feel like that’s biology trying to tell me something.”

“Trying to tell you what, though?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that my genes shouldn’t be passed on. That I shouldn’t help breed the next generation. That Harley and Mark should be the only ones to do it.”

She reached out and took his hand. “I don’t think that’s true,” she said quietly.

“No?”

“You’re an important part of this pack. You shouldn’t let yourself be held back just because of this stupid imprinting thing.”

“It’s not stupid. Whatever else it is, it’s not stupid. I see the way you look at them. The way they look at you. It’s like you’ve found your drug.”

“Okay,” she agreed, “it isn’t stupid. But it isn’t the only thing that matters either. You’d be a good father, Jamie. You have qualities the others don’t have. Important qualities.”

“You think so?”

“You’re responsible.”

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