Page 24 of Fierce Claim

“At least your nearest grocery store isn’t two towns over.” Vera laughs and looks from the kitchen to the living room and back. “And this is still bigger than most places Caleb and I have lived.”

Being on the run and trying to keep a low-profile probably doesn’t make you very picky with where you live, but imagining that the two of them lived in places smaller than this gives me a bad feeling. Life must have been rough for them.

I walk over to her, wrapping my arm around her waist and kiss her on top of her head. “At least you’re not living like that anymore.” I don’t mean to growl, or how angry it sounds, but it still comes out that way.

She lets out warm honey pheromones as she nuzzles my side. “It wasn’t all bad. The places were always clean and usually pretty well-kept, but simply not very big. And since we usually didn’t stay for more than a couple of months, it didn’t matter anyway. A dry place to sleep that was easy to protect was all we really wanted.”

The angry rumble in my chest makes her laugh. “Really. We weren’t living in squalor. We just lived small. When we’re back, I can show you some pictures if that eases your mind. Honestly, it wasn’t bad.”

“Maybe.” I kiss her hair again before I step into the living room, going over to the front of the apartment, looking out over the square.

It’s early in the evening and there are still people strolling past the shops that make up the ground floor of most of the buildings lining the square. The weather is good and nobody seems to be in a hurry. It looks almost serene.

This is the highest building around and the nearest place with a view of this window is too far away for most snipers to get a reliable hit. Even trying to look into here and guide a shooter from a different building would be complicated.

There are apartments on both sides, so no side windows that they can use. And the other side of the highway is mostly industry and other lower buildings, no tall factories or anything like that.

From a safety point of view, this is a good location.

“Want to know my escape routes?” Jorge steps next to me, his voice warm.

“Let’s not. We need to keep some professional secrets.” It’s the answer I always give, a habit. We talked about always needing to be sure about our escape routes the first or second time we met. But it gave me a bad feeling, so I haven’t wanted to talk about it since.

He laughs, though it doesn’t sound happy, it sounds sad. “I guess you’re right. What you don’t know can’t be tortured out of you.” His pheromones fill with pain and I turn to him, unsure. Then I remember what Vera said, about needing to communicate with him more, to let him know the ‘why’ of some of my actions.

“I’m sorry for not being open and sharing everything. I just...” Changes are hard. These last two days have been full of things I didn’t expect and don’t know how to react to. So many situations that I never thought I’d find myself in.

“I’ve known you long enough to know that’s just not how you are.” His voice is careful. “I’d hoped that you would feel safer with me now we’re part of the same pack, now we’re going to share our lives. But I also know that that isn’t you.”

“I’m sorry I growled at you in the nest.” That’s something I can absolutely apologise for. Once I calmed down, I realised how messed up it was that I growled at him. I was just so focused on Vera being in heat that I couldn’t focus on much else and getting Jorge to leave was the quickest solution.

I didn’t have the mental energy to deal with my instincts of wanting to claim Vera all for myself, my need to protect her and trying to figure out if people around me were friend or foe. So I only focused on Vera, which meant that I growled at Jorge and sent him away.

Once he came back into the nest after I’d marked Vera and Mathew, the only sensation I felt was pride. I wanted to show him how amazing our Omegas were and I wanted him to be close to them, I wanted all of us to be together in the nest. But that was after my instinct to claim them had been satiated, not when I was in the middle of it.

Jorge makes a quiet sound as he shrugs. “That was on me. Once I realised that Vera had gone into heat, I shouldn’t have gone into the nest without her or your say. I would have probably done the same if you suddenly came inside and my unbonded Omega was in heat.” His voice softens. “I’ve known you for a long time and I know what you like and don’t like. I just need to remember that just because our situations have changed that those things haven’t.”

I take a deep breath. Like Vera said, I need to explain my actions, or he won’t understand them. He might even interpret them the wrong way. Ways that I don’t mean, but that I never bothered to explain before because it was the end result that mattered, not the reason behind it.

Like this morning, I didn’t send him away because I was angry with him, I sent him away because I couldn’t deal with the extra impressions and it triggered my protective instinct. If I’d been better rested and had a clearer head, I might have been able to overcome that instinct, but I couldn’t this morning.

The end result was still the same, but the reason matters because he deserves to know why I did what I did.

“I don’t want to know your escape routes because I don’t want to think about what kind of situations you would need them in. Or think about you having to come up with them in the first place.” My heart beats fast. “Just like I never pressed you on knowing more about your fated Omega.”

“Riley...” Jorge’s tone holds a confused warning.

“‘What you don’t know can’t be tortured out of you’ is a valid reason, especially in our world. But it wasn’t about that, not really.” I still remember the tightness in my chest when he first mentioned his scent matched Omega and that he was going to pair-bond with them. And a pair-bond meant that I wasn’t going to be part of it, it wouldn’t include me. “I didn’t want to know too much about your life here because I wasn’t part of it. I didn’t want to know about things that I couldn’t share with you. Or things that would remind me that once you were out of my sight, I couldn’t protect you anymore.”

My pheromones fluctuate strongly, my face heating up with emotion and I feel like I’ve said too much, I’ve shared too much, I’ve overstepped a boundary...

I step away, unable to face him, unable to take back what I just said. “I’m sorry. I’ve said too much. I don’t blame you or anything like that. These were my own choices. This is fully on me. I did this to myself. You have no fault in whatever my feelings or actions are or were in the past.”

“Riley!” Jorge’s arms around me are strong and then Vera is also there, hugging both of us, mixing her pheromones with ours, trying to soothe the situation but now I’ve started, everything is spilling out, my emotions don’t seem to stop.

“I don’t blame you for anything.” Jorge’s voice is steady. “And I didn’t feel like you were blaming me either. These were choices we both made. It wasn’t like I could tell you much about Mathew, anything that I told you could be used to find out about his secret, which would put him in a lot of danger. And...” He glances at Vera. “It wasn’t like he was open to a bond until Vera and Caleb came along. We all did what we thought was best.”

I nod. Feeling drained and wanting to hide in Vera and Mathew’s nest for days, until the storm in my head calms down.

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