Page 30 of Into the Fire: Before

I blinked a few times at her. “Youwhat?”

“Yep. I caught a bus and there were—god—hundreds of omegas all gathered to support the 'End the Census' bill, and Corinth Wainwright even walked by—”

“Protests like that turn into riots!” I shouted, my heart racing. “God, Taryn, you shouldn’t go to those things! People have been shot and—and trampled andarrested. Fuck, people have tried tokillthat bastard, what if—”

“Honestly, Caine,” Taryn interrupted me, her voice raised over mine, “you have absolutely no say in what I do. Just…shut up and leave.”

Fuck me, there were tears in her eyes. Brea would be so disappointed—not only had I not used a single anger management coping mechanism we’d talked about only hours ago, but now I’d made her omega cry.

I didn’t say a word. Instead of moving toward the door, though, I returned to the final window I hadn’t quite finished yet. Taryn didn’t stop me, but she didn’t read me any more of my fortune after that.

Within ten minutes, the last window rose without a sound. I waited for the cascading relief that I could finally escape. None came.

Gathering my tools together, I glanced toward Taryn, who sat on the couch, scrolling on her phone. I cleared my throat, but she didn’t look my direction.

“Finished,” I grumbled.

“Hmm,” Taryn hummed, still not looking up at me.

My brow furrowed, and I buried the niggling insecurity. “Next time, submit a work order,” I muttered as I headed for the door.

Just as I reached for the knob, Taryn finally spoke up. “It’s a shame you’re so anti-omega, you know.”

I turned to face her, clenching my jaw. “I’m not anti-omega,” I said.

She gave a single cold laugh. “Could’ve fooled me.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose with my free hand, taking a slow inhale. Which, given the mouthwatering toffee in the air, didn’t really help.

Taryn didn’t wait for me to catch my bearings before continuing, “Anyway, it’s a shame you’re the anti-est pro-omega in the world, since you’re gonna have one in your pack someday.”

My eyes snapped open, laser-focused on the packet of torn notebook pages she held out toward me. Every cell of my brain screamed at me to turn and leave, run, lock myself away in my room and wait for this irritating, enrapturing creature to forget I existed. My body disobeyed. My feet inched forward. My arm raised. My fingers grasped the pages. My eyes read over the cute, if messy, handwriting.

A cluster of categories on the second page caught my eye.

Number of Packmates: 5

Beside that,Alpha, Omega,andBetawere scrawled five times each. She counted through, crossing off every fifteenth option until only five remained: Alpha, alpha, beta, beta. And omega.

My fingers clenched around the papers, but I didn’t crumble them. Even though the voice in my mind that had been trying to get me out of this apartment for hours insisted I should. I looked back to Taryn, blinking once, twice, before putting my mask back in place.

“Don’t put too much stock in games and wishes,” I scoffed. “You’ll just be disappointed.”

“I don’t know,” she replied, unwavering. “You’re already halfway there.”

Brooks and Lin. Beta and alpha.

Before I could fire off a retort, the knob turned behind me and the door opened, ushering Brea into the space. She paused as she came through the door, red hair in suave waves around her shoulders, fair skin glowing like pearl in the V of her blouse.

“Is…everything okay?” she asked, eyes bouncing between Taryn and me.

“Yep!” Taryn chirped as I made to brush past her alpha. “Just getting Cranky Caine to fix the windows for us. We had a delightful time.”

Brea arched a brow, as though finding that difficult to believe. She looked down at the papers in my hand and chuckled. “Oh, I seesomeonehad a delightful time.”

The alpha gave no indication we’d spent an hour in stilted quasi-intimate conversation this morning. I knew she wouldn’t tell Taryn about it—she’d explicitly promised not to—but I’d wondered how much she could really hide if we were ever all in the same space. My answer stood before me, an absolutely flawless mask ofnothing to see here. Meanwhile, my heart raced and my face felt clammy and I knew my scent was growing in the room, which was an added humiliation.

Taryn stood from the couch, meandering over to where Brea and I stood near the kitchen island. “I learned long ago to never doubt the MASH gods, Madam Alpha,” she said in a teasing voice that still zapped right through me. “They told me I’d get you, after all.”

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