Page 24 of Knot My Omega

“We didn’t know what she liked,” Harlan said from behind me.

“It’s okay, we don’t have to have dinner.” Although, I thought that was what they’d invited me for. It wouldn’t be the first meal I’d missed. “Just water is fine.”

“We would never—” Roan began, but the chime of the doorbell interrupted him. “I’ll get it.”

I turned to see a line of at least half a dozen delivery people holding bags and boxes. Roan and Harlan took them and, once the door was closed, carried them into the dining room. “What is all this?”

Benji shrugged. “We told you we didn’t know what you liked, so we tried to order some of everything. Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Thai… More than that, and we just hope you like something.”

“I like everything. The flower and a glass of tap water would have been enough. I didn’t have—omegas weren’t… You didn’t have to do all this.”

“Yes, we did. Come and eat.”

The table was laden with foam containers, bags, cardboard boxes, and the biggest pizza I’d ever seen. Enough food for twenty people, and I hoped they wouldn’t be hurt if I didn’t do justice to it.

“We know we overdid,” Roan said, passing me a plate. “But we don’t mind leftovers.”

I ate far more than usual because everything was so good—so much of it entirely new to me, and while we ate, they told me their backstory, how they got here and formed their own pack, touching my heart and allowing me to share mine as well. We carried laden plates out to my bodyguards, who were enthusiastically pleased by that, and then settled on the couch to talk some more.

Chapter Eighteen

Benji

The scent of fur filled the air. I wasn’t the only one seeing red, at hearing the horrors Lily had gone through. My mates and I were holding our beasts in the best we could, but it wasn’t good enough. Roan’s eyes weren’t quite human, and all of us reeked of our animals.

I’d never been one for taming my wolf. We were shifters, not people. And maybe if my beast was a house cat, I might feel differently, but wolves were wild animals, not domestic creatures. Pretending they weren’t was denying a piece of who we were.

But watching Lily tense up, biting her bottom lip, her foot tapping, her eyes looking slightly above us—our lack of control was freaking her out. I refused to let that continue.

I grabbed Roan’s and Harlan’s legs, extending my claws into them, not enough to cause damage but enough to sting. We needed to reel it in and not scare our mate. She’d been so brave, telling us everything that had happened in her life—or at least gave us the broad strokes. We couldn’t destroy the trust she so graciously gave us because we couldn’t control our anger toward those who’d harmed her.

No wonder she turned us down. I would have too, in her position. She’d never been treated as the goddess she was. Quite the opposite; they made her feel subhuman.

How could she be willing to share a space with us with her history, having experienced that kind of hatred? What a kind, forgiving soul she was. It’d be so easy for her to blame Rumor, for the horrors her family put her through. Instead, they were like sisters.

People like them were the worst. Acting in public like they were above doing the actual acts they did behind closed doors. And then to dress up their selling of their daughter as some weird-ass matchmaking process. Fuck, thats DarkShadow Pack not buying into the societal norm bullshit and honoring the goddess’ gift of a true mate by making sure Rumor felt safe and loved at all times.

We wanted that for Lily.

I pushed my beast down until he finally caved and submitted. The other two must have done similarly because the air started to clear.

What I longed to do was to bid her farewell and then go hunt those fuckers down and bleed them dry—along with every single one of the people who came to buy her friend, Rumor. Those kinds of alphas? Yeah, none of them deserved to share the same air as us.

I’d had a respect for Darkshadow already, but it was multiplied now. Not only did they treat their omega the way omegas should be, allowing her to thrive and be her own person, they’d taken care of our omega. They gave her a home, the freedom she needed to grow, and the safety she needed to do so. All this after rescuing her in the first place. We owed them far more than we could ever repay.

“I… Do we… Should we?” She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and as she let it out, opened them up again. “I didn’t want to make you mad.”

“We’re not mad at you,” Harlan said. “Not mad at you at all.”

He was very careful of his wording. He’d told her the truth but held back from offering more because we were livid, and telling your scared mate you want to bleed others wasn’t the best way to make them feel safe.

We wanted to seek revenge, get justice for our mate. True. But I didn’t think it was possible to be angry at her.

“You look mad,” she said, tensing up. “Please. Please don’t lie.”

Half-truths were too close to lying, no matter the reason. I’d have done the same as Harlan. But Lily was right to call us out. We needed to do better—to be better.

“I promise you, we’re not lying. We’re not mad at you.” For someone who was resolved to tell the truth, I was getting this all wrong. Consequently, she was getting more agitated by the second.

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