Page 55 of Two For the Show
“Not to say we’re having kids!”
They laugh awkwardly, Alex rubbing the back of her neck. “It was a slip of the tongue,” she says softly.
“So you don’t want kids?” Quinton’s never mentioned wanting kids to me before, but he’d be a fun dad, I think. I have always wanted a big family, but whether that’s through a pack or children never mattered to me.
“There is so much I want to see and do,” Alex says thoughtfully. “I would like children, I think, but I’m in no rush and I don’t think I’d be upset if it never happened. The… other three were insistent that I was going to give them pups, and it really turned me off to the whole idea.”
I place my fork on my plate and rest my chin on my palm. “But it’s on the table now?”
“This feels like something we should’ve talked about before I went all chain chomp on you and tethered you to me forever.”
Quinton snorts. “I’m never going to look at Super Mario Bros the same way again. I’m gonna see you as the chain chomp and let it get me every time.”
She balls a napkin up and throws it at him childishly. “I’m serious! We’re a pack now. These are the sort of things normal people discuss before bonding, but I’m over here, all ‘bite first, ask questions later’, and I don’t even know why I’m doing it!”
“Because you like us,” Quinton teases. “You realized how tasty my Beta is and took a bite out of him. Now you’re coming for all of us!”
“Like you’d complain if she latched onto you right now,” I say, standing up and gathering our empty plates. “And don’t make her feel guilty about it. I’m flattered that her Omega felt so safe with me, so quickly, that she locked me down immediately.”
“I still can’t believe you’re not mad at me about it,” she says, following me to the sink. “I feel like you should be mad at me.”
“Why?” I ask, turning on the warm water and squirting some soap in the sink. “Do you want me to be mad about it?”
“Maybe!” She grabs a kitchen towel and waits for meto hand her a plate to dry before saying quietly. “Yeah, I think I want you to be a little mad at me.”
“Why?” I ask again. “Why do you need me to be upset that you chose me?”
“Because I would be mad if it happened to me,” she answers honestly. “I don’t like having my choices taken away from me, and I feel like that’s exactly what I did to you.”
“I always had a choice,” I remind her. “I could easily have pushed your bond out, refused it. I knew what I was doing. You don’t need to feel bad about it.”
“Logically, I know that. It’s just that lately, I feel like logic has no place in my brain. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m sort of all over the place.”
Before I have the chance to reassure her, again, that I’m not upset, Quinton pops up beside me, startling me into dropping a fork in the sink and splashing bubbly water on my shirt. “I think I know what she needs,” he purrs.
“What?” Her tone is incredulous, like there’s no way he could possibly know the validation she seeks.
But there is a glint in Q’s eyes that I’ve seen before, and I have a feeling about where this is going. I have to bite my tongue to keep from interjecting.
I need to let this play out.
He scoops up a few soap bubbles on the tip of his finger and plops them on her nose. “It’s simple. You need to be punished.”
Chapter 23
I holdmy breath waiting for Alex’s reaction. This is a risky move, but I think it’s the right one.
She barely blinks as she stares at me, jaw a little slack.
“Punished?” she squeaks. “What do you mean?”
I slink around Matteo and press myself up against her back. “You feel bad about what you did, and even worse because Teo isn’t upset. It doesn’t feel fair to you that you could do something wrong and everything be okay. So you need to be punished for what you did.”
She chews on her lip and looks between the two of us skeptically. “I’ve been punished before-”
“That is not what I mean.” I interrupt. “Whatever they did to you, this isn’t that. That was to hurt you, to control you. This is to help you work out some of the guilt you feel safely.”
Matteo takes the towel from her and places his hands on her shoulders, guiding her to the couch where the three of us sit down together.
