Page 19 of Single Omega Dad
“What kinds of cold cuts?”
For a moment I heard only the buzz of the words. No meaning. My tongue pressed against my front teeth. “Uh.” I blinked hard. “Ham. Roast beef. Salami.”
He nodded briefly.
I could think of nothing more to do. I turned away from him and he followed me into the kitchen.
Chapter Five
Mathias
“Like this,” Saber said. He folded the meat double and placed it on the bread.
I stood at the kitchen island looking at my own sandwich which was flat and looking lifeless. I didn’t cook. I never made my own food.
The Omega should have been serving me, but the thought left me as soon as I glanced at his impeccable profile. Marble countertops and red name brand appliances meant his Alpha had bought the best. Or maybe it was Saber who had good taste.
He saw me glancing about the kitchen and said, “We just had the kitchen remodeled before Drayden died. Obviously, I won’t always be so extravagant.”
Extravagant? Father had raised his boys eating off imported China with fourteen carat gold forks and knives.
“You should have the best.” I nearly coughed as the words seemed to fall from my mouth.
Saber gave me a hard look, but his eyes wandered back and forth as if assessing me over and over again.
Why couldn’t I think right around this Omega? He was beautiful, but that shouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t in the Burn, and when I was, I had tastes for the pretty ones, yes, like any Alpha, but mostly I didn’t look at their full attributes, just their lower back halves.
We took our sandwiches and sodas to the table.
Luke and Tybor were already eating their peanut butter and jelly. Luke had a smear of grape jelly on his cheek.
“Napkin, Luke,” Saber instructed.
Luke picked up his napkin and wiped his face, but the grape stain remained. Tybor was fastidiously neat, more focused. Luke was the Alpha. Yet somehow their personalities seemed opposite to their labels. But what did I know about Omega children?
Father had taught me well. Omegas were good for only one thing.
Admittedly, Father was an asshole. But his money was in endless supply, earned, deserved, privileged. How could I have wanted to emulate anyone else? He had everything he wanted: a mansion, servants, the finest Omegas when he needed them, people catering to his every whim, doting and pure Alpha sons. Except for Kris.
But no, Kris had been doting. The best of the best. Father’s favorite, everyone knew. When Kris, the prize Alpha of our litter, had been diagnosed as an Omega at eighteen, though the parts inside him had been dormant since birth, atrophied, hidden, Father treated him as if he were diseased.
I didn’t know how to feel, so I followed Father’s footsteps. I believed something was wrong with Kris. And for some reason I believed he’d fooled us, keeping parts of himself hidden, keeping secrets. But he hadn’t known. He couldn’t have known.
I had blamed him for something he had no control over. I had behaved like the purebred Alpha brat Father had raised me to be. Now my litter-mate and brother, Kris, was a stranger to me.
In my life, I associated Omegas with the Burn, and therefore sex. That was all. Not a crime.
But Saber, this Omega, sat before me with his rumpled wheat-colored hair and firm eyes, his jeans and t-shirt fitting his form to show off his golden skin and lean muscles, and he was so much just a guy trying to raise two kids. A guy who was also pregnant.
A guy who’d asked me to stay for lunch.
Inside my chest, something lurched forward. The weirdest feeling swept over me, like he should be kept close, kept from all harm, treated like… like Father surrounded by his servants with all the best things, the catered foods, the luxurious rooms, the golden faucets on every sink and shower head, the furniture made to cushion bodies with the sweetest and softest of comforts.
Saber wasn’t a stray I needed to bring home. He wasn’t anything like that. He could take care of himself. Yet I responded as if he were in need, someone who should be protected.
I could feel the rise in me, a fierce craving, a heat-like arousal mixed with longing but disconnected from the blind force of the Burn itself.
To distract myself, I took a bite of my flat sandwich. I tasted little of it, chewing automatically, but had the impression it was the best sandwich I’d ever had because I’d put it together. It had been forward of me to reach for my own sandwich makings without Saber’s permission, yet I hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of having him serve me.
