Page 20 of Single Omega Dad
Why should he? I wasn’t his Alpha. I was no one to him, and that idea prickled at the back of my mind. This wasn’t my place. I didn’t fit. Yet I wanted to see that Saber had everything he needed, that all the paperwork for his future was perfect, organized, and earning him the best interest.
More, I wanted to block him from any pain. His Alpha hadn’t been nice to him? He deserved better. Did I think I was what he deserved? My body thought so, but my mind knew better. I was a prick. Like Father, I’d be alone forever. I’d chosen that road. And like Father, if I ever wanted children I’d hire an Omega to have them.
So far, I’d never wanted kids, but I looked at Tybor as he smiled at me, chewing a delicate bite of his sandwich which he held in both hands, and felt helpless.
I didn’t smile back. Instead, I took more tasteless bites of my sandwich. I did not open the soda.
I knew I should leave. I didn’t know these people and this little family was not mine and never would be. Obviously, my thoughts had gone haywire. I didn’t hang with Omegas outside the Burn. Like father, like son.
Abruptly, I pulled out my cell pretending to check it, and stood. Half my sandwich lay uneaten on my plate. It was rude but this couldn’t go on. I said, “I should be going now. I have meetings.”
Saber scooted his chair back with a scraping sound. “Of course.” He stood, looking down at the boys. “Finish your lunch.” Looking up, he said, “I’ll see you to the door.”
“I can see my way out.”
Saber said nothing, but accompanied me through the little hall and past the front room to the foyer. “I should have shown you the yard,” he mumbled.
“No need. I saw it through your windows. Well kept.” My skin heated. Too many times around this Omega, I wasn’t thinking before I spoke. Would he take those last words as a sort of twisted criticism, thinking he should keep his yard nice because I thought so?
“Thank you,” he replied. Simple. Not defensive.
“We should not need much further contact except by email if you have questions or there is anything else you need.” Those words should have brought me relief. Instead, they made me more tense.
“Then I will email if I have questions.”
Looking down at him, I had more odd thoughts. It was my day for them. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to lean down and smell his hair. Even now, at a distance of about one and a half feet, I scented him: Omega sweet as they all were, and the lilac fragrance I’d noticed yesterday, but with a hint of ionization around the edges, like a quickly put out match, or a distant fire. Salty, cloying, mouthwatering.
Saber was drawn taut, like me. We were the same in that way. But he didn’t need me and I knew it. Besides, my conviction to be like Father, to remain alone, made the notion of being drawn to him preposterous.
He wasn’t mine. I told myself that over and over as the front door closed behind me and I walked to my car.
He wasn’t mine.
Chapter Six
Saber
In the night, I woke with the image of Mathias looming over me, his dark hair loose and floating all around him. Dreams. Just dreams.
They had begun the evening after our first meeting, and now ramped up this second night after the home inspection.
I tossed and turned in my big bed. I was used to sleeping alone. Drayden had been gone so much of our married life. But somehow, even though my day to day living hadn’t changed all that much, things had begun to feel emptier, lonelier.
My pregnancy was going well. I had no morning sickness and only a little weight gain. That was normal. With Tybor and Luke I had not started to put on too many pounds or show until the third trimester. I had the musculature that held everything in place for a long time. In other words, said my doctor, I was the perfect healthy Omega standard for bearing young.
I sat up and turned on the light, reaching for a book. I couldn’t concentrate. My skin was hot so I got up and turned on the shower. When I got in, the water pelted my skin until it was overly sensitive in a good way, and when I touched myself I came in moments. It felt wonderful. Except for the fact that Mathias’s face and the memory of his scent accompanied the pleasure.
Lusting after my financial guardian? Honestly, it came as no surprise. He was handsome and big, the Alpha to a healthy Omega’s fantasies. Why not? Except this Alpha was a Vandergale, completely out of my league.
My fantasies tended to be overwhelming like that. My first crush was on an Alpha I saw at the chattel farm who was already dating another Omega. I had other incidents like that, wanting what I could never have.
I turned off the water, stepped out of the shower and toweled myself dry. As I stood naked in the steam of the bathroom, I made myself ask the question out loud.
“Do you really want him?”
He had been cold, arrogant and standoffish. Yet he had backed off from completely controlling every angle of my finances. Though he’d made the comment about sending Tybor to a chattel farm, he had later shown my kids some semblance of respect.
I couldn’t really tell if he liked kids or not, but Tybor had caught his attention. An Omega child. The type of child our society often overlooked. But Tybor had a personality everybody liked.
