Page 105 of The Omega's Alpha
Each day, I woke up and made breakfast, ate whatever looked like it would taste the best—even when Quin and the pups looked at me like I was crazy—and went through my day. In fact, I’d never felt better. Or looked better. Pregnancy had done wonders for my hair and my skin. I was still modeling, though not so much—the slight bulge of my belly, as small as it was, had still been enough that my clothes had to be cut specifically to hide it. And now that I was two-thirds of the way through my pregnancy, it wasn’t so small anymore and we were beyond hiding it.
Plus, I didn’t want to be working all the time—I was making enough money that I could afford to stay home a bit, though I heeded the advice of my agency and made sure my face was seen just often enough that no one could forget me. And it was amazing what photographers could hide by the way they arranged everyone. Quin’s favorite was a picture we’d had framed and hung on the wall in the living room. A couple of women, another man, and me, my back to the camera, my hand on the man’s shoulder, looking back at the camera like I was coming for the person taking the picture after I’d finished having my way with the rest of the models. I liked it because it was done only a month ago and you couldn’t tell I was carrying a baby. Quin liked it because he said it was just how I looked at him sometimes, right before I dragged him to the bedroom to have my way with him.
Couldn’t say he was that far wrong.
But all the good luck worried me because it just made me think that all the bad stuff would happen during the birth, and I spent my free time frantically searching on the Internet for ways to prevent an ever-broadening range of disasters.
But not tonight. Tonight was omega’s night in. Wyn, the omega from North Water pack, and Seosamh were looking after the pups at Bax’s, where they were having a movie night and a new toy night so the rest of us could huddle together in mine and Quin’s apartment and eat food and talk. Quin himself was spending the evening with his brothers, lending their labor to a Green Moon shifter who’d applied to change packs and wanted to open a small business. A pool hall, Quin called it, sounding enthusiastic, and promised to teach me to play once it was going. So, with a bit of shuffling, and with the money from the last ad campaign I’d worked on coming, we had funds for things that weren’t so necessary for survival. I was looking forward to it, though it was going to be far away from our little apartment. After much discussion, it had ended up tucked into one of the supply buildings in the new section of the enclave, next to the new pizza place. Which I was also really looking forward to trying out.
Then again, Abel had built a house and planned on moving even when he’d still been Alpha. I wondered, as our family grew, would Quin consider that possibility?
I was sitting on the couch with my feet up a stool and my journals and notebooks scattered over the space around me when Quin shooed our pups out from the bedrooms. “We’re ready to go,” he said, setting their bags down by the door. I gathered up my papers to make room and he came to sit beside me on the couch. His hand went to the swell of the baby and he leaned in to kiss first me, then the baby. “Hello, pup,” he whispered, then sat back with his hand still spread over my belly. “You ready for the night?”
“I am.” I leaned my head against his shoulder, then sat up straight again as Dorian came to try to wedge himself into my rapidly disappearing lap. “Don’t sit on your little brother,” I told him. “He’s still kind of squishy.” We’d found out from Bram’s doctor at my last visit to him, a fun little treat that we hadn’t expected to have.
“When is he coming? Dorian asked, for probably the seventeenth time.
“Two more months,” I told him, and put an arm around his waist to lift him to a more secure seat.
Agatha crawled up on Quin’s lap. “Can we go play?”
I laughed, but before I could say anything, that shiver in my belly I’d been feeling over the past week, the one that I couldn’t quite be sure was the baby, turned into the tiniest of thumps. And Quin’s hand, so large it spanned a good half of the now-expanse of my belly, was right over it. “Ha!” I said, and waited. Quin went tense, and it felt like we were both holding our breath.
The flutters tended to come in groups, three or four in a row, then nothing until I’d be convinced it would never happen again. But then it happened, like a tiny boxer punching whap-whap-whap against a padded form.
“He’s really in there,” Quin whispered in awe. And then he did something that filled my heart with joy and love for him—he removed the hand on my belly and reached for the puppies’ hands, placing them over that inch of skin to the right of my bellybutton where their little brother was letting us know he was there. And then he laid his hand over theirs and we waited again in quiet fascination.
“Oooooh!” Agatha squealed when she felt the tiny bumping and Dorian squirmed so hard in his excitement that he tipped himself right off the couch to land on the cushion that I’d lost there earlier. Quin made a grab for him, but even his reflexes were too slow and our soon-to-be-oldest boy bounced on the cushion, then giggled and rolled up onto his feet again.
“I wanna feel it again!” he crowed and lunged for my belly.
“Easy there,” I said, intercepting his weight. “Be careful around your baby brother. He’s not as tough as you yet.”
Dorian laid his head on my belly and frowned in concentration. “He doesn’t say anything.”
“No, he’s not big enough to talk yet.” I smiled fondly up at Quin, who kissed me, then got to his feet and swung Dorian up to hang folded over his forearm.
“All right, pups. Time to go to Uncle Abel’s and let Holland have some adult time.
Agatha climbed willingly off the couch and then, with a wave and a chorus of byes, they were out the door and I had the place to myself until everyone came over. I’d been told in no uncertain terms that I was not to cook, or clean, or do anything to get ready for this—Bax, Bram, Jason and Cale would look after it all. So I settled myself back down on my couch and went back to my slow translation of the old journals. It went by fits and starts, but I wanted to finish this one before everyone arrived, because that was the other reason for omega’s night in.
It talked about the True Omega.
Chapter Eighty-Five
Two hours later, I was stuffed full of food, and everyone else had had a couple glasses of wine. We were all relaxed, and the conversation was going places that made Cale’s cheeks burn bright red and his eyes go wide.
“I’ll go you one better.” Jason set his glass of wine down out of the way. “So yeah, I’d kind of known that human women got more aggressive about sex when they were pregnant, but I wasn’t expecting it would be the same for me.” He grinned. “So, there was this day, just after Midwinter when I was pregnant with Seb, and Mac came home all sweaty and roughed up and I don’t know what it is about him when he looks like that, but I wrecked his shirt, and had to fix his jeans after.” He made tearing motions with his hands. “I was in the middle of making brownies because he’d eaten the last two for breakfast—”
“Greedy alpha,” Bram joked.
“What?” Jason asked him. “You have Duke trained to only take one?”
“I wish. I have to hide them. That’s the best recipe ever.”
“All hail the Internet,” Jason said in a sing-song voice and got to his feet. “But, I managed to hide a few from the last batch I made.” He went to the kitchen and brought back a newly opened container with the rich scent of chocolate rising from it like incense.
I moaned and my hand was reaching for a brownie before I even realized I was moving.
