Page 44 of The Omega's Alpha
Mac walked up, laden with bags and boxes. I ran over to take a few from him, easing them out of his hands to slide them into the bottom of the bus.
He tossed his bags in beside mine, then stood up and grinned. “This should be it, except for the personal stuff.” He pulled out his phone and checked the time. “Not too far behind schedule. That’s good.”
“Quin’s been pushing everyone.” I glanced around for my future mate, but he must have still been holed up with the Green Moon Alpha. “I’ll be glad to get home.”
“I’ll bet.” Mac grinned. “Quin told me.”
“I think Quin told everyone,” I said dryly. My future mate was as excited as a five-year-old pup at Midwinter.
Mac’s body language changed and his expression went from light-hearted to concerned. “Are you okay with this?” He lowered his voice. “I know Quin can be—stubborn. And he’s a lot older than you.”
“Thirty-eight isn’t old.”
“You know what I mean.”
“He didn’t force me into this, or nag me. Well, maybe a little nagging, but he generally took a no when I gave him one.” I laid a hand on his arm and tilted my head, letting him smell the truth of it in my scent. “I think he’s crazy and that he’ll want pups of his own someday—” The words were out before I realized that he wouldn’t know, but I swallowed my shame and I made myself go on. “I’m okay with the idea that someday this will end too. And maybe I’m tired of saying no to myself all the time,” I blurted, suddenly angry. “I’m not a martyr. Why should omegas never get what they want?”
“If you think Quin is going to change his mind, you don’t know him as well as you think you do. He makes a plan, weighs the pros and cons, and then goes straight for his goal. You might think he’s given up on something he wants, but eventually he’ll get it. We’re lucky he’s as pack-minded as he is, or we’d have another Bernard the Bloody on our hands.”
“Oh.” I felt I had to trust Mac in this—after all, he’d grown up with Quin—and it dovetailed with my own instinctive understanding of Quin, except I’d never been afraid of him or intimidated by him. Just aroused and bemused. But when I thought about it— “Yeah, I can kind of see that about him, that ‘going with me or going under me’ way he has. I don’t think he knows he’s doing it.”
Mac grinned. “No, I imagine he’d be horrified. Interesting that he doesn’t seem to pull that with you, though.” Mac gave me a speculative glance, and Bax’s earlier thanks now made sense. Then Mac shrugged and continued, “His grandfather on his Da’s side—you know Abel and the rest had a different Da?—was a terror. Just lucky he never made it anywhere in the pack structure. His son wasn’t much better, though hewasbetter at covering it up, and that’s how Quin ended up being raised here with his mother’s side of the family. She put up with it for so long, then she went all alpha on him, kicked him out of the house, then packed all her stuff and Quin’s and moved back here and tore her mating contract up. You should ask one of the older shifters about that story—I can’t tell it the way they do.”
“I’ve heard stories about her. Quin and I never talked much about it. I know she didn’t come for Abel’s mating, so I thought there was bad blood.”
Mac laughed and glanced over my shoulder. “No, not bad blood. But she’s easier to take in small doses. Here he comes. And the alpha in his family didn’t come from either of the dads’—it’s all mom.”
“Huh.” Good to know, but now a small ball of anxiety had made itself a den in my gut. What if she wanted to come to our mating? What if she didn’t want him to mate a barren omega? But then Quin walked up to me and I decided he was worth any amount of in-law mischief. I pasted a bright smile on my face. “Almost ready,” I all but chirped.
“Has he been filling you full of stories?” Quin dropped a kiss on my cheek. “Don’t believe him—I never did any of it.”
“Oh,” I said innocently. “Well, that would be a shame.” And then I let him wonder what’d we’d been talking about.
Mac clapped Quin on the shoulder. “The first bus is ready to go, just need to get everyone loaded.”
“Where’s Bax?”
Mac shrugged. “Off organizing something. You know him.”
Quin grinned. “Yeah.” He turned to me. “You want to go track him down and tell him we’re ready to go? I’ll finish cramming the last of everyone’s stuff into the bus.”
“All right.” I rose on tiptoes and stole a kiss. “Where did you last see him?” I asked Mac.
“I think at the Green Moon tent. He might have moved from there since, though.”
“I’ll find him.” And pump him for whatever he knew about Quin’s mom and whether I had to worry. Or prepare. I didn’t need a real monster for a mother-in-law, particularly with my deficiency in proper omega qualities. Which, I’d come to realize, were nearly everything.
Well, except for the cooking.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
IfoundBax in the Mercy Hills tent. “Hey, we’re ready to go.”
“I’m just checking for anything we forgot.” He pushed his curls up off his forehead and frowned. “I should have taken the time to get my hair cut before we came. It’s driving me crazy.” He bent and snagged some unidentifiable piece of cloth and shook it out. “Ah, I thought I recognized this.” He tossed it towards me. “You’re going to have to keep better track of Quin’s clothing once you’re mated.”
I snatched the shirt out of the air. “He’s a grown alpha and he can pick up his own damn clothes.”
Bax grinned. “Good. It took a while for Abel to break me of that conviction. I know sometimes he despairs of me.”
