Page 49 of The Omega's Alpha
I got to my feet and turned toward the photographer. Quin stood with me and I laid a hand on his arm for support as I looked the humans over. The photographer was obviously ill at ease, and I wondered why he’d even come. The other two, a man and a woman, were alert, but not nearly as on edge as the man who’d brought them. One of the pack’s youngsters, in a sort of apprenticeship to the security team, hung in the doorway of the apartment.
“Can I go now, sir?” he asked Quin.
“Yes, we’re fine. Thank you, Gent.”
The young shifter said a grateful, “Thank you, sir,” and ducked back out the door, closing it with something just short of a slam.
I winced and Quin shook his head. “Teenagers.” Then he turned to the photographer and held out his hand. “I’m Quin, the Alpha here.” He was being careful not to wear his stone-faced soldier’s face. Just two guys meeting for the first time.
Right.
The photographer looked startled and extended his hand gingerly. “Freddy Coontz.” He seemed to be expecting that Quin would suddenly pull him close and try to eat him. Obviously, he didn’t realize that Quin, in human form, liked his meat well-done.
The two men shook, and Freddy’s shoulders came down a little from around his ears. “This is my wife, Stella. She’s here to do make-up. And Evert Waldemariam, he’ll do your hair.” He finally looked at me, and I saw his pupils widen as he took in my appearance.
Yeah, I knew what he was seeing. Bax had always been prettier than me, a little more delicate, with those smoky green eyes that had all the alphas panting. But I’d been a close second, myself and Usher, and his reaction was nothing new. I let him look, knowing that this was what I could expect if I continued on this path. And it was different, the way he looked at me. No arousal, but he evaluated me the same way the alphas had, only for different reasons.
After the longest minute ever, he nodded. “I see what Thom was talking about. Right, let’s get you ready.” And just like that, all the fear, all the nervousness and wary reactivity was gone. He shot a quick glance around the living room and then moved me over by the big window with the winter light pouring in.
“I’ll do his hair first?” Evert asked, setting out a series of brushes and combs and stuff in cans that I didn’t recognize.
“Yes.” Freddy glanced around the room again. “I don’t want to do them all here. Do we have a backdrop sheet we can hang?”
“I have a soft white and a gray blue,” Stella said, unpacking one of the bags she’d carried in.
“We’ll try the white first.” He spun in a slow circle, then pointed at the wall with the door to the office in it. “That one, I think. We should be able to control the lighting there.” He turned to me. “Do you have anything other than cheap t-shirts and jeans?”
Cheap? I looked down at my shirt. “No. This is pretty much it. I have a couple of special occasion shirts, but these are the best of my jeans.”
He looked pained at the thought of this being the best of my wardrobe and I suppressed a snicker. “Well, if this one goes well, we’ll have to do a better one with some real clothes.” He ushered me to the window with a wave of his hand and sat me down on a kitchen chair that had appeared out of nowhere while I was distracted. “Evert will fix your hair, then we’ll get your face sorted and we’ll go from there.” He turned abruptly away from me and began unfolding a large, white sheet, pointing at the wall and talking with his wife.
Evert took a brush to my hair, his dark hands flicking with casual expertise around my head. “We don’t need to do much, though you definitely could use a trim.” The last words were spoken in a tone almost meant only for himself. “I might do a bit now, actually.” The next thing I knew, the snick-snick of scissors sounded in my ears, and I widened my eyes at Quin in awhat am I getting myself intoplea for help. He smiled at me, but I was well versed in the language of his body now and I could read the tension in the set of his shoulders and the cant of his head to one side, so I dialed down my own distress signals and reached out to him through that weird connection of ours to sayit’s okay.
The humans never noticed, luckily, and before long my hair had been trimmed and sprayed and brushed until if flowed around my face like water. Evert had been quiet as the deep center of the woods while he worked on me. Not the quiet of nerves, but of concentration and of someone deeply into the flow of his work. I could feel his attention on me, like sunshine in early spring, and it lulled me into a state of half-somnolence that was only broken when he stepped back and said, “That will do. Stella?” And I was back in the real world again.
Chapter Forty-Two
Freddy had been takingpictures for what felt like hours, but by the clock on the stove was less than one. Seated, standing, lying on the couch. Shirt on, shirt off, looking directly at the camera and away. At one point, he got right up in front of me. I think one of those was just of my eye, which was ridiculous.
My body ached and I was cold and couldn’t imagine what they wanted with so many different pictures. I’d sent Quin out to his office ten minutes in, correctly guessing that while, intellectually, he understood and accepted the touching and posing and the hands constantly reaching out to fix something, that more wild side that lived inside all of us was taking exception to their handling of me. But that left me trying to balance my omega training against my instinct to tell him to fuck right off on occasion.
Quin poked his head in the door while Stella and Evert changed the backdrop to the blue-gray one. “How’s it going?” he asked in a low voice. His pupils were wide, and I met his gaze with a smile to remind him that I was okay.
“Very well,” Freddy answered absently as he removed one lens and fastened another onto his camera. “I just want to do a couple of poses with the two of you to see how he works with others and then I think we’re done.” He glanced up at me, standing barefoot and half-naked in front of his blue-gray background. “I’ll send you copies of the shots I think are worth keeping and I think I know someone who’d be willing to take a chance on a complete unknown. Can you handle pressure?”
Quin stepped the rest of the way into the room, his alpha possessiveness giving way before his well-developed sense of humor. “He’s going to be Alpha’s Mate. Doesn’t get to be more pressure than that.”
“You’ve never been to Fashion Week then.” Freddy raised his camera, then made me jump by barking a command at Quin as he headed past us in the direction of the bedrooms. “Stay right there! I’ll want you in a second.”
“I’m not planning to be a model.”
“I just need to borrow you for a minute.” He took a few more pictures, then lowered the camera and pointed at Quin. “Get in behind and put your arms around him. Evert, get his hair down around his face, make him a bit more androgynous.”
Evert came to play with my hair, but I watched Quin. No one pointed at the Alpha and told him what to do—well, except me—and I had to admit to a tiny worry that the human’s tone of voice would tweak the temper that hid within all alphas. Quin came quietly enough, but his eyes had narrowed and his energy flowed around him faster than usual. I reached out to him again, both with my body and that other omega thing, but it wasn’t necessary—he was Alpha and he was the one in control here. He smiled at me as he moved into position, unaccustomedly clumsy, endearingly uncertain in his movements.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered.
He shrugged. “It makes him happy, maybe gets you this job. You want this, right?”
