Page 57 of The Omega's Alpha
I took the bowl and glanced at the mess in my big mixing bowl. Quin, the jerk, reached into the big one and picked out a couple of chocolate cookies. “Yum.” He put one in his bowl and stuffed the other one in his mouth. “You guys eat too.”
I frowned at him, but reached out myself. Well, one unhealthy breakfast wouldn’t hurt the pups. And the bowl was mostly strawberries anyway. I half-filled my bowl with the strawberries, then tried to pick one of the vanilla wafers out of the mess, but it disintegrated between my fingers, so I ended up with one of the chocolate cookies instead. “These are going to end up mush,” I said. Then, before the pups could be disappointed, I added, “Better eat them quick!” and reached out to tickle Dorian.
He squealed and tumbled onto his side, then reached for his bowl and began messily filling it from the mixing bowl. Agatha followed right after him and we traded food back and forth, laughing at our messy faces. It was still a wondrous thing to me, to see how Quin interacted with the pups. Any pups, really, but ours in particular. Quin was different from other alphas I grown up with, so…involved. To the point where he was as filthy as the pups were, strawberry juice running down his chin to drip on his chest and his thighs and I wished I had someone to take the pups to daycare today, because now I wanted to drag him back to the bedroom and clean him up. With my tongue.
No wonder I loved him so much.
I leaned against him and smiled. He winked back at me and went back to dickering with Agatha over one of the ginger cookies, which had been in short supply even before the kitchen raid. I’d have to make more tonight. Oh, except I couldn’t, because I was leaving for an introduction and then, possibly, a fitting with the designer Freddy knew. And to be run around to a bunch of different agencies and get my picture out to the people with the money.Shit.I looked around at my little family and decided I’d see if I could put it off for a week or so. This was still so new, I didn’t want to risk breaking any of the still-fragile bonds holding us together.
Agatha put her bowl down, already tired of ‘breakfast’, and crawled into my lap. “Can we have real breakfast, Holland?”
“Of course we can, sweetheart. What would you like?”
“Can we have eggy toast?”
“Of course.” I leaned over to kiss Quin. “You hungry enough for real breakfast too?”
“I could eat,” he said mildly, but that sense of humor I loved was dancing in his eyes.
“Well, don’t eat the pups,” I said and crawled out of the tent.
Agatha came out behind me. I turned to her. “I’m going to go clean up and put some clothes on. We should probably wash your face too.”
“Okay,” she sang and grabbed my hand. “I’m sticky.”
“You are. So am I.” I picked her up and perched her on my hip, patted Quin’s head through the blanket, which made him laugh and grab ineffectually for me, and then we made our way across the living room to the bathroom to clean up.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Over lunch and paperwork, I broached the subject of putting off the trip with Quin. “I just think it’s a bad time to be away from them. Sure, they’ve been living with us since November, but now we’re official and they’re going to be our pups.”
He looked down at his plate, filled with the pack version of Chinese food, and stirred the noodles with his fork. “I see your point,” he said slowly. He frowned and stared down at his food, stirring it some more, but he didn’t say anything.
“Quin?” I watched him anxiously. This was all new territory for me. I knew he didn’t want a traditional omega, that he’d seen something in me when we’d first met. But it was only now that we were officially mated that I realized I didn’t know hownotto be a traditional omega and it made me grind my teeth to think I might have to takeBramas a role-model. I hadn’t considered that when I’d agreed to this early, private mating.
I certainly hadn’t realized that, once weweremated, all my old training in how to be a mate would start asserting itself.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what the right answer is to this.” He reached out and took my hand in his, squeezing it briefly before letting go. “As your mate, and eventual father to those pups, I want to tell you to stay here and the pack will be fine without your work outside walls. But as Alpha—” He shook his head again. “We need the money. The money and, if we’re to start breaking down the walls between us and the humans—which needs to be our ultimate goal—we need you to go out there and make them see us as just like them. To try anyway.” He stabbed his lunch with the fork, over and over. “We should have done this last week, or next week, or… I don’t know. I don’t know when would have been the right time.”
I swallowed hard against a lump in my throat. “Do you…regret it?”
“Never!” His fork clattered against the plate and he stood, knocking his chair over behind him. He strode around the desk to kneel beside me. “I love you and I don’t regret a moment. I just wish I could get the hang of this job before the damn thing goes ahead and changes on me. Again. And then I might have some time for you.”
“Idiot,” I said, and put my fork down much more gracefully. “I have a lot more now than I ever expected to. And you’re the Alpha of a pack that’s leading the way into the future. If you were like Montana Border or Perseguir, your job would never change. We’d still be doing all the same things, and us—” I waved hand back and forth to indicate him and me, “—would never have happened, because no Alpha takes up with a repudiated omega except for a quick fuck and run. But you’re changing things for the better.” Shit, I wasn’t much of a mate, adding to his burden instead of lightening it. “I’ll call and cancel.”
He stood up and shook his head, but he kissed my fingers again too, which I loved. “No, you go. I’ll go get the pups early and we can take a run through Supplies. And plan breakfast.” His eyes twinkled and I had to laugh.
“Yeah, that was pretty awful.”
“It was. But funny. And a good sign, I think.” He let go of my hand and went back to his side of the desk. “Eat. We need to get through all this and you have to pack. I’m sending Edmond with you too. We need a few more of us that are comfortable outside walls, so you’re going to have two from the security team with you all the time.”
“That won’t stretch them too thin?”
He shook his head. “Mac’s taking on some of the Green Moon security to help keep on top of things and we want to bring on some of the younger ones from Mercy Hills and get them used to interacting with humans. It can’t just be the dozen or so that we have right now. Not if we do all this right.”
He had a point. “But what about Aggie and Dorian?” I couldn’t stop that nagging worry about the pups. Stupid, but that didn’t make it any less upsetting.
“They’ll survive. Maybe I’ll have Fan and Teca over for a sleep-over. Movies, snacks. One of the Green Moon people is supposed to make amazing pizza—we’re looking for space for them to set up as a business. I’ll see if I can get samples.”
