Page 58 of The Omega's Alpha
“Where’d you hear that?”Ihadn’t heard it.
Quin grinned at me and ate a mouthful of his lunch. “You know us alphas. All we talk about is food and sex.”
I snorted a laugh and turned back to my plate. “All right. It sounds like you’ve got this all worked out.” It still left a hollow underneath my heart, that he could part from me so easily after claiming me.
“Hey, earth to Holland. You in there?” Quin reached forward and tapped on the edge of my plate.
Ha, turning my own words against me. “I’m listening.”
“You went somewhere.”
I sighed and stared at my noodles, turning the fork back and forth so the sunlight glinted off the tines and threw sparkles on the wall. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” Quin ate another mouthful of noodles and raised his eyebrows in inquiry.
“It’s dumb.”
“I doubt it. What?”
“I—This just isn’t like what my first mating was like.” Now he looked entirely baffled. I tried to explain. “Gregoire and I did the whole mating night thing and came back to the party and then I had a couple of days with him to myself to get to know him…” And as I was saying it, I realized it really was dumb. “I’m sorry. That’s just ridiculous.”
“Well,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “I guess we are kind of going at this backwards. First we start sleeping with each other,thenwe decide to adopt pups, then we get mated, and in nine months’ time we’re actually going to celebrate it.” He said it in a dry tone which told me he’d realized all this a long time ago. “You’re right. We’re weird.” I laughed, which was what I thought he’d intended because he winked at me. “I don’t think we’re going to be a traditional couple,” he added. “I spent twenty years surrounded by humans. You’ve come through the worst thing that could happen to an omega in our society and not let it keep you down. And our pups have been through the worst thing that could happen to them, but look at how strong they are now. And I’m happy with that. I think it’s good for our people to see that there are other ways of doing things.” He pointed at me with his fork. “Eat. I need you to make these changes in the contract for the brewery before you go. Seosamh is coming over to get the lowdown on the office?”
“Around two,” I said and dug back into my lunch.
“Not that I want you to be gone a lot—damn, I’m going to miss you—but I hope we’ll need him a lot more. Tomorrow he can start calling around for quotes on the materials for the second wave of houses.”
Him saying he was going to miss me eased my nerves. He loved me, I knew it. It just sucked. Yeah, we had shitty timing. “Can we afford that now?” I asked, making conversation. With all the extra shifters with nothing to their names, pack funds were running disastrously low. If anything went wrong, we were in serious trouble. Not that the finances were part of my job, but as Alpha’s mate, I kind of felt I had to keep at least half an eye on them.
“We’ll make it work.”
I’ll make it work, he meant. Well, I supposed I could help with that. “Freddy wants me to talk to an agency tomorrow too. He says he knows someone in one of the bigger ones.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I guess. It’ll mean more work.” I played with my fork some more.
“You don’t have to do this,” Quin said, setting his fork down and pushing his plate aside.
“Eat, Quin. You have a long night ahead of you.”
“After we get this sorted out.” He reached across the desk and took my free hand in his. “Tell me now, no polite lies, no waffling, the bare truth. Do you want to give this modeling thing a go or are you doing it because you think it’s what I want you to do?”
I looked up at him, the words fighting each other on the tip of my tongue. My glass of water sat beside my plate, and I took a drink to give myself time to sort out my answer. I did want to try the modeling, but it also frightened me. I’d never been outside walls except for traveling, first to my new-mated pack, then back to Buffalo Gap, then here. I didn’t know how to deal with humans on their own territory, was already starting to miss my familiar walls, Quin, the pups. I was afraid that I’d go back to being invisible and powerless because I was a shifter in the midst of humans.
But most of all, I worried that he would think I was a coward if I backed out now. “I do. It’s just…new.” I traced the edge of my plate with the tip of my finger. “I’ve never been a person before. Except to you.”
I barely saw him start to move. By the time I’d registered him shooting to his feet, he was already around the desk and had pulled me into his arms. “That’s because, whatever my other faults are, I’m not a fool.”
Oh.
Chapter Fifty
Quin sentMac with me and I’d argued for about ten seconds before they both put a stop to it.
“Alpha’s Mate gets higher level protection,” Mac had said.
“That’s stupid,” I’d told them grumpily. “And unfair.”
