Page 69 of The Omega's Alpha
“Don’t you eat those cookies!” Bax scolded gently. “They’re for Bram’s homecoming.”
“He’s about due now, right?” Abel said, reluctantly closing the cupboard and reaching for the bowl of apples on the counter. “We can have apples and honey if you want to keep the cookies.”
“They aren’t our cookies. And apples and honey sound wonderful.” He dropped the little pair of jeans—Noah’s I thought—back into the basket and went to get out a plate while Abel began slicing apples. “Holland and I are going to Bram’s to give it a last clean and make sure their cupboards aren’t bare in a bit.”
“Want help?”
“I thought you had work to do this afternoon? Weren’t you troubleshooting something in the inventory software?” Bax began spooning large dabs of honey onto the edges of little plates. “Pups! Go change and put your clothes on.” Then to Abel, “They can eat in the living room.”
“They can eat outside, where it doesn’t matter if they make a mess.”
I got up and put my shoes on to help take the plates outside. “I can watch them,” I said. Old habits.
Abel shook his head and nodded to my list of names. “Your mating ceremony list?”
“Yes. I don’t remember it being so hard to make when you two got mated.”
“That’s because all we wanted to do was get mated. You two are revolutionaries. Revolutions are always messy and confused.” He grinned. “You really want a revolution? I think youshouldinvite the President.”
“Oh, like he’d show up,” Quin said from the doorway. My heart leaped with happiness and I thought he could tell from the expression on his face. He walked in to lean over my shoulder and bite gently at the corner of my jaw.
“Wouldn’t it be fun if he did?” Abel joked from the doorway.
Quin pointed a finger at him. “You’d have a heart attack if he did. Don’t forget, you’re in charge that night. The substitute Alpha.”
Abel laughed and went out the door with his plates of apple slices, the pups boiling about his legs. Of course they hadn’t changed back. Where was the fun in that?
I glanced at Quin, then out the door again, then came back to the table and added another name to the list.
Quin looked at it. “Are you sure?”
I held my hands up in a ‘who knows?’ gesture. “Not like he’d come anyway, right? And maybe they’ll send back a polite refusal and we can frame it and put it up on the wall.”
“See? That kind of thinking is why I mated you.” He leaned in and whispered. “Well, you have a very tempting ass too, but I can’t say that in company.”
I blushed and pushed him back toward the table. “Go add some names,” I told him as severely as I could manage with my ears burning like forest fires. He grinned but did as he was told, and I went out the back door with another handful of plates to feed the ravening hordes before we left for Bram’s.
Once Bax’s laundry had been put away and we’d left enough snacks to keep the pups and the alphas from gnawing on the furniture, Bax and I slipped away, just two omegas and a car full of supplies.
“Jason snuck down last week and painted the rooms that didn’t get done before the Green Moon pack moved here,” Bax said as we pulled up in front of the house. “Plain white, but nothing that won’t wash clean if the pups mark on them. They’re getting to that age.”
I said nothing, instead loading myself up with bags and a laundry basket heaped with supplies. Bax held the front door open for me and I took everything into the kitchen and set it on the small table. “Is he going to fit three pups in here?”
“There’s room. Three bedrooms upstairs and if he needs to later, he can expand out the side or into the second floor of the clinic once the Green Moon people are gone.” Bax dropped his bags on the floor in front of the sink. “You want to check over the upstairs or the downstairs?”
“I’ll do the upstairs,” I said, the new sheets I’d bought Bram foremost in my thoughts.
“Okay. There’s a cleaning bucket under the sink in the bathroom and I think this—” He picked through the bags he’d carried in and handed three of them to me. “This one is for the bathroom, to give them some time until they have to go to Supplies. The other two are sheets and towels and things.”
“Ah. Good idea.” I took the bags and picked up the one I’d brought, heading for the stairs.
I started in the bathroom and laid out the towels and facecloths, toothpaste and soap in case Bram and Duke forgot them, then gave everything a quick wipe with a damp cloth to pick up any dust that had landed since the last time Bram had been here for full moon at the end of March. The bathroom looked good, so I took my bags into the rooms where the pups would sleep.
It didn’t take long to make up their beds. I wiped off the surfaces in the puppies’ rooms and decided I’d come back up after to sweep the floors.
Then there was the master bedroom. I stood and stared at the big double bed. It had a head and foot board that Duke had built, plain, clean lines but the wood beautifully chosen for the grain. I pulled out my new sheets and started the process of spreading them over the mattress, forcing pillows into cases. When everything was neat and tidy, I turned to see if Bram had left any blankets here from his stays over full moon.
“Are those new?” Bax asked. He had the broom on one hand. “I noticed you forgot it,” he said when he saw me looking at it.
