Page 74 of The Omega's Alpha
“No,” I told him honestly. “I’m looking forward to having you at my beck and call all day every day.” I slanted him a look that expressed exactly what kind of beck and call I meant and he laughed.
“Okay.” He stepped back and closed the door, then tapped the roof to let Blaine and Edmond know they could go.
I dug out a novel, trying to distract myself as we approached the gate. It hadn’t gotten any better going through, though there seemed to be a certain amount of envious respect for me on the part of the human guards once they found out why I would be leaving Mercy Hills so regularly. But I couldn’t concentrate and as we pulled up by the guard house to show our papers, I hid the novel underneath the canvas bag sitting on the seat beside me.
Oh, it’s the older one. I didn’t mind him so much. “Good morning. You have the early shift today,” I said cheerily.
“Yeah,” he said, holding his hand out for my papers. He glanced perfunctorily at them, then handed them back. “This the big show?”
I nodded. “Kind of nervous. I keep having dreams I’ll fall off the catwalk and everyone laughs.”
He snorted. “I’ve never seen one of your people ever put a foot wrong that way. They could probably send you down a balance beam and you’d be fine. It’d be the rest of them you’d have to worry about.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said and then slapped my forehead as I remembered something. “Here, hold on.” I rummage in my bag and came out with a small sack. “I made olenbolle last night and I stole a few for your grand—kids.” I’d almost said pups, but he didn’t seem to notice. I’d been eating some of the sweet doughy cakes the last time I went through the gate and had offered to let him try it, and then been surprised when he’d liked it. So I’d made some extra this time to bring along.
“Thank you.” He seemed entirely surprised, which was good, but pleased. “They’ll love them.”
Small steps, but we’d eventually convince them all that we weren’t that different. “You’re welcome. I’ll get you the recipe if they like them.”
A shout from the other guards interrupted us and the friendly one stepped back. “Okay, you’re good to go. Stay safe out there and don’t break curfew.”
“Yes, sir,” I said and then we were off again.
Blaine glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “You’re feeding them?”
I shrugged and dug into my bag for more ollenbolle to pass into the front seat. “The kinder their thoughts toward us, the less trouble we have going through the gate. And he has grandpups.”
“Huh.” Blaine’s eyes rested on me a moment longer, then he went back to watching the road.
Good. Because I was looking forward to sixteen uninterrupted hours to finally get back to the omega project and my notes and journals. I had a notepad and the binder with all of Bax’s and Bram’s transcriptions and now I was going through everything looking for clues, patterns. Whatever I could come up with.
I had a secret goal while we were in New York too. I’d talked very briefly with the researcher that was collecting all our old journals and other writings and he had some in the old pack language that he couldn’t translate.
But I could.
The deal was I got to borrow the journals as long as I passed back to him the translation. I hoped these journals had something worthwhile in them to make those torturous years worth it. And if I found something worthwhile, I wasn’t going to translate that part for him either.
In the meantime, I had pages and pages of old stories to go through, and my own little stash of ollenbolle to eat that I didn’t plan to share withanyone.
No one was that altruistic.
Chapter Sixty-One
The trip went well. We got checked in to the hotel just before curfew, which was a miracle of Blaine’s driving and inattentive cops, I thought. By rights, we shouldn’t have been able to make it, but Blaine knew how to blend into the surrounding traffic and despite going consistently over the speed limit, we never got stopped. Of course, it seemed like everyone else was going consistently over the speed limit too, so maybe we just hadn’t stuck out. But it did mean that we’d been able to make the trip in one day instead of two, though we’d barely gotten inside our rooms before the locks clunked-shut behind us and we were stuck in for the night.
Luckily, I’d planned for this and while sandwiches and tea were kind of boring for supper after eating them all day, we went to bed with full stomachs.
The next morning we grabbed a quick breakfast and I made Blaine and Harris take me to the university, where we wasted half the morning just wandering around looking at the buildings and peering in doors before finally tracking down the professor and liberating the pack’s history—however temporarily—from him.
I did have to promise to come back and let him interview me at some point, though I managed to put it off until after my official mating ceremony. I didn’t even care that it disappointed the man—his office made me want to growl with fury for those of my people who had been robbed to fill that room. Harris put an end to the visit just in time, and I stomped across the campus back to the car, clutching the journals to my chest and plotting how to never give them back.
Then Harris took us shopping at some used clothing outlets and we filled the trunk of the car before heading back to the hotel for lunch and a break, where we lost our human guide.
“Tell Quin I said hi. Oh, and I guess I give this to you?” He held out a car, one of the tiny response cards we’d sent out with our mating invitations. “Tell him I’d be honored to be in his…bratvuk? Did I pronounce that right?” I nodded, and he continued. “As long as it doesn’t cause him any problems.”
“Quin wouldn’t ask if he thought there would be.” Or if he thought he couldn’t deal with them. “Thank you, I’ll let him know. He’ll be very happy.” I was, too. Harris was good for Quin, in ways that I couldn’t be—their shared background, I supposed. But he eased some of the tension around Quin’s eyes when they talked and so I welcomed him into our little circle of family.
After lunch, it was off to the place where they were holding the fashion show. The guy running it put us all through our paces, snapping at the other models when they’d break formation or throw off the timing because they wouldn’t come close to me. It hurt, a little, but mostly it just frustrated me and finally I pulled the guy aside and asked him, “Is there anything we can do that would make them relax?” He just shrugged, so I did the same and went back to Blaine to get my phone.
