Page 11 of The Omega's Alpha
I made a face and Bax met my eyes with rueful dismay. Yes, I was a better cook than he was, but I hadn’t bucked the system as hard as he had. And I still wasn’t as good as some of the omegas I’d met were. “I suppose,” I said slowly, my gaze moving back and forth between the two alphas. “It depends on your measuring stick. It was our one potential claim to fame, aside from sewing, really.” Bax nodded, but didn’t offer a contribution of his own, so I kept going, feeling my way through an explanation I understood in my gut, but had never before dragged up to be seen in the light of day. “Omegas mate. That’s what we do, what the pinnacle of our ambition is allowed to be. To be a good mate, to be the mate that the best alphas wanted, was the goal of everything. So everything became a competition—looks, grace, dancing, homemaking. Cooking.” He shook his head and pushed his chair back from the table. “I met an omega on a trip to another pack, when my father was looking for a mate for me, that could make a four-course meal, with everything cooked perfectly, exactly the way the diners liked it. Like, if you—” I pointed to Abel. “—preferred well-done steak, yours would be well done. Your—” I pointed to Quin. “—rare steak would be ready at the same time. Plus everything else that went on the plate. Yes, she had help, but still, that’s way beyond me. Even if I practiced, I don’t have the talent. And she mated well. Extremely well.”
Abel tilted his head to one side and gazed at me with eyes that saw more than I was comfortable with. “You mean Lydane. Salma Wood’s mate.”
I nodded and began piling empty plates on top of mine. “Yes. I have the traditional omega skills, but I’m lacking…something.”Yeah, a working womb.Ignoring the ache in my chest, and wondering why I’d suddenly gone so sullen, I hurried away with the dishes and began to run water into the sink while I filled the kettle and started the coffee maker, gathering mugs in one efficient movement. I was disappointed with myself—I was supposed to be flirting and now here I was back on the edge of tears again. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all.
“Bax is gone to check on the pups.” Quin’s voice slithered up my spine, raising pleasant goosebumps despite my less than stellar mood. “I’m supposed to dish out ice cream.”
A glance around showed me an empty kitchen. Empty, that is, except for myself and Quin. How had I missed it? “I can do that.” Omega, right? I should have been more prepared.
“Holland?”
I looked up at him, and he kissed me.
I think it surprised him as much as it surprised me. I’d expected to flirt longer, to maneuver him until he came upon me alone and then make my interest plain. I’d expected it to take days, weeks, and then for him to jump on me—I knew he hadn’t been seeing anybody. This swift response was unexpected, his kiss such a gentle exploration, touching only where our lips brushed against each other. Not even any tongue, which was a bit of a disappointment, but it probably would have ruined the mood, which was sweet and wondrous. My hands were still full of mugs and I had nowhere to put them down, so I just stood there and sighed in contentment.
Of course, it eventually had to end, and I remembered later trying to follow his mouth as it parted from mine, but then I opened my eyes—when had I closed them?—and watched him to see what he’d do next. Because I obviously didn’t have a fucking clue.
He smiled at me and took the mugs from my hands, placing them carefully on the counter. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind what?” What was there to mind?
“That I kissed you?”
“No. Don’t mind at all.” My stomach fluttered and I waited to see what his next move would be, that anticipation as delicious as I hoped whatever he did next was.
“Good.” He put his hands on my waist and pulled until I could feel the heat coming from his body in the minuscule gap between us. I opened my mouth to invite him to do more, but I didn’t need to, or perhaps my expression was invitation enough. He bent his head to me again and my entire body went up in flame.
Chapter Eleven
After the kissing, things went back to normal, except for this shimmering excitement that filled me. Bax and Abel came back from cleaning the pups up, their arms fulls of dirty plates and glasses, and I went about setting out the pups’ little bowls so Quin could scoop ice cream into them. Everything was normal, except I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and maybe he couldn’t stop thinking about me. His hands brushed against mine, even when there seemed no logical explanation for their nearness, and I felt his eyes following me, warm and heavy like the fur blanket my grandmother used to wrap me up in when I was sick. I certainly felt fevered now, but it wasn’t a virus.
We served the pups and took our own bowls out into the living room. It felt like a celebration—dessert was a rare thing in the enclaves, though more common here in Mercy Hills. Conversation wound around different topics, some personal, some pack-related. Quin wanted to either buy one of the houses next to the pack’s house in the city, or look for a new, larger one. “We need more trained people. It’s okay to apprentice, but some things need book learning.”
“Are you going to set money aside for it?”
“As I can. It can work as an emergency fund too.” He swirled his spoon around in the bowl. “It would be better to buy one right next to this one. I can’t see getting a decent price for the old one with all the specific renovations we had to do. And I think we got robbed on it.”
“We did. I saw the paperwork.” Abel set his empty bowl down on the coffee table. “I don’t mind the renovations, but jacking the price up when we ask about the place makes me want to chew something.”
Quin put his bowl down on the table too and I scooped it and Abel’s up. Bax had declined the ice cream, instead disappearing back into their bedroom to look for something, so I only had the three bowls to clear, but all the dishes were still to be done, so I quietly left the alphas to their chat and headed for the kitchen.
Bax was sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through a magazine. Two others sat underneath it and it took me a moment to figure out that this was the article that had been written about him and Abel when they were getting mated. I hadn’t realized he’d gotten a copy.
“Feeling sentimental?” I glanced at the pages as I walked by and my steps slowed, then stopped, and I came back to peer over Bax’s shoulder. “Wow. They turned out really well.”
“He took a million pictures. There’s only nine in the article, but they’re nice.” His tone was dreamy, and his fingers traced the edge of one picture, one of him and Abel and all the pups. “I really like this one.”
“It’s nice,” I agreed. “What made you get them out?”
“Oh,” he sat up and closed the magazine. “The photographer who did them called today, wanting to bring a writer over to see about doing a book. Quin asked to see the old articles before he made up his mind.”
“Ah.” What good would a book do? I turned back to the sink and let my mind drift back to the kiss earlier.
Bax came to stand beside me, a dish towel in his hand. “I think he wants to continue what Abel started, to start breaking down the barrier between us and the humans.”
I handed him a plate to dry and started on the next one. “It would be nice.” Imagine, being able to come and go freely from the enclave. What would it mean to our future? I couldn’t even picture a life where a shifter was equal to a human, able to go and do and be the same way that humans were. But Bax evidently did. “Would you like that? To be able live outside walls? To just go wherever?”
He glanced around the kitchen and thought about it for a moment. “No. It’s not for me. This is home, my home. I’m happy here.” He leaned against me briefly. “You might want to do something outside walls, though.”
