Page 17 of Mating the Omega
Jason looked up, and William said, “We can wait on your coffee.”
Fuuuuuuck. “No, if you don’t have anything you need to do, let’s go.” He felt like a jerk. “I want to show you the basics, then we can run by the Job Center and see what we can set you up with. You,” he added, looking at Jason. “Are already good for a job, but your father should have one.”
“Do you need electricians?” William asked.
Mac nearly dropped his coffee. “You’re one?”
William nodded. “I can do some rough carpentry work, but nothing fancy. Framing and such. Getting kind of old for it now, though.”
“No, electrician is fine. Electrician is fantastic. You have your papers for it?”
“No, but we could send for them. I went to a human school for it—they set up a small class for us in the evening.”
“Abel’s going to love me for this,” Mac muttered, his mind already plotting on how he could use this leverage. “Come on, we’ll stop there first.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was two weeks to the day after our arrival, and I was feelingfine. More than fine. I washome. Dad had been to the hospital and they’d told him he was okay to work part time, and that they’d look at him again in a month. Mac had found him a job wiring for some project of the Alpha’s, with flexible hours in case his headaches became a bother. As for me, my little portable herb garden was doing fantastic, and I’d broken ground on the new section of community garden yesterday, and the soil was rich and dark and perfect.
The only fly in the ointment was that, as soon as they realized I hadn’t been to school in years, I was immediately saddled with a tutor, and now I spent three hours a day, five days a week, working my way through the local high school curriculum. But today was Saturday, which meant no tutor, and I could go lose myself in that lovely patch of land.
They called it a community garden, but it wasn’t one the way the humans used them. For humans, it meant that you rented a patch of land and grew your own crops. Here, a community garden was meant to feed the community, and pack members with either an interest, or no preference, worked the land to lighten our debt to the human watchdogs. Now I understood why it had been so easy for the Alpha to offer me extra help with my garden, and why he’d agreed so readily to allow me to do it.
Mac was coming with the truck today and a load of heavy poles that I was going to use to support tall greenhouse tomatoes at one end of the patch. I planned to sow clover underneath them, for the nitrogen the tomatoes needed, and then tall pea plants beside them, because the peas would also provide nitrogen for the tomatoes and they weren’t hard on the land.
I was so excited, singing along to the pack radio, dancing around the kitchen while I cooked breakfast, using my spatula as a microphone, that I didn’t hear Mac’s knock at the door, or hear him come in.
I sure as hell noticed him when I pulled off a fancy spin and nearly ran right into him, though.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I brushed at the spot of grease my spatula had left on his shirt, then blushed and ran for the sink and some dish soap. “I’ll get that right out.” It was kind of awkward, how I responded to Mac when he came around. Once I’d gotten my feet under me here, I’d realized how high a price I’d actually set on myself, and it made me determined to be the best omega mate the Alpha could ask for. Which meant that the lusting after the Alpha’s second-in-command had to stop.
Tomorrow.
“It’s fine,” Mac said, in that deep, easy voice of his. It slithered down my spine and made my knees weak. If I’d been in heat, I would have been all over him. “It’s just an old shirt. It’s meant to get dirty.”
“No need to start now,” I said, with what I thought was a credible attempt at nonchalance. I approached him with the soapy cloth, hardly bothering to watch for his displeasure any more—I knew I wouldn’t see any. He was either the most easy-going alpha I’d ever met, or he was making a concerted effort not to set off my omega tendencies. He stood still while I scrubbed at the spot, then rinsed and scrubbed again. “I think that’s the best I’m going to manage. If you want to leave it, I’ll make sure it comes out and bring it back to you.”
“Maybe at the end of the day. I don’t want to burn.”
“True.” I wondered if he did burn. He didn’t have many freckles, despite the fox-red hair, and his skin had that creamy-golden undertone that usually meant someone tanned easily. But if he wanted to keep the shirt, I’d be a good little omega and let him.
“So what are you making for breakfast?” Mac wandered over to look into the frying pan. “Are those apples? And eggs?”
“Yes,” I said, slipping past him to see if they were done. “Apple omelets. I felt like something sweet and decadent today.”
“Never heard of that,” he said, helping himself to coffee like he did every morning when he dropped by to take Dad and me wherever we needed to go. I was kind of wondering if he actually worked, except sometimes the Alpha would show up instead, though usually it was Mac. I preferred it when Mac showed up, to be honest. It felt like I could be myself with him, but when the Alpha came, I had to show him what a good omega I could be. Our meetings were still kind of strained and awkward; I couldn’t quite figure out what he wanted from me, and it left me flustered and flailing about in an attempt to define his expectations.
But Mac, Mac was cool. “You want to try some?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. Not that I’d doubted he would. He tried everything I made.
I slid the omelet in the pan onto a plate and set it in front of him with a fork and a knife and plain white paper napkin. Before he could say anything, I raced back to the stove and started another one, pretending I wasn’t paying attention to him while every cell in my body waited to hear what he thought of it.
First I heard the sound of fork against plate, then chewing, then “Hmphf.” What the hell did ‘hmphf’ mean? I gritted my teeth and took extra care sprinkling the brown sugar over the apples in the frying pan, then carefully poured the beaten eggs over them.
More fork scraping. That was good, right? I put the cover on the pan to let the top of the omelet cook and fiddled with the spatula.
Dad came down the stairs and I smiled at him. “Breakfast’s almost ready.”
