Page 38 of The Omega's Surprise Baby
“No?”
“There's a lot of Gregories.” It was all he said, and it was explanation enough. And I didn't know what to tell him. I thought I did a somewhat okay job at parenting most of the time, but there were moments I felt wholly inadequate. My son telling me that he didn't want to be an omega was one of those moments. There wasn't much I could do to help him. I couldn't change the world, no matter how much I wanted to.
The only thing I could do was swear to support him no matter what.
“There's a lot of Gregories,” I said, because there was no point denying it. “But there's also a lot of people who aren't like Gregory at all. You'll find your people, and you'll always have your family, okay?” Putting an arm around his shoulders, I held him close to me to drive the point home.
“Okay,” he said quietly, not entirely convinced.
I rubbed his arm. “You don't have to worry about this yet, anyway. You might not be omega, so just sleep now, okay?”
“Okay.”
For a moment, we sat in silence, then Conner asked. “Am I getting punished?”
“For?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Getting into a fight with Gregory.”
“No.” I stroked his ginger hair. How could I blame him whenIwanted to punch the boy? “But don't make a habit of it.” I got up from the bed and Conner crawled back under the sheets. “Lights out now. No more reading, it's late.”
“Five minutes? I'm almost at the end of this chapter.”
“Okay, but then you sleep.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Dad.”
“Goodnight, Conny.” I left the room, closed the door behind me and simply stood for a moment. Somehow I'd managed to get through that alpha-beta-omega conversation with Conner tonight, but going forward? I could really use some advice.
15
Kade
Iwas going todie. Hanging over the toilet bowl, I was absolutely sure of that. Jesus Christ, what did Ieat? Whatever it was, I was sorry for it now. I couldn’t even remember when I’d last been this sick. I didn’t drink a lot and I hadn’t even had any alcohol this whole month. I was too busy recording and uploading videos to YouTube to do much of anything, really.
How did I deserve this?
Flushing the toilet, I washed the evidence of my sickness away. Now that there was nothing left in my stomach, I felt a little bit better. Still, I was going to keep sitting here for a while, just in case.
And then my phone rang. Oh crap. Did that mean I actually had to get up? I crawled into the living room—okay, I walked, but Ifeltlike crawling. Of course my phone stopped ringing by the time I reached it.
Awesome.
I had one missed call from Jimmy. That was odd. We hadn't spoken in a while. Jimmy and I had been on the third season ofStar Voicestogether a few years ago, both of us nobodies. We'd kind of bonded over that as well as the fact that we were both omegas.
In the end, we'd been the only two contestants left on the show. I went on to win. It was a close thing, I was told. Jimmy hadn't been bitter about it, though. No, we stayed friends and he managed to use the exposure the show had given him to propel his own career alongside my own. Good times. The memory made me smile even as I still felt queasy. Jimmy was doing way better than me now. He'd stayed clear of scandals, and now the radio was playing his songs up and down.
After a moment, my phone buzzed again. Not a call this time, only a text message.
Hey, man. Wanted to congratulate you on the success of your videos. Talk soon.
Flopping on the couch, I put the phone aside. I'd write back later when I felt less nauseated. For now... I pulled my laptop close, hoping that Jimmy wasn't the only one to send me a message today. I smiled to myself when I saw a message waiting for me from my alpha friend. I frowned, though, when I saw how short it was.
How didyou feel when you found out that you were an omega?
That was... I read the message again. Had he really just asked me that? The question came so out of the blue I didn't know what to think about it. We'd been messaging back and forth a lot, but for the most part, we'd talked about surface level stuff.How's the weather in the cityorLook at what I had for lunch today.Easy stuff that didn't require much thought. And now suddenly he wanted to know how I'd reacted to finding out that I was omega.
Oh, please. Don't hold back on the difficult questions,I wrote back while I tried to come up with a more elaborate response I could send him later. It wasn't that I didn't want to have deep conversations with him, but this wasn't a question I could respond to within a matter of minutes.
