Page 161 of Omega's Flight
For a moment, I thought I would throw up, or faint. I clamped a hand over my mouth and doubled over with horror.
Cas swung me up off my feet and set me down on a chair. "You need a bucket?" he asked in a worried voice.
I held up my other hand, asking for a moment to collect myself. I'd never even met him, but the image that came to me when he described his brother's injuries had been so vivid I couldn't unsee it and my heart ached.
He crouched beside me. "It's going to be okay. He's alive. The rest of it, we can deal with." He laid the back of his hand against my forehead and frowned. "Are you sure you aren't coming down with something?"
"I'm fine," I said, and swallowed hard. "I just got this visual..." I gagged again, then pushed past Cas and ran to the bathroom where I threw up the exactly nothing that was in my stomach.
"Papa?" Pip's voice came from the doorway, the same anxious little voice I'd heard a year ago in very different circumstances.
"It's okay, sweetheart," Cas said gently. I looked up to see him crouched beside her. "Sometimes Papas get a little sick to their stomach when they have babies inside them, while they get stuff worked out. It's okay. Just means more breakfast for us!"
I frowned at him and he grinned. Trust Cas. "I'm fine, honey. Cas will get your breakfast, then we'll walk up to Da's. Connie's making a special breakfast for my little hobbits." Take that, saucy alpha. We'd watched Lord of the Rings—the cartoon version that Cas had dug up from some closet in the library—and the pups had been talking about nothing but second breakfast ever since.
"Come on, hobbitses. After breakfast, you can show me what Midwinter Wolf brought," Cas promised. He held out a hand and Pip took it, though not without a worried look in my direction.
"Thank you," I said and got carefully to my feet. "It's okay, Pip. I was sick with Henry too." A rabbit lie, but she was too young for the truth.
She wrinkled her nose. "Duh. He's a boy." She let go of Cas's hand and came into the bathroom to pat my belly, then gave me a hug. "Hello little brother. You're not allowed to play with my microscope." Then she kissed me, right below my bellybutton, and turned back to Cas. "Can I have a whole sandwich? I'm hungry."
"You'll spoil Connie's surprise."
"What's she making?" Their voices faded as they left the bathroom. I took a seat on the side of the old, stained bathtub, not yet ready to tempt fate. And while I waited for my stomach to settle, I thought about how different my world had become in just a year. Probably the best present that Midwinter Wolf had ever brought me.
I laid a hand over my belly. Merry Christmas, little boy.
C H A P T E R 1 1 1
H olland and I met our mates at the front door of the main building on the day they came back from seeing Kaden. It was both better and worse than I'd expected. Better, because they were already busy making plans on where he could stay and trying to figure out some way to hire the medical expertise we'd need to support him while recovering. Worse, because there was a brittle, lost quality in their voices, and neither one would discuss what they'd learned beyond the bare bones of the events.
We did have time, though, before he'd be discharged and sent home. In the months between now and then, while he healed and learned to use his body again, learned to walk with half of one leg missing, learned how to tie shoes and manage small tasks with only a finger and a thumb on one hand, we were going to be learning too. What kind of bed he'd need, if he'd need grab bars in the bathroom or bedroom, if we needed to put ramps into some of the public buildings to make it easier for him to get around. We moved Cale across the hall to the large apartment with the three bedrooms, so Kaden would have a space of his own, and prayed we wouldn't need the guest quarters until we had time to turn the floors that had once been planned as a hospital into apartments.
There was a group call every two weeks, Bram in the city, Adelaide here, the three brothers and those of us omegas who had reason or the wish to be there for it. On the occasions that I went, it was mostly to support Cas, who was handling this less well than his older brothers, though maybe that had more to do with his inability to do something.
Sometimes we had someone from the army, the medical people who were working with him. Sometimes Quin or Abel or Cas would go to see him, but they always came back wearing sober expressions and Cas, at least, would spend the first day after one of these trips holding me closely every chance he got.
In the meantime, I got quietly to work on the paintings for the next book, and Ori and I started talking about doing one for older people. Maybe not a myth retold but a completely fabricated story, or maybe we'd retell a myth and cloak it in modern clothing. There were so many possibilities that we found ourselves struck by a sort of paralysis about it.
My belly grew and unlike the last one, I was healthy and strong all the way through.
One stormy day near the end of March, Holland and I were sitting in his living room working on baby clothes. He was putting the final little pawprints and puppies on a baby's gown, his needle flashing in and out of the fabric with a speed that I envied, while I knitted baby socks—lots and lots of socks— for me and for Holland. Because I'd never had a pup yet that didn't immediately lose one the instant I put them on. And the baby gown that Holland was working on was for the pup in my belly, not his.
Quin stuck his head in the door. "There's a phone call for you."
Holland's fingers paused and his eyes widened. "Me? I'm not modeling right now, I told the agency."
"Not modeling." The corners of Quin's lips twitched. "It's the White River Alpha. They have an omega who wants to petition to move here and the Alpha called to arrange it. I told them they'd have to deal with you."
"Yes!" Holland set his sewing aside and ran across the room to throw himself into his mate's arms. They laughed and kissed and I thought that if I hadn't been there and the Alpha still waiting on the phone in the other room they might have disappeared down the hall to the bedroom.
"Take it at my desk, if you want," Quin said, gently setting his mate's feet on the floor again.
Holland threw me a shining, sparkling grin, then disappeared into the office with Quin right behind him.
Well, a new omega. And a sign that the other packs were starting to see that things were different here, and maybe better in some ways.
Half a sock later, Holland came back, practically glowing with excitement. "He's going to be here in mid-April. I think I'll put him in with Cale and Julius. It'll hopefully take some of the edge off of Cale and give poor Julius a buffer."
