Page 87 of Omega's Flight
The packmembers working on the house next door gathered on its front porch when I arrived and I passed around the mugs. They thanked me and we got talking about the house—they didn't know any more than me, just that it needed to be in livable condition immediately, and that fine tuning things would be done later. That there needed to be care taken for an infant.
When they'd eaten and drunk everything I'd brought, I gathered up all the dirty dishes, said my goodbyes, and headed back to my own house to the sound of stomping feet and the tearing of wood as the carpenters did whatever they were doing to the inside of the place.
I washed up the dishes and put them away, then tried to go back to my drawing, but the lure of the activity next door and my own curiosity made it hard to concentrate. So I made another cup of tea and took it and a chair out to my own front porch and watched the comings and goings until Bax and Holland and the rest of the omegas showed up.
C H A P T E R 6 2
"Hey, how are you?" Bax gave me a sideways hug and rubbed my back as if we were just meeting after years apart instead only two days since. The baby was snug in his sling against Bax’s chest and I stole another peek while his bearer looked on proudly. “He’s fed and clean, so hopefully he’ll sleep a couple of hours and we can get some work done.”
He turned away and held out a hand toward Fan, who was standing impatiently behind him, a heavy-looking bag hanging off his shoulder. "Fan's here to keep an ear out for your pups. And he's going to come immediately and tell us if any of them wake up, right?" he finished in that tone that was directed at me, but obviously meant for Fan.
Fan sighed. "I know, Dabi. I can't play anything interesting anyway, 'cause there's no Internet out here." He slunk past us into the house and I watched him go with a hand clamped over my mouth to stifle the laughter.
Bax chuckled low in his throat and looped his arm through mine. "I don't know what he's going to do when the hormones hit. Though maybe they already have and this is what I'm going to have for the next decade." He tugged on my arm. "Is that your stuff?" He nodded his head at the stained bucket with its bottles and the tiny bundle of rags.
"Yes. Do you want the mop and the broom too?"
He shook his head. "No, we brought some. It's mostly getting all the dust out of the nooks and crannies and making sure all the construction leftovers have been cleared up."
We walked next door and I was surprised to see the crowd already at work. Cale was running a vacuum over the old couch in the living room, while Holland scrubbed at stains on the arms with a frustrated expression. "Do we not have anything better than this to offer?" I heard him mutter as we came through the door.
"We're here," Bax announced. "Thank Lysoonka for alphas. Though how they expect to get any planning done with all the pups in the same house I'll never know."
Holland threw his rag down and stood up to hug Bax briefly. "I told Adelaide to break out the tranquilizer darts, just in case," he said in light tone, and it took me a moment to realize he was joking. The times I'd met him, he'd been grave and concerned and welcoming, the way an Alpha's Mate should be. I didn't think I'd ever heard him joke until now, although it also occurred to me that perhaps I'd just never noticed it either.
He turned and led me toward the couch. "I'm trying to make this look less like it's the cast-off of a hundred families than it actually is. At least it's solid." He grabbed the back and shook it a little. "Or would you rather work on something else?"
"This is fine." It seemed like a nice couch, not as new as mine, but once it was cleaned it would be perfectly usable. "I'll pull the cushions off and start on them? They don't look bad."
"Sure." Holland picked up his rag and looked at Bax. "You want to help us here or help Jason out in the bathroom?"
Bax looked thoughtful. "Which one is scarier?"
Holland grimaced. "I think the word Jason used was horrifying."
Bax laughed. "I'll go help in the bathroom, then. Bram is coming with some stuff he's borrowing from Adelaide, but he says we can't use much because they need it." Holland snorted and Bax waggled a finger at him. "He's growing up to be a fine young man and he'll be an asset to the pack, you know that."
"I do," Holland replied. "We're fine. We're just...different." He winked at me, and went back to spraying and scrubbing at the fabric of the couch.
I shrugged and picked one of the seat cushions off the couch. Not my business, but I'd make a point to ask Bax, or maybe Cas, the next time I had a quiet moment with one of them. I trusted Holland, but this subtle discontent with Bram never seemed to fade. Sure, Bram was pushy and a little arrogant, but he worked as hard as anyone I'd ever seen and Bax had mentioned casually that he was still managing to stay in the top ten percent of his class in college. That should have been something to make a packmember proud of him. I had to wonder what it took to get on Holland's bad side, and now I regretted not going to help one of the omegas who couldn't redirect my future with a simple phrase or scratch of a pen. After all, hadn't I been a stupid omega more than once since I'd gotten here?
"You're upset," Holland said quietly, and looked a silent message to Cale that sent him away to rattle around in the kitchen.
As soon as his brother left, Holland stopped scrubbing and looked directly at me. "Ask, it's okay. You're new, you're not going to know the history, but I don't know what's putting that tension in your jaw." He reached out to touch my cheek just in front of my ear, where I hadn't noticed the anxiety settling.
I stared at him for a moment, considering this offer and wondering how much of it was a command from my Alpha's Mate. He let me, even to the point of challenge, and never made the slightest movement. Only I couldn't be certain if it was lying in wait, or waiting for me to find my bravery.
"Would a scenting help?" he asked, his voice reassuring, and held his arm out to me.
With only the briefest hesitation, I leaned down to scent at his wrist. Nothing there but stress and fatigue and worry. No anger, no rising aggression. He meant this, an honest request to know how he could help. The least I could do was accept his offer and give him my own trust back.
"What is it," I asked slowly after a moment. "This thing between you and Bram?" And underneath that question, the real one—am I at risk of the same feeling? But we were both omegas, used to reading the subtext of everything around us; I rather thought he'd know.
He nodded and looked away to spray at a particularly dark patch on the pale blue fabric. "I wasn't always Alpha's mate. Before I came here, I’d been repudiated by my mate for not getting with pup and was seriously considering killing myself as unmateable. But Bax took me in, gave me a home, work to do, and a sense of purpose. He gave me value, when he'd only just managed to scrape some for himself." He stopped talking for a moment to dip his cloth in clear water and blot the soap away from the couch. "I know it's not entirely fair, and some of it is jealousy, I suppose. Bram had it pretty easy here, and he still doesn't really get it, no matter what stories he hears. Which I know up here," he tapped his temple, then went back to his scrubbing. "It's reasonable and expected for him to not really understand something he didn't experience. But it frustrates me sometimes."
I didn't say anything, just kept washing and rinsing my way across the cushion.
"It came to a head, I suppose, when Bax had Taden. He wasn't three days past birth when Bram came crying to him that the alpha he'd been teasing and flirting with had caught him in heat."
