Page 123 of Omega's Flight
And if I was going to have another one—well, November was coming up and there was a very handsome young alpha sitting right next to me that I thought could be coaxed into cooperating. Whether he'd insist I mated him first, was hard to say. I was still on the wrong side of the fence about that, as much as I enjoyed my time with him. And his way with the pups made my heart sing.
But there was Degan to deal with first. "I can't see how that would work. Not now, not after everything that's happened. Everything I've learned here. I'm different now, Degan, and I don't think you'd like the omega I am now, even if I was willing to go back to Jackson-Jellystone. Which I'm not."
"I'm not leaving my pups here!" he growled.
Cas twitched in his seat beside me and I sent him a look, begging him not to start anything. He blinked slowly at me, but I could feel the tension in his body where his shoulder brushed against mine. Was this always an omega’s duty, keeping two alphas from beating each other to splinters out of sheer testosterone? If Holland's books were right, I was never going to escape this. "So you'll take them home, separate them from their bearer, and put them in that leaky old house of yours? What would you do with Henry during the day? What will you do in the evening when you want to go out with your friends but you have pups you need to feed and wash and make do their chores? And how are you going to explain to them that you took all this away from them?" I waved a hand around and then leaned forward to stare directly into his eyes. "I will fight you for them. And I will win, because it's not just me you're fighting, but the omegas of Mercy Hills too."
He bolted to his feet, the chair skittering away behind him. "What in the Barrens has gotten into you?" he demanded.
I stood up to face him, and Cas, bless him, stayed in his chair and let me speak. "Self-respect," I told my soon-to-be-former mate. "I'm not a thing to be owned, or a pet to keep. I have skills. I'm useful. I'm liked. You couldn't even be bothered coming up here to see your pups before they went to bed."
“I… Now, wait a minute..." He sputtered to a halt and gritted his teeth. "I couldn't just walk out on my Alpha and your Alpha."
Ha! He'd admitted that Quin was my Alpha! So he really didn't think I was his after all. I felt a loosening in my shoulders that was entirely to do with knowing he probably wouldn't put up much of a struggle to force me back to Jackson-Jellystone.
I just had to safeguard my pups. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the best way to safeguard them might be to keep Degan here. I didn't want him in my bed, but once he got comfortable... I started ticking over the list of unmated and unpaired shifters I knew that I thought he'd find attractive. "Why don't you come back for breakfast tomorrow morning? We can walk the pups up to school together, you can get an idea of what their day is like."
His eyebrows flew up—I'd surprised him. He sent a glance Cas's way, then turned back to me. "I thought we could get them up and I could give them the things I brought from home."
"They have school tomorrow," I said firmly, crossing my fingers behind my back the way Laine sometimes did as a joke. "Let them sleep, Degan. You know how cranky Pip gets if she doesn't get enough sleep."
He looked thoughtful, then nodded sadly. "All right." He reached out and took my hand, and I let him despite the doubts and worries it raised. "And we need to sit and talk. Just the two of us."
"Mhmm," I said noncommittally and gently took my hand back. "Seven o'clock is when we usually eat. I'll see you then."
He took the dismissal with good grace, if not with any evidence that he truly believed I wanted nothing to do with him, but all I needed at the moment was for him to leave. Leave me here with my house and my pups and my Cas and let me fall quietly to pieces for a few minutes before I moved on with my life. It probably helped that he’d spent the evening with the two Alphas—I had no doubt that between Quin and Holland, it had been strongly impressed on him not to start a fight. Though I wondered what he’d be like later, without the little brother of the Alpha around.
I herded Degan toward the door and surprisingly, he let me.
He was quiet. Too quiet, for Degan. I'd been careful not to give him any hope of a future between us, but now as we stood in the warm glow of the light from my living room, I wondered if he'd really come here expecting that. He looked dazed and his fingers ran back and forth over the wood of the old porch chair beside him.
"You've really come up in the world, haven't you?" he said quietly.
"You can look at it that way, if you want. Quin will keep you here, if you contribute, and you can have all this for yourself too. It's not out of reach."
He raised his head and peered into the dark, as if even the night here was different, better than in Jackson-Jellystone. "But not with you."
"No." It came out harsher than I'd intended and I softened my voice on my next words. "Settle in, have a rest. Come for breakfast in the morning." He said nothing in response, just kept looking out into the dark, then back at me as if I'd suddenly turned human. "We can make this work, Laine promises me so," I began, falling back into my old ways. Placating, halfway to begging. This is not who you are now. I straightened my back and stood as tall as I could, and my voice when I spoke again held a little bit of Holland in it, I thought. "But the effort can't be all on my side. If you can't be bothered to do this for your pups, if you can't appreciate the effort that went into making this opportunity available to you, then I'm washing my hands of you and your bruised ego." I made my voice as firm as I could, even though inside I was quaking, waiting for the burst of anger.
But there was none, just that sadness that I couldn't quite understand. He was an alpha, and he was getting what he wanted. Sort of. Maybe more than he wanted, really. "I have work to get done, I can't stand out here all night with you." I turned my back on him and walked in my door as resolutely as I could, expecting at any moment to feel his hand on my shoulder, his fingers clutching at my hair.
He was two houses down before I was brave enough to peer out through the door again. The moon was just cresting the wall, casting barely enough light to see him trudging down the path to his house. Something about him looked off; I couldn't put my finger on it...
And then it hit me. He was lonely.
That thought shook me. I'd believed that part of the reason for the failure of our mating was that he didn't need me the way I needed him. That his connections to the pack and to his family were enough to sustain him and so he didn't see the need to build any with me.
Maybe I was wrong.
I waited until he was out of sight in the dark before I closed the door and rushed for Cas's arms.
"You did good," he whispered and hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe. "I want to bounce him around a little, just until he cries. Can I do that? Please?"
"No," I scolded, already laughing. "But you can come to bed with me and maybe hold me tonight? I just need to be with someone who understands me for a bit. I don't know how to feel. I need you to hold me and keep me in one place while I figure this out."
"Absolutely." He kissed my temple and let me go. "I'll turn the lights out. You go get into bed."
"Thank you," I said, and stroked the side of his face in wonder.
