Page 28 of Omega's Flight
He wanted to frame it? I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I fell back on the tried and true, “You’re welcome,” and did my best not to look as starstruck as I felt. He likes it. I wanted to dance and I might just have danced a step or two on my way in to wake Henry up.
Bax lounged in the doorway while I coaxed my sleepy pup out of bed. Henry rubbed his eyes and his mouth crumpled, though the full-on wails I'd been expecting never materialized.
"Want to go to a party, Henry-boy?" I asked, bouncing him a little in my arms.
"Moon party?" he mumbled, but I heard a spark of interest.
"Moon party," I confirmed. "Bax is here to take us to meet some more pups."
Bax leaned in. "My pups are outside, waiting to meet you." He looped his arm through mine and drew me out onto the porch where Abel and their pups were playing with Abel's brother. They really were fine-looking alphas, the two brothers, and in amused exasperation I wondered why we'd never gotten ones that looked like that at home. "We usually walk over," Bax said. "But if you're tired I can call Mac to bring the truck and drive you to the park."
Ann and Pip came over for a hug and a kiss before running away again. Henry squirmed to get down and I rescued Fluff before he could be forgotten on the grass and threw him in through the door to land on the couch. "No, I'm fine. A walk would be good." I'd been buried in garbage, stuck in a too small seat on a bus, and crammed into the space underneath the back bench of a car—a walk was exactly what I needed.
We headed off and the alphas and the pups fell in behind us, though from the noise I was hearing, it sounded more like a bunch of pups, just some bigger than the others. "Are all alphas like this here?" I whispered in Bax's ear.
He grinned, but didn't bother to look behind him to see what was happening. "Not all of them, but as a pack, we encourage everyone to be involved in the raising of the pups. Abel and Quin have been good role models that way, and Mercy Hills has always considered the alpha to be as important to raising good pups as the omega. Didn't hurt that they had forty years without an omega birth—they forgot a lot of that old-fashioned foolishness." We strolled along a little farther, then Bax leaned in and said in a lower voice, "Adelaide—our nurse—said she'd rather not put off seeing you and she'll make herself available during the celebration if you want."
I was feeling better now, though. "I think it can wait for tomorrow. That tea helped." Mostly.
He looked at me, not the way one omega looked at another, but the way the Alpha's Mate looked at a particularly foolish pack member. "I'm not going to force you to go see her tonight, but it wouldn't take long and I think it would be good to know where you stand. Especially if the pregnancy isn't a healthy one."
I stumbled in the dark and he helped me regain my balance. "How did you know?"
"That, for one," he said, nodding at my hand, which I was unconsciously pressing against the twinging pain in my belly. "And you're not sick with the virus that's been going around, but you've been throwing up. A lot, to hear Laine tell it."
Oh. Trust Bax to notice that. And seeing as how he was on his sixth pup, he'd know what the first stages of pregnancy looked like. "I was never so sick with any of the others. I think this one hates me." He laughed but cast me a thoughtful look at the same time. "You know, we've spent some of the money the Mutches gave us already. Adelaide has an ultrasound machine now. I bet she'd love another chance to try it out."
Ultrasound? They really were becoming like the humans, but in this I couldn't fault them. While I might be wavering about ruining Adelaide's Full Moon, it would be a relief to have someone look at my baby and tell me everything was going to be all right. "Sure, I'd love that." And with those words it felt like the whole world became a little lighter and I finished the walk to the park with a happy heart.
C H A P T E R 2 1
F ull Moon food was always worth waiting for. And Cas kicked himself for forgetting how Midwinter Moon brought out the best cooks and the deepest culinary rivalries. He'd missed the last seven, being the one who'd volunteered to man the pack house in town to guard it against vandalism.
He looked down at his plate, still half full from his second trip down the food tables. For a smart guy, you're damn stupid. He considered how full he was and weighed the possibility of later dancing and not-dancing against the immediate benefit of a third helping from the food tables.
"Cas, nice to see you again!" A leggy blond with a figure like the Lady Lysoonka sidled through the crowd to drop a friendly kiss on his cheek. "You back for good now?"
"I am." He and Mariyah had enjoyed a semi-exclusive relationship with each other while he'd been in his final year of high school. Cas still had fond memories of some of the 'studying' they'd done. "What are you up to?" In the corner of his mind, he started putting back some of the items on his imaginary third plate.
"Oh, enjoying some pup-free time. It's nice just to go pee without company, let alone eat a meal. And I didn't have to cook it." She sighed happily. "I mated Coleman five years ago, we've got a boy and a girl. You never mated?"
"Too busy with school," he said.
"Let me know if you're thinking about settling down with anyone. I'll give you a recommendation." She winked bawdily at him and moved on while he laughed. Mariyah had always been a good one, not possessive like some shifters got. Of course, she'd moved on to someone else as soon as he was accepted to college, and he'd moved on to a fling with... who was it? Oh, right, Gibson, of the blue eyes and the incredibly well put together cock. That had been a fun summer, though they'd nearly broken each other a couple of times, trying to get acrobatic in the bedroom, or warehouse, or the grove for that matter. Yeah, new moon wasn't a great time to try out anything that actually needed light to see by.
But by the time Cas had gotten to his third plate, he was slowing down and decided that maybe he'd better stop before he blew up, no matter how much good food there was left that he hadn't sampled. He dropped his plate off at the table set aside for used dishes and amused himself with another light-hearted flirtation with a lovely red-headed cousin of Mac's who was in between partners and was about as interested in mating as Cas was—which was not at all.
When she was called away by a family member, he strolled back to the edge of the clearing where the dancing would be happening later and flopped down on the grass next to Abel and Quin. "Where's the bosses?" he asked them slyly.
The corner of Quin's mouth quirked up. "Raleigh's stomach is upset, they took him up to the apartment to see if they could settle it down."
"Soooo," Cas drawled and raised his eyes to Quin's. "We're unsupervised." He let his grin spread slowly across his face and leaned back on his elbows to watch his brothers' reactions.
Abel simply snorted and checked his phone, tapping something quickly onto the screen before putting it away. Quin turned his Alpha's eye on Cas, which Cas assumed was supposed to quell whatever mischief he was planning. Good thing Cas was the youngest of four—he'd had lots of practice ignoring older brother efforts to keep him in check.
"We should start the dancing soon," Quin said. "It's getting cold faster than I expected."
"You have to wait for Holland," Abel reminded him.
