Page 33 of Lone Wolf
Damian didn’t answer my question, but he did put a hand around my waist and pull me in against his side. “What did you two talk about?”
I shrugged as if it weren’t very important. “Oh, this and that.” The baby stretched, a long lazy movement that made me want to stretch too. “I need to get some sleep. I can’t bring you home with me.”
“Yeah.”
Oscar walked toward us. “We’ll spend tonight in the place in Vegas while I make a few phone calls. Think you can bear to tear yourself away from your Nevada hottie for a few days while I fix this fucking mess you made?”
Damian’s fingers tightened on my waist and I patted his chest to soothe him. “I’m working the next couple of days anyway.” His arm went even tighter. “No, you don’t get to make that call. Not yet. And don’t think I’m going to be a doormat like your Montana Border omegas—this is Nevada.”
A snort of laughter broke the silence behind us and Damian turned his head to glare at whoever had laughed.
One of the gate guards came out their door. “He needs to go back, we’re doing the nightly reset of the system.”
Oscar nodded and waved in a way that could have been acknowledgment, or could have been a fuck you. I know if it had been me which one it would have been, but watching him, it was probably the other.
“I should go,” I told Damian. “I’m tired.”
He kissed me on the temple, a tender gesture that surprised me more than it should have. “Thank you,” he said, his lips brushing against my skin. “If we don’t ever see each other again—”
“Don’t be stupid.” I shrugged out of his grip and frowned at him. “You need sleep too.” I pursed my lips and thought about it for a moment. “If someone has a piece of paper, I’ll give you my phone number. You can call me, between three and four. Otherwise, I’ll either be getting ready or working.”
They found a scrap of paper and a pen inside one of the cars and I wrote my number down. I didn’t sign it, but I did draw a tiny pawprint beside it, then, after a few second’s thought, drew another, smaller one.
I was getting sentimental. Definitely time to get out of the houses.
Oscar sent everyone off to the car ahead of him. “Someone will call you. Not just him.”
I nodded, and let the humans escort me back inside to the sound of their retreating engines.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Icame home from the sewing group two days later to find a strange omega sitting in my mother’s kitchen drinking tea.
“Salem, come sit,” Ma said, holding out a hand.
I stared at the stranger. The first thought in my head was that he would have started at the houses as a blue bracelet, and they would have been wracking their brains to find a newer, more expensive color for him. He had bright blue eyes and long wavy dark hair and something about the way his face was put together made him look shockingly vulnerable. He woreverynice clothes.
“Yes, please,” he said, with a bit of West Texas twang in his voice. His smile was comforting and a little seductive. Yeah, he would have been serious competition.
“What’s going on?” I asked warily.
“Holland is here with an offer for you,” Ma said and I could have sworn she was trying not to cry.
“Sit, please,” Holland said and patted the chair beside him.
I sat, because it would have been rude not to, and watched him warily. And maybe it was because I was watching him so closely that I notice the brief moment where his eyes flickered, the whites showing while the colored parts disappeared up under his lids. Was he sick? Then he was back and entirely normal and I couldn’t have said for sure what it was that I’d seen.
“How are you and the baby getting along?” he asked me. Just conversation. Maybe.
“We’re fine, thank you,” I replied.
“You look well,” he said breezily. “My mate has been after me to have another pup, but I keep telling him four is probably enough, unless he wants to strike out and start his own pack.” He and Ma laughed lightly at that and started to reminisce about the trials of adding more pups to a family.
Four pups.Was this Oscar’s friend? Or the friend’s mate, probably?
I ran my hands anxiously over my belly, wondering what this visit meant and who this omega was.
Finally, they wrapped up their story-telling and turned back to me. "Well, that was very rude of us. I can only apologize and confess that I don't have near the time to sit and chat as I would like to have and sometimes I let myself get carried away." He folded his hands together on the table and I saw his eyes flicker back and forth between me and my mother before he began to speak again. "I heard, through a friend of a friend, that you'd become pregnant through a series of truly ridiculous events and through no fault of your own, so I spoke to my mate and to some other of our administrative team to see if there was anything we could do. I have something of a habit of collecting omegas who are unhappy where they are, or are in situations that are less than ideal."
