Page 203 of Omega's Heart
Quin nudged Kaden and pointed a significant look in Felix’s direction.
Kaden nodded understanding. “Maybe we should just send the omegas for now. If he’s had trouble with an alpha, he might not feel entirely comfortable speaking up with us there.” He nodded to the Alpha. “And I have a couple of things I’d like to discuss with you, as well, if you have some time free.”
“Ask your brother if I ever have time free,” the Alpha replied, but his tone wasn’t unwelcoming. Maybe even a little curious.
“Then that can be the plan,” Quin decided. He leaned in to whisper in Holland’s ear, something that made his mate squint and shake his head at him.
No secret messages for Felix though. “If you get tired, you need to sit down,” Kaden told his stubborn mate. “I mean it, you haven’t spent time in this kind of heat.”
“Yes, dear,” Felix intoned and kissed Kaden’s cheek.
He’s making fun of me.
“Saucy omega. But seriously,” Kaden took Felix’s hands in both of his. “Please trust me on this.”
Felix’s eyebrows flew up. “Of course I trust you. I’ll be careful. And I have two Alpha’s Mates to keep an eye on me. I’ll be fine.”
“Water too. The air here will dry you out.” It was after noon and the sun beat straight down on them without any shelter at all from the walls.
“Water, too.” Felix squeezed his hands again reassuringly, then moved over to stand next to Holland and the Nevada Ashes Mate. “He’s such an alpha,” Kaden heard Felix joke in a low voice to the Nevada Ashes Mate, which seemed to be the right thing to say, as the looming tension in the air dropped.
Holland’s head came up and his nostrils flared. He stared at Felix hard for a moment, then gave Kaden a measuring look.
Kaden shook his head. No and Leave him alone his primary messages, then resigned himself to sitting his packbrother down and laying down the law about picking at Felix.
If his mate didn’t want to be poked about the possibility of being a True Omega, then Kaden would go to war to stop it.
C H A P T E R 1 0 5
I made sure to separate Verena from Holland as soon as we’d been shown to Salem’s mother’s house. It seemed like the smarter thing to do and from the discreet thumb’s up my mate gave me, it seemed he thought the same thing. So Kaden and Quin disappeared in the direction of their pack’s main building and the Alpha’s office, while I gave Verena the friendliest smile I could and said, “I’ve never been here before. I know you’re probably busy, but is there someplace I can go for a walk and look around?”
As I’d hoped, she denied being busy and insisted on taking me for a tour of the front of the enclave.
I hid a smile when she started with the public houses. It was obvious to me that the attitude of the rest of the packs to Nevada Ashes’ chosen method of supplementing the pack’s coffers was a sore spot for her. So as she led me through different doors, deliberately challenging me to be shocked or horrified, I simply smiled more broadly, asked the kinds of questions I would have liked to be asked, complimented the buildings, and expressed jealousy over the clothing worn by some of the shifters currently working.
But it gave me a very different sense of what working in these houses actually entailed, and how the Nevada Ashes shifters felt about it. Some of them seemed enthusiastic, most of them happy, the odd few were obviously considering what their other options were. There were the usual moans about being tired and rolled eyes about difficult customers, but no one was forced and no one seemed to feel like they had no other options. They were paid well--the few who disclosed what they were making made my eyes widen. But everything in this enclave was expensive, so maybe it balanced out.
And they were nice. Sweet, even. I got a phone number and email address from a very pretty blond beta for poor Edmund, who had apparently been madly in love with Bram for a while. Verena had turned up her nose at the idea until I gave her Edmond’s whole sob story, after which she looked thoughtful. My guess was she was a secret romantic at heart, no matter her hard-nosed facade. So I went with that and poured out my entire story to her, emphasizing how fierce Kaden was in his attempts to give me everything an omega could ever want, even before I asked for it. By the time we’d toured the grounds of a couple of the apartment buildings the pack lived in—some even taller than the pack building in Mercy Hills!—and had taken a stroll through the park in the very center of the enclave, she’d softened towards us Mercy Hills shifters quite a bit.
The alphas were still holed up in her mate’s office when we got back, so she invited me back to their apartment for sweet tea and pecan pie.
“This is amazing,” I said after my second bite. “Way better than mine. What’s your secret?”
Dimples appeared on either side of her smile. “Just a little bit of good whiskey added in with the sugar. Don’t worry about it hurting the baby, the alcohol is all gone by the time it’s cooked.”
“I’ll have to try that for next full moon,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe this month I’ll be the one with the first empty dish, instead of Julius.”
“Is Julius a friend of yours?”
I nodded. “We lived together for a while when I first came to Mercy Hills. He’s taking over as Quin’s office assistant soon. Kaden keeps telling him not to let the power go to his head, and then Julius gives him this look.” I chuckled. “I’m pretty sure once Julius is established there, Kaden’s going to end up regretting the teasing. And I’m just going to laugh at him. Alphas really are nothing more than big pups sometimes.”
She put a bite of pie into her mouth and chewed slowly, her eyes fixed on nothing. “Is Julius the young omega who got caught out after hours?”
I nodded again. “He had a rough time there, but he’s been doing much better at Mercy Hills. I hope that when they strike down the Segregation Laws, they can get his sentence erased or whatever they call it.” Maybe it was sneaky of me, but it couldn’t hurt for me to put in a good word for my mate’s job, right? And after walking all over the enclave with her, I thought—rather like Holland— that she was a lot more than a helper and raiser of pups to the Nevada Ashes Alpha. If I could get her on our side, it might go a long way to convincing Nevada Ashes to follow our path.
“Vacated, I think,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Is that what your mate is doing? Trying to convince the humans to set us free? I suspect he’s going to be disappointed.”
“I hope not.” I ate another bite of that amazing pie. “He was invited to come work for our local senator, with the backing of the president. We had to move to Washington for a while. It was interesting, but I’m glad to be home.” I was careful with my words—she was touchy, and I didn’t want her to think I was trying to claim dominance over her. Which I absolutely was not. All I wanted to do was plant this seed and let it grow.
