Page 35 of In Doubt
I can hardly look him in the eye knowing I’ve seen that photo. I’m certain he must know I’ve seen it by my burning cheeks. Which is a ridiculous notion because that photo has been published for the last six months or more.
Luckily, he’s not talking to me, instead recounting the story of his find to the two men sitting the other side of him.
How I ended up sitting next to him, I’m not entirely sure?
We all wandered to the table together as a group after some very weak cocktails in the hotel foyer. I grabbed a seat next to Sia, sinking into my chair before I realised Jake was doing the same beside me.
We’d both clocked our mistake at the same time and then it was too late to move.
Sia is talking about an archeologist she got talking to today at the dig. But I’m not listening. All my attention is homed in on Jake’s words beside me.
“Congratulations again, man,” the beta with the short brown hair says next to him. His name is Peter.
“Yeah, but it’s not like we’re going to get any of the credit for it. It was just luck who ended up in which trench.” I’m surprised to hear him being so modest about the find. “And I’m not sure what it means for tomorrow, I don’t want to be sitting around on my arse all day. That’s not why I came out here.”
“What was the artefact like?” Peter asks.
“It looked like some kind of decorated box. It was covered in carvings and artwork. They looked like people.”
“Omegas,” I blurt out. He swings his head around and those murky blue eyes land firmly on me. Once again it seems to whip the breath from my lungs, leaving me dumbfounded by this strange reaction. But hadn’t those same stupid eyes featured heavily in my little shower fantasy? “I think they were omegas.”
“What makes you think that?” he asks, his attention now focussed on me.
“They were similar, don’t you think, to some of the carvings we saw in the inner sanctum of the Rulox temple.”
He thinks about this, nodding. “Yeah, they were a bit. But how do you know they were omegas?”
“There are some new theories that the inner sanctum of Rulox was reserved only for omegas. Omegas in heat. And that the hieroglyphic for fertility is the one used for omegas as well.”
Peter laughs behind Jake. “But omegas were no better than slaves in ancient Egypt. There’s no way they would’ve been allowed inside the most sacred part of the temple.”
Jake scrapes his chair around to face me more, waving Peter off with his hand. “That’s such bollocks. A society doesn’t give a Goddess as important as Isis to a section of its people that it abhors.”
“Exactly!” I say, holding his gaze.
“And the Pharaohs were alphas. Omegas would have been treasured to the most important people in the kingdom.”
Is he right? My brother and his pack treasure their omega. They treat her like the most precious thing on earth.
Other alphas? That one alpha? He treated me like dirt.
I’ve always believed Jake Grantham would be the same.
But when he speaks like that, I can almost believe he means it.
“It’s a shame we can’t excavate that patch of land to the west of the main path,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
He’s leaning closer to me now, and I receive the full force of his scent as well as the warmth of his body.
I push away my empty plate, and rest my forefinger on the table. “The Rulox temple is situated to the west of the Rah temple.” I move my water glass into place, representing one temple, and then Jake’s to one side, representing the other, “If the Rah temple was built for the alphas as they suspect, I think there would’ve been a link with the Rulox temple. A connection between the two. I believe the alphas would have visited the Rulox temple in some kind of fertility ritual.”
“When the omegas were in heat?” Jake traces his finger between the glasses and my heart beats a little faster.
“Probably. Did you notice that grand door to the east of the Rulox temple?” I point to the side of my glass. “It’s so much larger than the others and far more decorated. Yet no one has ever been able to properly explain why.”
“Here?” he asks, tapping the place I pointed to.
