Penn shoved more, with dressing, into his face. Finally, we all eased up, the tension dissipating. Freid and I picked up fries, dipped them, and fed them to him in between his own handfuls. He eagerly took them, licking the salt and dressing from our fingers. Which could have been innocent enthusiasm—but wasn’t innocent at all.
I was getting hard and had to stop to save myself embarrassment. Freid and Penn laughed.
Penn told us both a little more about his former pack. His teen years were the worst, but it never actually stopped even into adulthood. The bully alphas teased him relentlessly, made inappropriate sexual comments, and always tried to get him to sleep with them. When he declined, the comments and teasing and put-downs worsened.
“Sometimes they chased me, threatening me.”
“Dare I ask if they ever caught you?” Freid hunched his shoulders as if bracing for an answer he didn’t want.
“Yeah, but they always stopped short of physical harm. Although, one time, I thought a couple of them would cross that line. They caught me and tied me up and left me in the trunk of a car all night.”
Both our mouths dropped open at the same time.
“They let me go the next morning, but I was terrified. They laughed it off, blaming me for not being able to take a joke.”
“Did you tell anyone?” I asked.
“Who could I tell? My foster family was worse. I was alone.”
He had truly been all alone. Our omega. Our mate. No one should ever be treated that way.
“We’ll never ever let you be harmed or mistreat you. That’s our solemn oath.” I looked at Freid and he nodded.
“I can feel that already in our bond,” Penn said. “You are alphas, sure, but I don’t think of you in the same way as I do those others. You’re different. Special. My mates.”
“And we love you,” Freid said.
“More than anything,” I added. “Never forget.”
“I know. I love you both so much.” He took a deep breath, picking up an empty fry basket. “More, please?”
“Anything you want, mate,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders.
Freid flagged down the server.
Chapter Seventeen
Penn
I was late to work for the first time since I started here and consequently was behind on everything. I just couldn’t get my butt up and out of bed this morning and gave up even trying. I wasn’t sick, or else I’d have stayed home, but I also wasn’t quite myself. I felt weird, and weird wasn’t on the approved list of reasons not to come in to work. And really, I wanted to be here. I only wished I felt like myself.
Today, I was shelving books, and I was taking forever. I half expected one of my coworkers to come over and make sure I hadn’t fallen asleep in the stacks. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded if I had. I was that tired. But I kept treading along, one book after another.
When I first got this job, I did take a long time shelving books, not knowing exactly how the stacks were arranged and being curious about what people checked out. I spent more time looking at the books and scanning shelves than I did actually putting them in their places. But that wasn’t the case now. It was just pick them up, put them where they belonged, pick another one up, put it in, one after another.
I rolled the cart back and filled it from the return bin after scanning everything back in. I organized the books by section to expedite the process and noticed there were a lot of pregnancy books. Like, an unusually large amount. Somebody either was newly pregnant and wanted to learn everything, or there was a school project involved because this wasn’t typical light reading.
As I pushed the cart toward their home on the shelves, it hit me.
I was pregnant.
I didn’t know what snapped it all into place. I’d seen pregnant people in the library that day. I’d watched a movie last night where a pregnant omega was kidnapped and saved at the last minute by a superhero. It wasn’t that this was the first encounter I had with pregnancy in recent times, but it was the first time I thought,Huh. That explains it.That explained being tired, not liking my favorite cheese anymore, and being moody. I was pregnant. Or, at least, I was 99 percent sure I was. I wouldn’t know until I took a test.
I ran out on my lunch break and grabbed a test from the convenience store. I wasn’t sure it was the most reliable place to buy one. For all I knew, it had been sitting there for a decade. But it was the only place I had time to get to, and it would have to do. When I got back, I beelined into the bathroom, peed on the stick, and waited in the stall for the results. They said not to watch the test, to put it down and set a timer. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. I watched as one line appeared, and then…nothing. A few minutes later, still nothing.
I wasn’t pregnant, after all. I tossed the test and cried. I didn’t realize how much I wanted this until I didn’t have it.
When I went home that night, I was still upset. I had just officially started living with Freid and Ty at Freid’s house. We hadn’t moved everything over yet or anything formal like that, but we’d moved a lot in. Here was where we were every morning and every night. We just hadn’t figured out the logistics of everything else yet.
