My stomach flips and I duck, looking at my phone to hide my smile. “So, I’m not sending you to the home for retired honor guards early?”
“Didn’t say that,” he mutters.
“You thought I’d be the good kind of trouble.”
“Youare. Everything around you, on the other hand…” He sighs, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel. “I hate that you’ll be under your father’s roof again.”
“You’re the third person to say that. So, what do you say? The toy drum, the toy xylophone, or the toy piano for Aspen’s little ones?”
Marcus cuts a glance at me before turning back to the road. “First of all, stop trying to change the subject. Second of all, wow, youreallydon’t like your brother, do you?”
I smirk to myself. “I’ll be okay, Marcus. I promise. And if I ever feel otherwise, even for a minute, I’ll call you. And I don’t hate my brother! How could you say that?” I tease. “It’s just, I absolutely adore his little munchkins. And Rose children have always started learning music at a young age… Oh, there’s a set of all three! The triplets will be like a very tiny, very loud little band. Sorry not sorry in the least, brother dearest…” I mutter as I tap the button to add the bundle to my cart. After I check out, I finally toss my phone into my bag, finished with my last-minute shopping at last.
“Oh saints, you’re the vodka aunt.”
I snicker. “If that was something I could be while also being a Rose omega, being the vodka auntie would be my dream. Instead, I’ll get to hear over and over from Claire how she can’t wait for me to experience the miracle of childbirth.”
“Aspen’s mate?”
“The perfect omega my father wishes I would be. Nothing against her. She’s sweet as can be, and genuine too. But she’s only a year older than I am and I just know she’s going to try and talk me into dropping out of Fairhaven. If she gets in my father’s ear…”
“If your father even thinks of withdrawing you from Fairhaven, I’m calling Cassian and putting you on a plane to New Zealand.”
“You heard.”
“I heard.”
“You’re not going to make me talk about Luca?”
“I’m ticked you kept something so big from me and risked yourself again, but no. Not until you’re ready.”
I lean across the center console and rest my head on his shoulder, hugging him around the middle as best I can in the front seat of the town car. “Thank you, Marcus. For everything.”
* * *
We dressin our most understated designer clothes, donning our most demure diamonds and our least ostentatious five-thousand-dollar shoes, all to stand in a line in front of people with only pennies to their name, handing out cold sandwiches and bowls of thin soup, while news teams and paparazzi alike light up the room like the Times Square Yule tree.
The hypocrisy is astounding.
I pass Hawthorn to grab a new stack of bowls even though I’m supposed to ask an employee of the food bank to do that for me—so as not to ruin any photo opportunities. “Saints, how come I never saw how hypocritical this all was before?”
He shoots me a suppressive glare and returns to handing out hot cups of weak coffee, a fake smile plastered to his face.
Sickening. The hypocrisy isn’t just astounding, it’s sickening.
No, that burning fever beneath the color of my black velvet coat isn’t sickness. I glare down at my black heels, my head pounding. My heat. A day earlier than expected.
“Ma’am?”
I look up sharply to see a diminutive omega standing before me, wide eyes expectant. Her clothes are ragged, her winter coat barely more than filthy tatters, and her shoes have been patched with tape, but her eyes are bright and her smile brilliant.
I shake off the fugue flooding through me and force a tight smile as I fill her bowl. “Are you here with your pack?”
She nods to three alphas and two betas, a mix of men and women, and smiles fondly as she looks from one to the next. “I never go anywhere without them. They’re my everything.”
I serve her a bowl of soup and wish her a good Yule as her pack filters in behind her. Saints, there’s so much love among them that it hits me like a blow. They have nothing but each other and, for them, it’s enough. Just like whatever small, quiet life I could have had with Luca in a sanctuary state would have been enough for me. My insides cramp hard, every instinct in me shouting at me to find my own pack, my own love.
“Sad, isn’t it?” Tom asks.
