Similarly, I didn’t know what to say. Or do. I kind of just wanted to evaporate and disappear off the face of the earth, to be honest.
“Uh.” Jericho finally averted his eyes. His cheeks burned with shame. “Sorry. I, uh. I didn’t know you were - yeah. I just ran up here because I heard you making noise and I thought you - I thought something was wrong, or you were sick again…”
Finally pulling myself together, I gripped the covers and frantically pulled them over my naked body. My whole face burned. I’d never been so embarrassed in my life. The gravity of what just happened was hitting me like a truck.
“I am so, so, so sorry,” I said. “Holy shit.”
Jericho chuckled nervously. “It’s okay. I’m, uh, the one who should be sorry for barging in.”
For a brief moment, we shared an awkward glance before we both quickly looked away.
“I guess if you don’t need anything, I’ll leave ya alone,” Jericho mumbled. He backed out of the door and closed it. I heard his footsteps scurrying away until he was out of earshot.
On one hand, I was suddenly immensely grateful that I hadn’t cried out his name while I came.
On the other hand, I had no fucking idea how I was ever going to live this down.
As my fantasy was shot and reality came back to me, I realized what the fuck had just happened. I was having sex fantasies and orgasming over the alpha I lived with. The alpha who I was definitely not in love with or even interested in. The alpha who had been taking care of me since the day I stepped foot in Indigo Mountain pack. The alpha who just caught me masturbating in his bed.
***
By nightfall, I knew I probably should drag myself out of bed. It had been hours since the debacle with Jericho walking in on me. I didn’t want to deal with this mess of a situation in the morning, so I knew I had to do it now.
I hauled myself out of bed and trudged to the door. As I slowly made my way down the stairs, I wondered what the hell I was going to say to him.Sorry you caught me whacking off in your bed?
I found him sitting at the kitchen table, his nose buried in a book - it seemed to be an encyclopedia. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he studied the pages.
For a second, I almost turned around and went right back upstairs. He seemed peaceful, reading here all by himself. Did I really want to disturb that?
But, of course, he saw me from the corner of his eye, and then there was no escaping him.
“Oh!” he said. A hint of a blush spread across his cheeks. “Mason. There you are.”
I froze mid-step. “Hey,” I said stupidly.
“Come on over,” he said, beckoning me with a hand.
Not having any other choice, I shuffled over to the table and had a seat. Earlier I had rehearsed some apologies and things to say, but none of them were coming to me now. Figures. I just stared dumbly at the tabletop and waited for him to say something. Maybe he would scold me and tell me not to do it ever again. That was fine. I just wanted to get out of this situation as soon as possible.
Then Jericho pushed the book towards me. It was a thick hardcover with large pages, printed in big font that was easy to read. There were equal parts text and diagrams on the page.
“Look,” Jericho said, pointing at a block of text. “It says here that, er, omegas get… more easily aroused while pregnant.”
Heat flushed into my face immediately. “W-what?”
He motioned innocently to the page again. I looked down. It was a whole section about omega arousal during pregnancy.
Was this book an entire encyclopedia about shifter pregnancy?
“Why do you have this?” I asked bluntly.
Jericho just blinked. “Well, I… To be honest, I didn’t know if what you were going through was normal, and I was kind of too embarrassed to ask my friends, so I ran out and bought this book…”
I stared at him for a moment before bursting out into laughter. I hadn’t had this kind of gut-wrenching laugh in a long time. When I was finally done, Jericho looked equal parts amused and embarrassed.
“You really are something else,” I said, wiping a tear. “Don’t they teach you this stuff in high school sex ed?”
He looked even more embarrassed now. “Well, I mean… We had separate alpha and omega classes.”
