The answer was easy, even if I had a lot on my plate: “I’d like that.”
29
It was a gorgeous day in the bay area, so nice in fact that I kept the top down on my car as we rounded the coastal roads towards the Marin Headlands. Eloise was sitting in the passenger seat next to me, her face tilted up to the sun and her eyes closed, her long lashes fanning against her cheeks as she took in the beautiful weather. I was nervous to be around Eloise in a one-on-one fashion. I’d never been alone with her before, usually Ric or Owen were around as buffers to smooth out some of my less than pleasing characteristics.
A burst of comfort filled my chest and I realized that Owen was soothing me. My emotions had probably gone all over the place down the bond. I inhaled a deep breath of the crisp ocean air that was surrounding us, pushing my nerves away and instead focusing on the road in front of us.
After another twenty minutes we pulled into the parking lot at Kirby Cove. It was pretty empty, as we were at the tail end of the summer tourist season. Only a few families and groups of people were walking up and down the beach or eating lunch at the picnic tables.
“Have you ever been to the Marin Headlands before?” I asked as we got out of the car and walked in step together to the set of wooden stairs that led down to the beach.
Eloise shook her head, holding her long brown hair on one side of her head so that it wouldn’t wildly whip about in the wind, “No we never got out much at the academy. They were always super paranoid about it.” She rolled her eyes and I couldn’t help but share her sentiment. I’d never been super interested in the inner workings of the omega academies that were popular in California and several other states but after meeting Eloise and talking with her I was fairly sure that they were far too overprotective of their omegas.
“Well, we’ll just have to take you to see everything then.”
Eloise gave me a funny look, the line between her eyes forming, “It’s strange.” Was all she said.
“What’s strange?”
“You. Three months ago you were ready to throw me out on my ass but now you seem to be wholly on board with my presence in your pack. It’s just strange, I never thought that a pack bond was that strong.”
We made our way down the beach as I thought about my response to that, making it to the spot that I was looking for. It was a large flat boulder that was sitting up against one of the sides of the cove and was surrounded by the purple ice plants. It was also a spot my mother had brought me to many times before her death, she would pack a picnic and we would sit here for hours just listening to the ocean.
“Before I answer that I should probably tell you why I was so against having an omega at all, here, let me help you up.” I held out my hand to her and was pleased when she slid hers in mine so that I could help her up onto the flat top of the boulder before hopping up next to her.
I sucked in a quick, steadying breath before beginning, “My mother was an omega. She was my favorite person in the entire world. She was such a gentle and delicate person that I think the lifestyle that my fathers’ were involved in was too much for her. The Russo family has a long history of criminal activity that dates back to the early 1800’s, it’s what they had always done and could never understand why she was so against it since she’d been raised the same way.” As a child I didn’t understand what their many fights were about but now as an adult I realized that my mother was worried about it bleeding over into our everyday lives. Sometimes my fathers would come home bloodied and exhausted and it fell on my mother’s shoulders to clean them up—that was just the job of a mafioso’s wife after all.
“She couldn’t handle it and it very probably caused her death. When I was five years old she drowned herself in the pool in the backyard.”
Eloise gasped, her hand flying to her mouth and her brown eyes rounding, “Leon…” But I couldn’t stop now, I needed to get the whole story out.
“My fathers just sort of faded away after that they were all dead within a year. Studies have shown that bonded alphas have trouble living much longer after their omega passes away like that. Some do okay—you can ask Gage about his fathers, they're both still alive even though his mom passed away from cancer when he was nine—but mine couldn’t handle it. I went to live with my grandfather after that in Italy. We moved back to San Francisco when I was eleven years old and by then I was convinced that my mother was to blame for all of them dying and my grandfather didn’t really help either.”
“He was against omegas as a whole—he never took one himself believing that it would open him up to weakness. He’d tried to convince his son, my father, to do the same. To get a surrogate to pass on the family name. But he and his packmates wanted the softness that an omega provided. Once they died he felt justified in his opinion and made that abundantly clear to me and I grew up with that idea. I met Gage and later on Ric and I decided that was all I needed—and it worked for a time. I was so busy with trying to move the company away from it’s illegal roots that it was easy to ignore that Ric and Gage weren’t happy because I rejected any omega that they tried to court and then…”
“You met Owen.” Eloise provided and we shared a smile. I was pleased that we both seemed to feel the same way about the beta. Owen deserved as much love as we could give him.
“Yes and despite the fact that he was in the middle of hacking into my company I was smitten. I just didn’t know it yet. Things moved quickly from there and before I knew it I was in a long term relationship for the first time in my life and I became a bit paranoid. I thought any day I was going to wake up and be all alone again—that was just what happened when I had too many things that belonged to me and made me happy, they tend to disappear.”
“And then I came along and threw a bomb on your carefully laid boundaries.” Eloise sighed, “I’m so sorry Leon I had no idea.”
I slid my fingers through hers and gave a quick squeeze, “There really isn’t anything to apologize to me for Eloise. I’m the one who is sorry. I think in the end you actuallyhelpedme. We would have gone on the way that we were forever, me insecure and paranoid and everyone else just going along with it because they love me. It took Owen practically forcing me to bond with him to really understand. Whenever I start to feel nervous or insecure he sends comfort down the bond and it stops my anxiety in its tracks. I’ve finally been able just to enjoy the new dynamic that has been happening in the pack—well until yesterday of course. I’m very much a give-to-get kind of man, so if you’re willing to share with me…?”
I was hoping that by sharing my own story that Eloise would be comfortable enough to return the favor. Of course I had spent the entire first month and a half being an absolute asshole, so I wouldn’t blame her if she chose to keep her feelings close to her chest.
Luckily, Eloise was a far better person than I had been.
“I get the whole mommy-issues thing. My mom and dad sold me to the academy—granted they were offered an obscene amount of money and didn’treallyhave a choice—but the fact still stands that they sold me once I perfumed. The only reason I wanted to stay was for Link, he was my next door neighbor and my protector. Whenever my mom or dad got physical with me I always knew he’d wait for me at the creek and when his step-dad did the same I’d wait for him.”
Just the idea of someone slapping Eloise around caused a protective growl to rumble out of my chest.
Eloise nudged me with her shoulder, “I appreciate it but it happened over a decade ago Leon. No one is slapping me around anymore. Anyways when they came for me I refused to go with them and ran away. Link found me at our spot and promised me that he’d come for me when I was eighteen. As you probably already know that never happened, I should have just moved on—it was a silly promise made by a child. But it just kind of kept me going over the years. The omega academy isn’t necessarily the best place ever and I’d already experienced an alpha pack that treated me like a breeding chattel rather than a human being. It was probably easier for me to cling to the promise that Link would come back one day rather than face being alone.”
I understood how she felt. She’d relied on a constant—her promise with Lincoln Sawyer—and had refused to move on from that. My constant had been my reticence at welcoming an omega into my pack despite the fact that it was what my pack needed. We’d become disjointed and nebulous over the past ten years and it almost seemed like we were coworkers rather than packmates. Eloise had clung to her promise at the cost of her own health if her file was to be believed.
But I had also seen Lincoln Sawyer’s face the night before when I’d led Eloise out of the restaurant. The man had been absolutely heart broken. There seemed to be more to the situation than the beta forgetting about their promise and moving on.
“Eloise?” I finally asked after a few minutes of digesting all of the information she’d given me.
