He must have seen the confusion on my face because his mouth opened in silent laughter as he pulled the laptop over and typed underneath his letter. ‘I’VE NEVER KISSED A GIRL BEFORE,’ he wrote, shooting me a sheepish smile.
Something in my chest fluttered at reading that, and I realized that it was pleasure over being the only girl he’d ever kissed. The only thing I had ever felt territorial about when I was younger had been my nest, so the sudden possessiveness I felt over Podcast was taking me by surprise.
I yawned again, a sudden bout of sleepiness filling my body as the events of the day finally caught up to me.
The sound of Podcast’s fingers typing drew my attention back to his screen. ‘WANT TO TAKE A NAP?’ he asked.
I wanted nothing more than to snuggle up amongst the fluffy blankets and pillows with him, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. “Won’t your alphas be upset? With all of this? You kissed someone outside of your pack,andanother omega no less.” All of my previous worries that I’d carelessly shoved out of my way in my quest to kiss Podcast came spiraling back with a vengeance.
Podcast made a face as he typed. ‘MOST OF THEM DON’T CARE AND WHY WOULD BOTH OF US BEING OMEGAS MATTER?’
I shrugged and frowned at him. “Because omegas are never in packs together? There aren’t really enough of us to go around, so isn’t it still frowned upon?”
Most omegas in my time would be scandalized by the very thought of having to share their alphas with another omega. They never spoke aboutactuallyfalling for that omega. I was sure it happened, the world was vast after all, but in my tiny society bubble omegas were with alphas and that was that.
Podcast’s frown deepened as he shook his head, his fingers hitting the keys harder than before. ‘IT’S NOT, THERE ARE LOTS OF PACKS WITH MORE THAN ONE OMEGAS THESE DAYS. DO YOU LIKE ME?’ He pushed the screen so that I could see it, a stubborn set in his jaw.
Biting my lower lip, I paused for a moment before finally nodding.
It couldn’t last though. I was going home in three short months, and for the first time since falling out of the mirror, I wished I wasn’t. I opened my mouth to voice my concerns but Podcast put a finger to my lips to stop me.
‘NAP NOW, WORRY LATER,’ he typed before shutting his laptop and sliding it back under his pillow.
I let him tug me down into the soft blankets that smelled of the entire pack. Podcast pulled me in close so that my head was resting on one of his arms.
‘Sleep,’he signed, his eyes closing.
I settled in a little reluctantly. I could worry about everything later, but for now I wanted to bask in the glow of having my first kiss. With a sigh, I finally gave into the drowsiness, falling asleep in the circle of Podcast’s arms and surrounded by the scents of his alphas.
Chapter Fifteen
“Okay,youladiesneedto chill the fuck out,” I told Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly, karate chopping my hand between the two pigeons. They had been getting ready to square up over a saltine cracker and I didn’t feel like spending the night putting Neosporin on pigeon scratches. I needed to nip that shit right in the bud. “There’s enough saltine goodness to go around.”
To punctuate my words I reached into the pocket of my apron and pulled out a handful of crushed crackers. I began to spread them throughout the coop, distracting the pigeons from their earlier fight club reenactment. Both Marilyn and Grace immediately chased the falling food, their earlier squabble completely forgotten.
“Those are my good girls,” I said as I watched them all scramble after the crumbs. I moved up to the nesting boxes where my broody pigeons were still sitting on their eggs.
“Good evening Vivien, Rita, and Judy, how are Daddy’s precious girls?” I asked with a coo as I sprinkled some treats in front of them. They didn’t answer me, but another voice did.
‘You’re out here with the pigeons again and the rest of the pack is inside having fun without you,’the voice that sounded like my own hissed in my ear as I moved around the coop cleaning up. It was the same voice I always heard, the one I knew for a fact was in my own head and not the same as the one that whispered in Juneau’s. It echoed with the voices of all of the people that I’d had some hand in causing pain, whether it was during my tenure in the military or at the orders of my father. The therapist I used to see when I was still in the Marines had called it the ‘embodiment of guilt.’
But I just called him Barry.
“Barry, I don’t have time for your shit today,” I muttered to him as I dumped the water feeders and refilled them with the hose.
It had been three days since the showdown with my father in the city and I still felt on edge. The rest of the pack had settled back into a more vigilant normalcy, continuing to open the bar every night and to teach Juneau how to function in modern society.
I couldn’t sit still. I had barely slept a wink since smelling my father’s burnt meat scent on the wind as we sped to the rescue of our pack. With it brought nasty memories that I still bore mental and physical scars from.
Tug taught me everything that I knew about illegal shit. From petty theft, all the way to torturing those who displeased Apollo or whoever else was in charge of the Titans MC. The men in my family had been the loyal dogs of the Prez for as long as the MC had been around.
My grandfather had broken my father when he was young, and my father had done the same to me. My mother worked hard to glue all of the pieces of me together with her soft love, but at the end of each summer she had to send me back to the Cape. My father would then work overtime to shatter me all over again.
On the night that Rex and the rest of Pack Steele fled from the Titans, I was forced to make a choice. I could either go against everything that I knew in order to be with the people who made me feel less like I was a monster, or I could let the loyalty that had been ingrained inside of me since birth take over.
I never regretted my decision to follow Pack Steele. But even two years later there were still bridges that I couldn’t cross. We’d been friends for decades, but I knew that my past still unsettled them. So I stayed in the shadows, taking care of the creatures that didn’t seem to be afraid of my bloodstained hands, and tried to make as much of a peaceful life that I could.
Tug’s return had completely wrecked that. My sugared view of my new life had been shattered three days ago and I was desperately trying to hang onto the normalcy that I’d worked so hard to create.
