Darius snags my foot again, dragging me back over to his side of the picnic rug. “Ramses is first born, and since you’re an only child I guess the same applies to you. He’s got a lot of expectation resting on his shoulders, always had, always will, again, exactly the same as you. He was immediately pushed into what our family did, no question on what he wanted to do with his life, it was a given he’d do what our dads did. You were probably groomed from a young age too at being the one to take over your family’s empire. Where you differ though is he had us to look after too. If I tripped Kai up, Ramses would get the blame because he should have already been over talking to me about being more aware. If Kai forgot to do a chore in the morning before school, Ramses would get in trouble and have to do all the chores for a week as punishment.”
“How unfair is that?”
“But if that’s how we were raised, is it unfair or is it all we know? Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s other ways of teaching a person the same lessons our parents were trying to teach us. Either way though, that’s what happened to us.”
“Dare’s, you know. How our parents raised us probably would have raised a million red flags for other people, but you can’t forget we are red flags ourselves. And a lot of how we were raised is because we’re triplets,” Kai says, his tone a lot gentler than Darius’s. “We were taught from such a young age how we had to be, how we had to hide. And yeah, some days those lessons were brutal, but I guarantee you each of my fathers and our mother would also shower Ramses with so much love and praise, Dare and I used to get in trouble just to get some attention.”
I bite at my lip as I try to imagine how they must have had to grow up, constantly living in fear and in secrecy.
“I always wanted a brother or sister,” I say.
“Yeah, well I’m pretty sure each of us wished on more than a few occasions that we were an only child. But now looking back, having brothers and hard ass lessons constantly shoved down our throats, I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
“We can be your family now, little moon, before you fill a home with all our babies.”
“Jumping the gun there, Darius. We’re only on day two and we barely know a thing about each other.”
“True. But how can you start finding out about someone if you can’t see a future with them. Like why would you waste your time with them if they were not going to be around tomorrow?”
“So, everything with you needs to be efficient?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your comment about not putting energy into people seems a little… like you can’t be bothered and will only put effort into situations where you’re going to get something out of it.”
“I don’t see what the issue is.”
“Yeah, clearly.”
“But if someone is only taking from you, why would you hang around for that? They’d drain you dry and walk away, on to their next source.”
“We clearly see things differently.”
“Or we see things exactly the same and just use different ways to express that,” Kai adds, leaning back, letting the sun hit his face.
It seems weird to be talking so deeply on an emotional level, although it’s probably because it’s not something I’ve done too much of. Everything with the Scorned Girls excluded. My parents were not big into emotional psychoanalysing unless it was to dissect something or someone, but feelings weren’t taken into too much consideration.
“All I’m saying is, you should only be around people that make you better, but you do the same to them. I’m not into wasting time with emotional vampires who bleed you before they flit away. And likewise, we’re not wasting time, we’re not playing games, we’re playing for keeps with you so that means I share how many kids we’ll be having.”
“How did we get to talking about this? All I asked was what I said to Ramses that upset him enough for him to walk away.”
Darius rolls his eyes at me. He’s obviously got it all mapped out, and it’s all making sense to him, in some round-about way. “He told you. He laid it out straight, without getting emotional and walked away before that changed. A few things are always going to set him off though, talking about our parents, us, and you will always push his buttons. But it doesn’t mean you stop talking about it or you curb the way you do. It’s Ramses who has the issue.”
“Darius…” I groan.
“Little moon, he’s a strong Alpha who’s had protective tendencies drip fed into his thick skull from the day he was born. And for the record, he doesn’t see you as a victim at all. How could he? You radiate. And probably because of that the more primal part of him, the one our parents turbo charged, gets easily distracted because you’re you.”
I shake my head, wondering if I’m ever going to get it.
“Rohi, trust me, he will be back. And it’s not you at all who he is disappointed in. And it’s also not disappointment he’s dealing with. Being around you, everything is overwhelming. And I’m not over-exaggerating when I say all of us get caught on everything. For us, as your scent-matched Alphas, some of our focus goes on how many times a minute your heart beats, should it be more, should it be less. Is the blush on your cheeks or the small change in your scent something to worry about? Have you eaten enough, do you like what we made you, have we done enough to show you the welcome you deserve? Should we take you inside, should we walk away and give you some time to absorb what’s going on? Everything you do matters because you are the only thing that matters to us.”
I try pretty hard to not side-eye Kai’s explanation. It’s actually perfect and makes my chest get tight. In a lot of respects, I’m not doubting his explanation, and this connection we share is impossible to ignore. With them, I feel like I have the space where I can be more emotionally available. Like it’s okay to embrace feelings and moods without someone watching and suggesting I’m being or acting ‘unstable’ and relating it back to me being ‘unfit’ as a person because I’m an Omega.
The way I was raised was not without love, although I wanted more, I wrote off that need as a part of being an Omega. Probably because I could understand the disparaging differences between designations, on a clinical level. In a lot of ways those attributing factors changed who I was, to who I had to become. I reined in emotions, which is pretty funny considering I’ve been a blabbering mess since I arrived, but with the Board Members I was constantly proving I wasn’t a weak spineless Omega; I was capable of taking over Verdune because I had the ability to lock down and focus, but I also had the necessary knowledge.
“Enough talking. All this is going to take some time, but we’ll get there,” Darius says, dragging my butt back into his lap. “You know Alphas and Omegas use the language of touch too, which is just as fucking necessary.”
He lounges back, taking me with him before he pushes another box towards me.
