I could tell, she still had a faint accent. Barely there really—one, or both, of her parents had been American, that much was obvious.
“Illegal?” Seven asked, and she whipped her head toward him.
“Why would you ask that?”
He shrugged. “You’re jumpy. Suspicious. Evasive.”
She pointed her fork at him. “I’m crammed into my house with five huge strangers who could literally tear me apart. You’d be jumpy too, asshole.”
Seven frowned, like her words physically hurt. “We’d never.”
She shrugged. “I’m beginning to believe you. But so far, I’ve only had your word for it.”
We kept circling around and around back to this point. “What can we do to convince you?” She shrugged again, and I sighed. “Do you want to know a little about us?” I’d bare my soul to her if it got her to accept us. Just cut myself open and let her poke around at my insides until she decided that we were suitable mates for her.
She gnawed at her lip, but nodded. “Sure.”
I looked around the group, but none of them seemed like they wanted to take the leap and go first. Honestly, whoever said Betas were the weak ones had never tried to get an Alpha to open up emotionally.
“Hi, I’m Ellar, Beta Manix of Pack Huxley-Grey.”
“Huxley-Grey?” she asked.
I cast a look over my shoulder at Finlo and Gatlin. “The Pack takes the surnames of the Alphas who join. If another Alpha were to join, we’d add it to the Pack name.” She nodded, her face thoughtful as she considered that, so I continued. “Up until I was sixteen, I was raised in a normal suburban house on the outskirts of Denver. When I started manifesting my Manix traits around puberty, my father—who obviously wasn’t really my father—freaked out. Realized I wasn’t his. Gave an ultimatum to my mother, who’d accidentally conceived me when she was on a business trip to Missoula. It came down to me being sent away or they’d get a divorce.”
Shit, the hurt of the kid I’d been was still raw. “My mother stuck me on a bus and told me I was going to boarding school, but at the other end, a huge guy who said he was my biological dad collected me from the bus station in Missoula. He took me back to the Manix colony in the mountains and told me to fend for myself.”
I shivered as I remember those first few weeks when I was lost and confused. I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me every single day until Gatlin arrived, beat down all the other Alphas and claimed me for his Pack. Back then, the Huxley-Grey pack had just been Finlo and Gatlin, but it wasn’t long after me that they’d taken in Seven too. I’d lived happily with them for five years before I’d worked up the courage to kiss Gatlin one day. When he’d kissed me back, it was like everything had fallen perfectly into place. They’d thought that because I’d been raised human, perhaps I stuck to the ideals of human gender norms.
Oh, they’d been so, so wrong. The next few years were a sexfest.
A throat cleared. “Might want to skip to the next part, Beta.” Finlo sounded amused, and I realized I’d been saying all that shit out loud. Whoops.
My cheeks flushed as Naja’s eyes bounced around to all of us. Seven had told her that we all had sex, but I guess she didn’t really believe it until now. And if I wasn’t mistaken, there was more than a little lust in her eyes.
“Uh, so next. That part is more Raiden’s story, but I guess there isn’t a happily ever after until we get there, so if he doesn’t mind…?” I looked up at Raiden, and his eyes were soft and filled with love. He leaned down and kissed me, nipping my lip as he pulled away. And that was Raiden in a nutshell, really. Softness with a hint of pain. Like the stroke of a palm across your ass before it came down in a heavy blow.
I cleared my throat and mentally told my cock to behave. “So, when an Omega turns twenty-five, he leaves his parents’ nest and chooses a Pack of his own. Packs try to woo him like he’s a Victorian era debutante. It’s kind of gross.”
She looked between us all. “You guys petitioned for his hand in marriage?” Amusement colored her tone, and she was laughing at us politely. I guess it would be weird to think of us sitting around eating finger sandwiches and drinking tea as we tried to convince him we were his best option.
I shook my head. “Hell no. Our Pack wasn’t considered… suitable for an Omega.”
She frowned, her jaw growing tight. “Why the hell not?”
Was she outraged on our behalf?
It was Seven who answered. “We are misfits. Gatlin and Ellar? Half-breeds. I’d been kicked from two Packs already, and Finlo…” He trailed off. “Actually, Finlo would have been a perfectly fine option, except he’d formed a Pack with a bunch of cast-offs like us.”
Now it was Raiden’s turn to frown. “Don’t talk about yourselves like that. You’re the only worthy Pack on that damn mountain and you know it.”
Seven gave our Raiden a soft look. “We are now that we have you. Sorry, Omega.”
Raiden shook his head, and I knew he’d fuck the idea of unworthiness from Seven’s head as soon as he could.
Naja huffed. “I don’t know what the rest of the Manix are like, but if they’re anything like the other Pack from the flower market, then I agree with Raiden.”
I bit my cheek to stop myself grinning widely. She was starting to like us.Keep it together, Ellar. You’ve got this.
