“Can I talk to the doctor?”
Darius flushed. “Of course you can. We should have offered before now. We can go today, if you’d like?”
I nodded. I hadn’t had a checkup in… ever. I couldn’t go to human doctors and there was no way I could’ve come into Maxton. It would be nice to know that everything was where it was supposed to be. “Thank you.” I felt the flush start at my toes over the next question, but I had to know. “Can we still have sex even though I’m not in my heat?”
Everyone fell silent. Then as one, they looked at Cooper. He was the only one who hadn’t eased the ache during the heat, though he’d appeared regularly with food and water, and cleaned me up when I could barely move my body. As far as I was concerned, that was as intimate as sticking your dick in someone.
“You can’t pick and choose between the Pack. No matter what you feel for Corvin and Beckett, or what they feel for you, splitting the Pack like that would hurt us all.”
I frowned. “What do you mean, pick? You don’t want to… Oh. I’m sorry.” I wiggled off Corvin’s lap. I’d just assumed that Cooper would want to have sex with me too, like I was some irresistable bombshell, rather than a half-wild mixed-blood who lived in a hovel in the hills. What an idiot.
I looked at Cooper, who was easily one of the most gorgeous males I’d ever seen, with his shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes. Every part of his body was big and broad, the perfect golden Alpha. He didn’t have the same childhood attachment to me as Corvin and Beckett.
“That’s not what I meant—”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll get dressed and see the doctor now. Then I think I’d like to go home.” Back to where my life, and my body, made sense to me.
“Cooper!” Darius hissed, and then suddenly, the big blond Alpha was in front of me.
He grabbed my arms gently in his huge hands, holding me still. “Kitten, I’m going to kiss you now.” His voice was soft, and his grip loosened slightly so I wasn’t restrained. “If you don’t want this, you just have to say.” He was giving me the chance to get away if I wanted. I stared up into his sparkling blue eyes, my lips parted as I held my breath. I didn’t want to go anywhere though.
When he leaned forward, the brush of his lips against mine was the gentlest kiss I’d ever received. It was tentative, and I had a feeling it would stay that way until I made a move. So I slid my tongue along his bottom lip and melted into his arms a little more, pressing my body along his.
He groaned softly, pulling his lips from mine. “I didn’t mean I wasn’t interested, Kit. I meant that I didn’t want you to feel pressured to take us all.”
I froze up. “I’m nottakinganyone. Sex doesn’t mean I want to mate into your Pack.”
Not yet, at least. I wasn’t ready to give up my life just yet. But I wasn’t opposed to being in a Pack. Lorso had spent most of my childhood telling me stories of his Pack, and his Omegas. They were dashing tales of battles and romance, and they’d created this dream Pack in my mind that I wasn’t sure any real-life Manix could live up to.
The Wiley-Fletcher-Reid Pack would come close though.
Cooper kissed me again, a quick, hard kiss this time. “Sex means something. It doesn’t have to mean commitment, but you can’t go into this thinking we aren’t going to get attached.” He leaned closer, until his lips were beside my ear. “We are already attached, Kitten. You hold all the power in those beautiful hands. Be careful how you wield it.” Then he nipped my earlobe, making me gasp. Pulling back, he straightened to his full height and gave me a lopsided grin. “Go and get dressed. We’ll take you to see Doc and maybe pick you up some more stuff. Then, if you want to go home, I’ll take you.”
A low rumbling noise came from behind him, but we both ignored it. He was giving me choices, and I desperately needed them.
My life as a carefree Beta in the woods was over. I didn’t want to admit it yet, but I knew deep down that I could never go back again.
People were staring.After visiting the doctor and being given a clean bill of health, as well as an awkward procedure involving a contraceptive that would be immediately effective—because we all knew that things were going to get wild andsoon—and a crash course in Omega biology that apparently I’d missed out on by not going to school, we went to a store that sold clothes. Darius called it the commissary.
Corvin hovered and refused to let anyone closer than six feet, which I didn’t care about, but he couldn’t stop their whispers. Most of them seemed to think Corvin had been keeping me in his basement or something. There were a lot of sneers about my parentage as well, along with some outright lustful looks since I was an Omega. I hated it. I felt like a bug under a microscope, just waiting for someone to come and squish me.
Darius and Beckett were at the Sanctum, which was the home for unwanted baby Manix apparently. It was also the place where Darius worked with the infamous Bonnie. My lip curled silently at the thought of him being close friends with another Omega, a completely visceral response that horrified me. I wasn’t a jealous animal; I’d let the two men I’d loved go all those years ago so they could be with their chosen Omega. It was like the heat hormones had flicked a switch in my brain, making me a territorial shrew.
Cooper picked out some things from the extremely limited range in my size. At first, he wanted me to choose, but it was all too much. I could feel people watching me as I searched the rack, so I just gave up and let Cooper pick. He was no nonsense about it, and I knew he wanted to be in and out of here just as fast as I did.
The guy behind the counter was a hundred years old if he was a day, and while his eyes had a small light of interest, he didn’t stare. “There’s a package for Darius as well. I think it’s that new weighted blanket he ordered.”
Cooper thanked the man with a smile, paid, and then hurried us out of the store.
Doc had said that there was no going back to being a Beta. He’d also told me that the heat was usually once a year, and that the pheromones I gave off would attract unmated Manix from all around, sometimes even other shifters. He’d insinuated that it would be best if I found a Pack to stay with during my heat, or come into town and be protected, either at his clinic or in the Legion building.
The Beast, he said, could sometimes not be controlled by the whims of the man, unless the Manix was very strong. I thought about Cooper, and how I was in his house, fucking his Packmates at the height of my heat, and he’d still resisted. That must have meant he was strong, right?
I was so lost in my thoughts, I nearly ran into a huge Manix Alpha. He caught my arm immediately, and I looked up into a hard, smirking face.
“Careful, little Omega.” His words sent shivers down my spine.
Corvin grabbed my hand and pulled me back behind him. “Fuck off, Wilkie.”
