She rested her lips against his, squishing their faces together, and for a moment I thought she’d fallen asleep. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I was meant to wait until I turned Omega. Goddess’s plan.” She reached down and rubbed his stomach without opening her eyes. “So I could be a mom. A mom better than mine was, anyway.” She pulled away with a sleepy smile. “I want a nap now.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Okay, Kitten.” Scooping her up in my arms, I carried her up the stairs. By the time we reached the landing, she was sound asleep. I laid her down in the bed and crawled in after her, keeping a firm hold on my Beast.
Soon. Soon she’d be ours forever.
The following day,I took Darius to his checkup with Tanner. Darius wasn’t some weakling Omega who needed his Alpha for everything; I just wanted to go. There was a chance that one or two of those cubs were biologically mine, and I wanted to see them any chance I got. Plus, you know, Tanner was a vampire and he made my Beast wary, even though he didn’t throw up any red flags.
Darius, being the sweet guy he was, didn’t even protest about my overprotectiveness. He’d definitely popped more in the last week, his stomach protruding enough to be noticeable now. Which meant every person in Maxton was gawping at him like he was a sideshow exhibit, and it was riling my Beast.
“Stop growling, Beck. They aren’t going to leap out and attack me, and I honestly don’t care if they look. This is magical. I’m not going to hoard it for myself.”
“I wish we could,” I grumbled, but did my best to rein it in.
We stepped into the doctor’s office, but there was no one around. “Hello?”
A squeak from the back room, some hurried whispers, and the sound of the back door shutting told me that the doctor was in. The door to the exam room opened, and a whoosh of pheromones wafted out. Omega pheromones.
“It smells like a sex den in there,” Darius said to a flustered-looking Tanner.
It was undeniable that the good doctor was fucking one of the new Omegas, though I wasn’t sure which one. If the rest of Maxton found out, there’d be hell to pay though—regardless of who it was.
Darius obviously thought the same thing. “Best be careful, Tanner. This place might have a brand new Alpha with some pretty open-minded ideas, but this town is still populated by the close-minded assholes who let the old Alpha General get away with his bullshit for so long. Too many people see Omegas as a commodity, and they won’t like you trying to steal one. Not me, of course. I say as long as everyone is willing, let there be fuckfests for all. But my Pack isn’t in the majority.”
Tanner bowed his head respectfully. “Thanks for the warning, Omega. I know you’re right, but I can’t help it. She’s like a bloody addiction that I can’t give up.”
I knew he was Australian, but when he used the word bloody, it always threw up the worst mental images. Still, I felt sorry for the poor bastard. I shrugged. “Then don’t. Just be prepared.”
Tanner nodded again, before tilting his head at the exam room. “Give me two minutes to, uh, clean up and then come on back.”
He disappeared back into the exam room, and Darius raised an eyebrow at me. He didn’t have to say the words for me to know he was wondering the very same thing that I was—who was the Omega? There still weren’t that many, but Tanner had been in contact with all of them to undertake his genealogy assignment. The new Omegas all smelled different from their old scents, so it was hard to pinpoint exactly who it was.
But you know what? My own life had enough mystery in it, so I was going to let this go. Tanner seemed nice, and I trusted him with Darius—I could trust him with one of the random new Omegas too.
We decided that the vampire had enough time to clean at superspeed, and I knocked on the door once before opening it. Tanner was sitting in his chair with Darius’s file open in front of him, the very picture of professionalism, like we hadn’t just busted himin flagrante.
“So you should be about ten weeks along now, and from what I understand, that’s just over halfway?”
We both nodded. Well, at least that's what we’d guessed. Raiden had gone about eighteen weeks. It was only male pregnancies that had the shorter gestation, an evolutionary quirk probably due to the propensity for litters. Female Manix had regular gestation periods akin to those in humans. Honestly, if humans found out about us, about how different we really were, we’d be studied for generations.
The idea scared me like it never had before. My cubs could face dangers long after I was dead and buried, no longer around to protect them. Was this what parenthood was? Constant worry?
Eesh, that should have come in the Pack Life Starter Manual as a warning.
“Let me grab the doppler. Darius, if you wouldn’t mind getting up on the exam table, we’ll check out these cubs.”
Darius grinned. “I don’t know, Doc. Did you wipe it down after the previous patient?”
Tanner turned red at Darius’s teasing. “Of course I did, you cheeky bastard. Get up there before I convince you that you’re giving birth to bird-lions instead of babies. No one can actually tell on these things anyway, not without a trained eye.”
Oh shit, I hadn’t even thought about if the babies could be Griffins. I assumed not, because if Kitten was only fifteen percent, then the cubs would be even less. But what if one had a recessive gene or something? Not that I would be upset if one of them was a Griffin. It would be amazing. But the only Griffin in existence? It would be in for a lifetime of being hunted.
“Beck, are you catastrophizing over there?” Darius gave Tanner a scolding look. “Now you’ve freaked him out that they’ll all come out baby Griffins.”
Tanner laughed, not looking even remotely sorry. “Nah, mate. Chances of them being a Griffin is extremely slim, and then the chances of the Griffin animal being dominant are even less. I think you’re pretty safe, at least according to the research of that kid doctor who was here before me. The one who worked out all your Betas were changing to Omegas.” He lifted Darius’s shirt up and whistled. “Gotta spit out those watermelon seeds, Omega. Looks like you’re baking a dozen buns in that oven.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, but Darius snorted. “Lesson one, Tanner. When you see a pregnant Omega—or Beta, for that matter—do not mention how fat they’re getting.”
“Eesh, sorry Omega,” Tanner said, picking up the wand and putting some gel on it. “My bad. I did suck at my obstetrics rotation, so I guess that’s why.” He looked up at me. “The medicine part was fine. I promise, I’m real good at delivering babies.” He went back to looking at the ultrasound machine. “Ah, here we are. Look at those big boys growing.”
