A black car, the only one that had passed since I arrived, drove slowly past us. I made eye contact with the driver before he drove away. Soren watched it roll out of sight.
“I’ll talk to you soon, then,” I said.
Soren took his phone back.
“Give me your cell number and I’ll text you with a location and time to meet up. It shouldn’t take more than a couple days for Lachlan to cook up some kind of hacking shit,” Soren said. He adjusted his jacket, and I spotted a faint bite mark on his neck. A bondmark. “Thanks for helping, anyway. Maggie ispissed Bridget won’t make an official statement, but we’re doing the best we can.”
We shook hands, and I walked back to the train station alone while Soren remained at his post.
Chapter 17 - Bridget
Living with Maggie’s pack was almost bad enough to make me go back to the Omega Center, even with some shadowy figure threatening me.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault. But an unbonded Omega living with a bonded pack went against everything in our biology. A visit for dinner? Fine. But by the third day of my stay with the Murray pack, I was beyond ready to leave.
Maggie was struggling, too. When it was just the two of us, she was the friend I knew and loved. But if any of her bonded mates were in the room with us, I could see the tension in every line of her body. She would start pacing, then stand between me and her packmates as if protecting them from a threat. Her scent changed, too, becoming sour and oppressive.
I hated stressing her out. But whenever I told her I would leave, she denied anything was wrong.
“It’s fine, Bridge,” she would say breezily. “You’re no trouble at all. And we want to make sure you’re safe.”
Her point was undermined slightly on the third night of my stay, after she convinced Nathan to endanger his life, when I accidentally walked too closely to Lachlan after dinner. She bared her teeth in a snarl at me, and her guttural warning growl took everyone by surprise. Lucas, her most levelheadedpackmate, grabbed her around the waist before she could lunge at me.
I cringed away, making myself small by instinct.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” She covered her mouth with her hand. Lucas started purring, his arms still locked around her. “I didn’t mean to. I don’t know why this is happening.” She sounded almost as distraught as I felt.
“No, I’m sorry,” I said and darted to the stairwell. “I’ll just… be up here.”
I was staying in one of the guest rooms on the second floor. Maggie and her pack slept in the main suite on the third floor. I threw myself facedown on the bed. The situation was clearly untenable, but I had no idea where else to go. Lachlan worked in cybersecurity, and he didn’t know if it was safe for me to go to another Omega Center. I’d almost asked Nathan if I could stay with him, but that felt incredibly presumptuous. Not to mention dangerous. Not to mention I didn’t trust myself to be in a room alone with Nathan feeling this vulnerable.
Maggie knocked on my door ten minutes later. “Can we talk?”
I rolled over. “Sure,” I said, trying to sound normal.
Maggie looked ashamed, and my heart broke. I patted the bed next to me, and she lay down, facing me like we’d done so often at the Omega Center before she found her pack.
“I know you didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just the Omega biology that sees me as a threat,” I said, preempting her inevitable apology. “I need to find a new place to stay.”
“No. You’re safest here.”
“Am I?” I asked with a wry smile. “Because it seemed like you were going to attack me.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “I would neverattackyou, dummy. I love you.”
I thought she was underestimating the intensity of Omega instincts, but I decided not to press the issue.
“Hopefully your Nathan will find something quickly,” she said, propping herself up on her elbow.
I rolled onto my back. “Quit it. He’s notmyanything.”
Maggie waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “He seemed awfully eager to help.”
“That’s because he’s a decent person and you took advantage of his stupid sense of honor.”
“Whatever. I think I know an interested Alpha when I see one. Or, hear one, I guess. He’s obviously into you,” Maggie replied with an infuriating sense of superiority.
I considered telling her about the crazy moment at the gala when I’d wanted to lick the skin of his throat. If anyone would understand, it would be another Omega. “He’s made it pretty clear that we are just colleagues.”
