Page 98 of Glitterati Omega

Eighteen

W

here thehellare you?” morgansnapped the minute Rupert had the satellite link connected. The connection buzzed with static for the next few seconds.

“Where does it look like I am?” he asked, glancing around.

“The middle of Botswana,” the doctor huffed back.

“Close, but no. I’m near the border with Mozambique.”

“Oh my God,” Morgan spat after about thirty seconds of delay. “Are youkiddingme?! You took off to the middle of bugfuck nowhere, you didn’t tell anybody—did you even get your vaccines updated?! Christ, Roo, South Africa’s like a—”

Rupert lifted his brows. “A backwater? A cesspool? Morgan, Ilivehere. I’m inoculated, and if I were you, I wouldn’t talk—you Americans have all the vaccines, but you’ve got a bunch of bloody antivaxxers cocking it all up.”

Morgan frowned at him. “Still,” they said. “You are pregnant, which makes you more vulnerable.”

“I got all my jabs updated before we did the procedure. Or did you forget that?”

Morgan grumbled, then shook their head. “Well—whatever. You should come home.”

“Thisishome.”

They rolled their eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, he did. He crossed his arms. Morgan was silent for a second. Then they said, “You were supposed to have your midterm ultrasound last week.”

“I’ve been busy,” he said. They had been; signing over the land was no easy thing, as it turned out. Winston had involved no fewer than ten people thus far, most of them lawyers. One of them seemed to be an expert on constitutional law or something. It had all gone over Rupert’s head.

Morgan made the most exasperated noise he’d ever heard, and then the link cut out again, chopping it up.

“And Dr. Vilkensen emailed over his chart notes. I really want to do some more tests and follow up, and—”

“Why?” he asked.

“Well,” Morgan said. “Because. It’s good practice. I want to make sure you’re healthy, Rupert.”

He sighed.

“So get back to Cape Town—”

“Dr. Vilkensen is based in Johannesburg.”

Morgan looked down at their notes. “Whatever. Get back, get the testing done, then get your butt back here. Okay?”

“Fine,” he muttered, then closed down the link. He sat there for a moment after, rubbing his belly, then scratching when the itch started to drive him mad. He was twenty-two weeks pregnant now, and his skin was mottled with fresh, red stretch marks, on account of how much bigger he was.

The baby was growing like a weed—or weeds, if Mama Thandiwe was to be believed. Rupert was starting to think she might be right; he’d been counting kicks at night, and either he and Winston had inadvertently created the next star footballer or there was more than one set of feet hammering on Rupert’s insides.

He gathered up the satellite equipment and waddled his way back down the path from Uncle Stanley’s to Mandisa’s. Uncle Stanley, since his home was slightly more elevated, generally allowed people to make calls from his kitchen. Like almost everyone else in the village, Uncle Stanley seemed very invested in Ndileka’s grandchild, Mbulelo’s first child.

Rupert had gathered that Ndileka occupied a place of great respect; Mama Thandiwe was also greatly respected in her role as a midwife. Winston was their eldest child and an alpha, and the whole village was quite proud of him for having studied in an Ivy League American school (Yale, Winston had finally told him, when pressed). They were even more proud of him for practicing law, and his financial contributions didn’t hurt his social standing either. The villagers had almost nothing but praise for Winston; if anything, they complained that he spent too much time in America and that he hadn’t settled down with a “good omega.”

Rupert didn’t know if he counted as a “good” omega. The villagers shared a lot of Ndileka’s reservations about him, even after news of the land return had become public. His role as parent-to-be of Winston’s child seemed to buy him more social status than giving back the land had.

Mandisa had been making him change diapers and bathe her children, which he didn’t quite understand; he’d thought they’d hire a nanny, at least. Winston had seemed perplexed by the suggestion, so Rupert had decided to let it lie. He couldn’t quite figure it—surely, Winston didn’t think he could take care of the baby all by himself, constantly? But then again, he wasn’t going to have a job, so maybe Winston did expect that of him. At the same time, the alpha said that it took a village to raise a child.

“Mama Thandiwe said to give you this,” Mandisa said when he returned the satellite equipment to her home. Mama Thandiwe and Ndileka didn’t use it a lot, so Mandisa kept it safe at her place.