Page 18 of Flight of the Omega

“Um.” JP didn’t really have an explanation for why he was on top of the bed canopy. He’d probably thought about tossing himself off it. Hitting the floor would hurt, sure, but it wouldn’t kill him. It was a foolish thought, if it had been a thought at all.

Jack considered him for a long moment. Then he set down the tray he was carrying. “You wanna get down from there? How the heck did you get up there anyway? I know you can’t fly.”

JP huffed but clambered down, sliding to the floor. He didn’t feel like explaining.

Jack quirked a brow at him but wisely left it alone. He gestured to the tray. “Just some toast, but it’s better than nothing.”

They were silent while JP picked at the toast. He wasn’t hungry, although he had a headache. He drank water, because Jack seemed more concerned about that than anything.

JP snuck tiny glances at Jack, wondering if or when Jack was going to lose interest. Maybe he already had. He didn’t seem to want to bang JP, at any rate, which made JP just as nervous as people whodidwant to bang him.

He swallowed down another bit of dry toast, then took a healthy sip of water. “Do you … are you …”

Jack quirked a brow. “Am I what?”

JP lowered his head a little, trying to hide the blush that was staining his cheeks. “Y’know,” he mumbled.

“No. What?”

“Avian,” JP mumbled, glancing first at the floorboards, then at Jack. More specifically, at Jack’s crotch.

“Oh,” Jack said, in that kind of homey, easy-going way he had. “Could you tell?”

JP couldn’t, actually, but he nodded anyway. It had seemed like a fair assessment, from the way Jack handled the other birds in the flock.

Jack sighed. “On my mother’s side,” he said.

JP lifted his head. “Your father’s not?”

“Nope,” Jack said.

“I’m half too,” JP offered, wondering at the curl of heat in his chest. “My mother,” he added when Jack gave him a funny look. JP turned pinker. He hoped Jack wouldn’t say anything about his father. After all, the man was Jack’s employer.

JP frowned. Did his dad have a thing for collecting angelics? Jack wasn’t his brother, was he?

“Well,” Jack said, “that’s something. Guess we’re more similar than we thought. But different too—I’m shapelocked.”

“Oh,” JP said softly. That meant different sires, likely. At least Jack could keep his secret.

“Yeah,” Jack murmured. “Little jealous of you, to be honest.”

JP cleared his throat. “It’s not fun,” he said. “Shifting, I mean.”

“Wouldn’t know anything about it,” Jack sighed. “Guess we always want what we can’t have, yeah?”

It was on the tip of JP’s tongue to tell him that they could bond since they were both angelics, and then he’d be able to see what it was like to be in a bird’s head. Bird’s eye view or something.

But that felt dangerously close to emotion, and this was supposed to be nothing. JP couldn’t let it beanything.

Jack shuffled a little closer. It was hard to tell, but his bronzed cheeks were darker, maybe a little rosier. He was warm, at any rate. “You, um … you’re an omega bird.”

“Yeah,” JP agreed. He already knew where this was going, especially when Jack’s gaze darted down.

Still, Jack shifted around a little bit, almost like they were high schoolers with their first crushes, dancing around the subject of getting naked.

Not that JP had ever had crushes. Nor had he fooled around with anyone. He’d been sixteen the first time he’d gone into heat, the first time he’d …

He focused on Jack to block out the memory.