“And how are you doing with this all?”
Duke paused and glanced over at him. “What do you mean?”
“This is going to be stressful for you.” Bax was using that careful tone of voice that Duke had noticed before, as if he wasn’t sure either of Duke or Duke’s response.
Okay. Duke put the knife down and turned right around to face Bax. “I’m fine. Scared. I don’t like to see Bram in this situation. I don’t want to lose the babies, Bram doesn’t want to lose the babies, and if he does, he’s never going to forgive himself.” It hit him then, all the emotions he’d been holding back while he looked after Bram and he had to turn away, leaning over the sink with his hands braced on the edge. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.
“You’re already doing it, Duke.” Bax got up and came to stand next to Duke at the sink. His voice was stronger now, less of that careful tiptoeing around an alpha bomb. “And at least you have Adelaide here. In Buffalo Gap, he’d have lost them. Trust me.” He put a hand on Duke’s shoulder and Duke half-expected that odd calm of Jason’s to wrap itself around him, but it didn’t.
Oh, wait. Maybe Bax… “You’re True Omega. Can you do something? Anything? Make it better?” He looked up hopefully, only to see Bax’s moon-white face. “No? I thought you guys had magic.”
“No.” Bax’s first response was breathy and anxious, but his second, “No,” held all the firmness Duke expected of Abel, though Duke smelled hints of fear and worry in the air. “I can’t. I don’t even know what it is. I can’t do things like that.” He backed away, then appeared to catch himself and his voice softened. “I’m sorry, I can’t fix that. I wish I could.” He glanced over at the bedroom door. “I wish I knew what we were good for.”
“It’s okay.” Duke nodded and glanced toward the door as well. “We’ll just have to do the best we can. At least he’ll have time to study.”
Bax’s eyes widened. “He will, at that. But, I think I know a way to keep him busy, and let him earn credits.” He frowned, his brain obviously working furiously, then cracked a huge grin. “Come with me. We need to talk to Abel.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
When I woke up that evening, the apartment was empty and I felt lonelier than I ever had in my life. Being the only omega in the pack, that had been pretty lonely at times. Honestly, still was. I was so far behind the new omegas in what I knew about being one that I’d started actively avoiding some of them because the teasing just never stopped. But now, in my quiet bedroom all by myself, I would have even taken their company to not be alone in my nightmare.
Silly. You have Duke.
I almost got up. In fact, I was sitting up and had my legs over the side of the bed when I realized what I was doing. “Dammit.” Then I decided I was being ridiculous and I went to the bathroom, and instead of going back to bed, I laid down on the couch.
Except, like ninety-nine percent of the pack, we had no internet at our home, and of course no cable or satellite or any of the other ways the humans got television shows into their house. So turning on the television was a bust, unless I wanted to watch whatever was still in the little DVD player because I’d laid down before I thought about putting anything in the machine. “Dammit,” I said again, and just…sprawled there in despair. This sucks.
But then I felt a tiny bump against the side of my belly, one of the babies reminding me that they were there, and that made it okay.
Well, almost. I was still bored as snot. No, wait! I had my phone! Oh, crap. Nope. I was almost at the limit of my data. I could listen to music, I supposed.
When Duke got home, I was halfway through my housework playlist and starting to get antsy again. And tired, if I was being honest. All the pushing to get through the day that I’d been doing was coming home to haunt me. But hearing Duke come through the door made me want to sit up and look cheerful for him. “Hi, you’re back!” I made the effort to put as much happy care-for-nothing in my voice as I could, fighting against the fatigue weighing my bones down like concrete.
“Hey,” he said. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” He was grinning like a loon.
“What?” I debated getting up, but the baby kicked or punched or whatever, so I listened to the little bosses inside me and stayed put.
“You’ll see. You slept through supper. Do you want any?”
“I can make it.”
He frowned at me. “No, you can’t. You have to convince the ankle-biters to stay inside where they belong.”
I was disappointed, because he was right and now I really wasn’t pulling my weight, but his comment about ankle-biters was pretty funny and I let the silliness chase away my depression. Jason had told me stories about Mac’s first encounters with Fan and warned me jokingly to be careful not to let Duke get overwhelmed. Or eaten. “I’m blaming it all on you.”
“My mother would agree with you.” He came over to sit on the couch, lifting my legs to rest them on his thighs. “So, I hope you don’t mind, but I invited Abel and Bax over to visit tonight. Thought you could use some company.”
It would be good to have a distraction. “Are they bringing the pups?”
“Probably just Taden. I don’t think Bax goes anywhere without him.”
“Okay, sure.” I wiggled my toes at him. “Are they coming for supper, or just to visit?”
“Visit. I’m not brave enough to let Bax eat my cooking yet.”
“But you’ll let your pregnant mate eat it?”
“My pregnant mate knows I’m just a rough cook. Would you like some chicken and rice and maybe some string beans?”
My stomach rolled once, then settled. A promising sign. “That sounds good. Thank you.” I let him move my legs back onto the couch and watched as he rustled around in the kitchen. Soon, the apartment smelled of chicken and herbs and the starchy smell of rice cooking. I was hungry, and I couldn’t wait for it to be done. Maybe, now that I was bedridden, my stomach would give me a break? Wouldn’t that be nice?
I did manage a decent meal—nothing huge, but we took our time over the food, me still stretched out on the couch, with Duke sitting on the floor next me, and I managed to eat pretty much all of it without setting my stomach off.
Duke carried our dishes off to be washed, leaving me to rest on the couch.
I was bored. “Do you think we could borrow a movie from Bax? I’m going nuts.”
“I can ask,” he said absently. Water splashed and dishes clinked.
I was still bored. “I could dry them, you know.”
He stopped dead and turned to give me what I’d started calling ‘the Look’. “You set one foot off that couch except to go to the bathroom, and I’ve got a big bottle of wood glue in my shop that will fix that.”
The big meanie. I was about to complain some more, to see if I could get him to let the dishes soak and come back over here, when there was a knock on the door. Company!
Duke set aside the frying pan he was washing—boy, I hoped that was the last dish and not one of the first ones—and went to open the door. “Hi, come on in. He’s out on the couch. Let me grab the chairs.”
Bax and Abel walked across the little apartment and greeted me. Bax was, as Duke had predicted, carrying Taden, and Abel held Noah. Bax took the chair that Duke pointed him too, but Abel crouched down in front of the couch. In his free hand, he held a couple of heavy cloth bags.
“The rest of the pups are back with Holland,” Abel said. He put Noah on the floor and emptied out the smaller of the two bags, dumping a dozen small wooden blocks on the floor before taking a seat.
Noah squealed and grabbed for the blocks.
“Duke’s present for Taden’s birth, but Noah seems to be getting more use out of them,” Abel commented, reaching up to accept a mug of tea from Duke.
“The present was for you guys. You needed something to distract him.” Duke handed another mug to Bax with a “Sorry, I don’t have coffee.”
“That’s fine. I like tea too.” Bax smiled and sippe
d from his mug, Taden held securely on one knee with his other hand.
I watched the two pups hungrily, while mine punched and fought inside me, as if they knew that someone else was getting the attention that was rightfully theirs.
“When do you go for the next ultrasound?” Bax asked.
“Next week.” I was excited and nervous and apprehensive. Did I want boys, or girls, or what?
“It would be nice to have one of those machines here,” Bax mused. “Don’t you think, Abel?”
“I liked the surprise,” he said, and leaned over to kiss Bax on the cheek.
Bax laughed and bounced Taden on his knee. “Speaking of surprises, show Bram his.” His eyes were bright with excitement and, if I read him right, relief too. What was it that they had brought?
I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Abel opened the other bag he’d brought and reached inside to pull out…a laptop! He passed it over to me, then dug inside the bag again. “Bax really doesn’t have time anymore to work on this, and he thought this would be a way for you to keep earning pack credits, even when you’re on bed rest.” He handed me a small, rectangular device, with a tiny grayish window on the front. “On here, and on the USB drives in the bag, are the interviews that Garrick did with the old ones in the pack. There’s a binder in the bag too, with things he copied at the university, and a book that was written by a human about our history.” He showed me how to turn on the recorder, and I jumped at the voices coming out of it.
“Oh, wow,” I said, and even I could hear the wonder in my voice. “This is so cool. Why didn’t you use a phone, though?” I’d recorded things on my phone before.
“I didn’t want the information stuck on one person’s phone, or a bunch of people.”
I turned the recorder off, but kept a careful grip on it. “What do you want me to do?”
Bax leaned forward. “I was transcribing all the interviews, and making notes of any stories about True Omegas, and looking for links between them.” His voice was earnest, and when I looked up, I could see how important this was to him. He licked his lips, as if he were nervous. “I—we—need to know what Jason and I are, what it means. Why people think we’re so important. What we can do, and what we have to do to keep ourselves safe.”
Oh. “Wow, uh, okay. You sure I’m the person you want doing this?” I found it hard to believe that even another omega would put that much trust in me.
It wasn’t Bax that answered, though, but Abel. “Don’t forget, Bram. I’ve seen your school marks. I know you can do this and find the connections we need found.” He reached out a hand, and it took me a moment to realize he wanted to shake mine. “Deal?” he asked.
“Deal,” I said in a stunned voice and shook his hand, like I was an alpha or something. I had a job again. Not only that, but it was an important job. Abel wouldn’t give this to someone who would screw it up, because both Bax and Jason and—possibly—Taden depended on the information I would find.
Oh my.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
One week later, and we were on the road again. I was in the back, stretched out as horizontally as I could be with the seatbelt on. Duke was driving and Abel was in the passenger seat. I had my earbuds in and was listening to more of the taped interviews while the alphas talked business or whatever it was that entertained alphas. Well, I knew what entertained Duke, but I couldn’t jump him in the van with Abel here, and it wouldn’t be nice to tease him.
Besides, I was feeling kind of icky, between the never-ending nausea and being in the van and with the pups gaining weight like they were going for a world record. I honestly kind of wanted to be left alone to mope a little, though the thought of finding out if we were having girls or boys lightened my mood a bit. And Duke was going through one of his ‘we really shouldn’t, because you aren’t getting anything out of it and besides it might hurt the babies’ spells, even though I thought I was getting something out of our marital sessions, and just thinking about that pissed me off, so I went back to listening to the old ones talk.
This one was really interesting.
Well, no one in my immediate family was omega, but I had a second cousin in Green Moon who turned out that way, a girl, so we didn’t know until she was in her teens, although everyone said they’d always known, because she was so good with the pups and she had a real knack for taking a piece of beef that should have been turned into a shoe and making something edible out of it. But she was sweet, and no one ever wanted to cross her, because you’d feel like a piece of raccoon shit for days until you’d fixed whatever you’d done wrong. But if you ever wanted something to run perfectly, she was the girl you came to first. Especially matings, because nothing ever went wrong when she was in charge, and so people came to her all the time, until she had to start saying no, because her eighth baby near killed her and she was never the same after. Her pups did well, though. Strong and healthy, and they never had the unlucky accidents that happened to other pups.
I listened through three more stories, adding up the information in my head. Most of the omega stories were pretty ordinary, homemakers, organizers, big families. But there were a few, dotted here and there through all the different tales, that were…different. And I began to believe in the stories of the True Omega powers, because there were just too many coincidences in these memories. I really wanted to talk to Bax, or Jason, just to confirm some of the things I was listening to, to see if they saw the patterns as well as me.
But not the alphas. Not yet. I trusted Abel and Duke and Quin and Mac. But this was an omega concern and, in my gut, I felt it was up to us to make the first decisions about it.
We reached the outskirts of the city a few minutes later. I started to sit up, but Duke caught my eyes in the rearview mirror, so I lay back down again and was nervous. All I could see was the sky and trees and the tops of buildings from my horizontal position, but I didn’t want to get the recordings out again when we were so close. I wondered what the doctor would say, if he would have any ideas to keep my babies from coming too early, if he’d be happy with me.
I guessed I couldn’t shake that omega need.
We got the same curious, uneasy glances as we walked into the hospital. I was glad for the big winter coat I was wearing, because I was obviously pregnant, and all of a sudden, with the twins to protect, expressions that had annoyed me before now frightened me. I couldn’t run the way I was now, and we were incredibly outnumbered.
Duke kept me close, as if he too felt the unspoken threat in the air.
The doctor’s office was quieter today, thankfully. I took a seat in the corner and Duke sat beside me while Abel went to tell the nurse we were there. We got some nervous and some aggressive looks, but nobody said anything, which was a relief.
Abel came back. “She says it’s okay to stay here. They’ll try to get you in fast.” He sat down on my other side and gave me a reassuring look. “Apparently Adelaide filled them in. They’re all geared up for you.”
“Oh,” I said in surprise. “That’s good.” I leaned against Duke and closed my eyes. The pups did somersaults in my belly and one of them took aim at my liver. I grunted and Duke muffled a laugh. “Haha, funny,” I grumbled at him. “You wait until later, I’ll give you a demonstration of how it feels.”
“Only if you can catch me,” he murmured back.
I opened my mouth to snark back at him, but the nurse came out of her office. “Bram?”
It was time. I got to my feet, Duke right behind me, and made my slow way over to the hallway where the nurse was waiting. My belly ached, and the spot where the stitches held my omega line together stung uncomfortably. The smile she gave me was bright, the one for Duke somewhat less so, but at least she didn’t seem as unnerved and suspicious as she had the last time. She led us down to a different room and left us alone again, like last time.
I climbed up on the table with Duke’s help, then sat and waited tensely, my hands locked together between my knees. Duke leaned against the t
able, close enough I could feel the heat of him against my body.
“How’s the bathroom situation?” he asked.
“Not as bad as the last time. I cheated a little,” I confessed.
“Brat,” he said casually.
“Alpha,” I muttered back, which made him snort out a laugh.
The doctor came in about fifteen minutes later. “Hello, Bram. I hear you’re having some problems.” He was already shaking out a measuring tape and reaching to wrap it around my waist. “Yes, indeed, they are growing well.” He had me jump down off the table so he could weigh me, then let Duke help me back up so he could take blood from my arm. “There. We’ll just check a few levels there. It’s very different from human women, you know. I had to call Adelaide to make sure I was reading the tests right. There just isn’t enough data out there.” He smiled and I felt like a bug in a jar. But he was here to help me, and I supposed it was better if he was curious than if he didn’t care.
The doctor put a hand on my shoulder and another on my knee. I felt a wave of possessiveness coming from Duke’s direction and I threw him a smile to remind him that I was his. He smiled distractedly back at me, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the doctor’s hands on my body. I reached out and took his hand and wished him some of Bax’s calm. It didn’t seem to work, but he squeezed my hand.
The doctor chatted on with me, seemingly unaware of the shift in Duke’s temper. Maybe he trusted me to keep Duke in check. Or maybe he was really just that oblivious.
Down went my pants, and the doctor peered at my omega line with an intensity that made the blood rush to my cheeks. I tugged at Duke’s hand to remind him to behave, then turned my attention to the doctor.
“Well,” he said. “Adelaide did a good job with the stitching. I might add a few more on each side, just in case. I can see the effect of the pressure on them.” He glanced up at me. “You’re probably not very comfortable down there, are you?” I shook my head mutely. He nodded. “I thought so. Why don’t we have a look at those two, and then you can get dressed and we’ll talk about a plan. You’ve got about ten weeks left?”
Duke's Baby Deal (MM Mpreg Shifter Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 3) Page 19