11. Twenty-six #2
Caine rolled his eyes, turning back toward the window and getting to work.
And something about the tense set of his shoulders and acidic edge to his scent—annoyed, impatient—broke through the wispy tendrils of my restraint.
If he was going to be annoyed regardless, then he could feel the full power of how irritating I could be.
Twenty minutes later, I had three notebook pages scrawled in notes. I stood up from the counter, walking around the peninsula and calling out to him, “Pick a number.”
“What?” he replied without turning around.
“Pick. A. Number.”
“Why?”
“C’mon. It’ll be fun.”
“What will?”
I shrugged, all coy-like, and meandered closer to where he worked at the window. “Can’t tell ya unless you pick.”
“No.”
I kicked a spot clear on the couch and sat sideways on it, lounging like I didn’t have a care in the world. “Yes.”
A warning rumble from his chest only served to make me giddy. You only think you’re annoyed, Cranky Caine. Just wait.
“Let’s go, CC, we’re burning daylight here.”
“The hell’d you just call me?” he seethed, abandoning the window altogether.
I rolled my lips between my teeth, the look of innocence. “I called you Mr. Arceneaux, Esquire, Sir, yes, sir.” I finished off with a mock salute.
Caine crossed his arms, stormy visage unmoving. “Lie again, and I nail the windows shut. All of them.”
Instead of answering, I settled back further into the cushions and propped the notebook on my bent knees. “Pick a number, Cranky Caine.”
He blinked a few times. “Sonuva—”
“That’s not a number.”
He looked to the heavens as though begging for intervention from on high. “Eight hundred and twelve.”
I sucked on my teeth, looking at my notes.
“ What? ” Caine growled.
“No, no, it’s fine,” I evaded, barely paying him attention because I knew the brush-off would only add to his annoyance. “That’ll just…take…time…”
“ What , for the love of god, will take time?”
“Go work on the windows. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
“Tar—”
“Windows, Esquire!”
I swore I heard him muttering something about insane omegas under his breath.
We lapsed into a tense silence, him manhandling the windows and me completing my notes.
It was almost meditative, the counting and marking off, counting and circling.
I tuned out my exhaustion, my anxiety, my frustration and bitterness.
I rested my head on the back cushion of the couch, cradled my notebook against my propped-up knees, and counted. Over, and over, and over again.
Caine was finally to the fifth window when I stood from the couch, satisfied with my own progress. “Okay, you ready?”
Caine cut a look at me without stopping his work on the window. “For?”
I cleared my throat dramatically, holding my notebook in front of me. “Now, because someone was being a real crankosaurus, I had to improvise on the numbers. Otherwise I’d still be counting.”
“For the millionth time, counting what ?”
I ignored him, and his face grew even redder. My inner omega did a happy dance. “Luckily, I’m brilliant. So I just divided eight hundred and twelve by the fifty-four options total I had, and that gave me the number I actually needed to count through—”
“If you don’t—”
“—which was fifteen and completely manageable—”
“—explain this bullshit right the fuck now—”
“—and honestly, you really should be more invested in this—”
“FUCKING STOP!”
I met Caine’s furious gaze, struggling to hold back my cackle. “It’s your future, after all.”
Caine
Maddox women would be the death of me.
The damn omega was winding me up. I knew this, I could smell it in the smug excitement of her damned toffee and cream scent that was too strong in the enclosed space. I could feel it in the heat that colored her cheeks. Could see it in the pinch of her lips as she tried not to smile.
After this morning’s little surprise, I was not in the fucking mood.
“My future ?”
“Glad you asked,” she said with a chipper squeak and consulted that stupid notebook again.
“So according to my calculations, you’re supposed to be living in a mansion.
But honestly, I would count this as a mansion.
It’s all your building after all. You’re the ones who decided to turn it into a multi-tenant situation.
So that checks out. And for a spouse, we have—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the fuck up!” I said, stepping away from the window and snatching the notebook out of her hands. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
She looked at me like I’d asked who turned off the sun each night. “Your future. As told by the MASH gods.”
Sure enough, at the top of the page sat, in big letters, M-A-S-H.
The last three letters had all been X’ed out, and she’d circled the M multiple times.
Below were several groups of names or objects, all but one crossed out.
Categories ranging from Dream Car to Celebrity Spouse to fucking Final Meal.
Incoherent as the scribblings were, they were also familiar. Familiar enough that the tension evaporated from my shoulders.
I sighed, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. “I don’t have time for schoolyard games, Omega.”
A kitten-like growl emanated from the omega in question, and I hated myself for finding it just a little bit adorable.
“First off, you don’t get to call me ‘Omega.’ And second, it’s not just a schoolyard game, Cranky Caine. The MASH gods never lie.”
I practically strangled myself trying to hold back the laugh bubbling forth as I handed her notebook back to her and returned to the window. “Really? Do I strike you as a Spyder type of guy?”
“You strike me as an asshole, and unless they make a breathalyzer for that I don’t see why you couldn’t be.”
And just like that, the air soured with my annoyance again. “Yeah, well, the asshole is almost done here and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“You keep working, I’ll read it aloud,” she said, waving me off without a care in the world as she lounged back on her couch. I smothered my sigh as best I could, turning to the final window.
I could’ve been done hours ago. Hell, the first window alone—the one I’d finagled with for more than an hour—I could’ve finished in a quarter of the time. Yet I couldn’t force myself to work faster, no matter how much my brain yelled it to my hands.
My alpha liked her smell. Same as Brea’s.
I hated him for it, tried desperately to suppress the bastard to the point that I could do my work as quickly as possible and escape the confines of her apartment.
Bad enough I’d passed a mortifying hour inhaling Brea’s tangy pomegranate aroma, but at least the office had neutralizers on full blast.
No such mitigation here. Taryn’s sticky sweet scent permeated every inch of the apartment.
Even when she’d begun her annoyance crusade, while the man I was grew more and more agitated, my inner alpha wagged its tail.
He basked in her attention. He preened to have it undivided, her entire focus on him.
I tried to quell him, to remind him that she had an alpha—a female alpha, at that.
For all we knew, this omega wanted nothing to do with knots and ruts.
I didn’t want anything to do with knots and ruts.
He wouldn’t listen.
So here we still were, sunlight slanting through the windows I’d steadily sanded and unstuck, as the obnoxious, intoxicating omega read out the details of my supposed future.
The worst part of it all? The only headache that had bloomed after I left this morning’s appointment—gone within five minutes of entering the Maddox apartment.
Brooks will be insufferable about this.
“Your career,” she read out, “says you’re meant to be an airplane pilot. I mean, never too late to learn something new, I guess.”
I scoffed. Fat chance, given the fact that I could barely climb a ladder without getting woozy.
“What?” she asked.
“Not a goddamn thing,” I murmured, continuing my work.
She shrugged, returning her gaze to the paper. “And as far as kids—”
“Nope,” I said, turning and striding across the room. “Finished.”
“Hey!” she shouted as she sprang from her seat.
Fucking omegas. Nothing but babies on the brain.
“Fucking excuse you, Cranky Caine,” Taryn said, standing, “don’t act like you know me somehow.”
Must've said that last part out loud.
This omega was literally driving me mad.
“Then tell me something, princess. Surprise me.”
She crossed her arms, eyes sharp and narrowed. “How’s this for surprising? I spent my morning at a protest downtown.”
I blinked a few times at her. “You what ?”
“Yep. I caught a bus and there were—god—hundreds of omegas all gathered to support the 'End the Census' bill, and Corinth Wainwright even walked by—”
“Protests like that turn into riots!” I shouted, my heart racing. “God, Taryn, you shouldn’t go to those things! People have been shot and—and trampled and arrested . Fuck, people have tried to kill that bastard, what if—”
“Honestly, Caine,” Taryn interrupted me, her voice raised over mine, “you have absolutely no say in what I do. Just…shut up and leave.”
Fuck me, there were tears in her eyes. Brea would be so disappointed—not only had I not used a single anger management coping mechanism we’d talked about only hours ago, but now I’d made her omega cry.
I didn’t say a word. Instead of moving toward the door, though, I returned to the final window I hadn’t quite finished yet. Taryn didn’t stop me, but she didn’t read me any more of my fortune after that.
Within ten minutes, the last window rose without a sound. I waited for the cascading relief that I could finally escape. None came.
Gathering my tools together, I glanced toward Taryn, who sat on the couch, scrolling on her phone. I cleared my throat, but she didn’t look my direction.
“Finished,” I grumbled.
“Hmm,” Taryn hummed, still not looking up at me.
My brow furrowed, and I buried the niggling insecurity. “Next time, submit a work order,” I muttered as I headed for the door.
Just as I reached for the knob, Taryn finally spoke up. “It’s a shame you’re so anti-omega, you know.”
I turned to face her, clenching my jaw. “I’m not anti-omega,” I said.
She gave a single cold laugh. “Could’ve fooled me.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose with my free hand, taking a slow inhale. Which, given the mouthwatering toffee in the air, didn’t really help.
Taryn didn’t wait for me to catch my bearings before continuing, “Anyway, it’s a shame you’re the anti-est pro-omega in the world, since you’re gonna have one in your pack someday.”
My eyes snapped open, laser-focused on the packet of torn notebook pages she held out toward me.
Every cell of my brain screamed at me to turn and leave, run, lock myself away in my room and wait for this irritating, enrapturing creature to forget I existed.
My body disobeyed. My feet inched forward.
My arm raised. My fingers grasped the pages.
My eyes read over the cute, if messy, handwriting.
A cluster of categories on the second page caught my eye.
Number of Packmates: 5
Beside that, Alpha, Omega, and Beta were scrawled five times each. She counted through, crossing off every fifteenth option until only five remained: Alpha, alpha, beta, beta. And omega.
My fingers clenched around the papers, but I didn’t crumble them. Even though the voice in my mind that had been trying to get me out of this apartment for hours insisted I should. I looked back to Taryn, blinking once, twice, before putting my mask back in place.
“Don’t put too much stock in games and wishes,” I scoffed. “You’ll just be disappointed.”
“I don’t know,” she replied, unwavering. “You’re already halfway there.”
Brooks and Lin. Beta and alpha.
Before I could fire off a retort, the knob turned behind me and the door opened, ushering Brea into the space. She paused as she came through the door, red hair in suave waves around her shoulders, fair skin glowing like pearl in the V of her blouse.
“Is…everything okay?” she asked, eyes bouncing between Taryn and me.
“Yep!” Taryn chirped as I made to brush past her alpha. “Just getting Cranky Caine to fix the windows for us. We had a delightful time.”
Brea arched a brow, as though finding that difficult to believe. She looked down at the papers in my hand and chuckled. “Oh, I see someone had a delightful time.”
The alpha gave no indication we’d spent an hour in stilted quasi-intimate conversation this morning.
I knew she wouldn’t tell Taryn about it—she’d explicitly promised not to—but I’d wondered how much she could really hide if we were ever all in the same space.
My answer stood before me, an absolutely flawless mask of nothing to see here .
Meanwhile, my heart raced and my face felt clammy and I knew my scent was growing in the room, which was an added humiliation.
Taryn stood from the couch, meandering over to where Brea and I stood near the kitchen island. “I learned long ago to never doubt the MASH gods, Madam Alpha,” she said in a teasing voice that still zapped right through me. “They told me I’d get you, after all.”
“Mm-hmm,” Brea nodded, holding my gaze as she slipped around me to stroke Taryn’s hair and kiss her brow. “If anyone could open a channel to the gods, it would be you, Teacup.”
My inner alpha howled at their casual intimacy, at the easy affection.
I’d been trying to convince him for years that we didn’t want either.
Yet there I stood, transfixed by two taken women, with an ache in my chest where my alpha was clawing to escape, to beg them for just a taste of such tenderness for himself.
I reined him in, shut him down. Like I always did. Scowling, I gave Brea a solemn grunt and all but threw myself through the door, slamming it shut behind me.
I still held Taryn’s MASH notes in my hand.
There was nonsense in these pages. Much of it, in fact.
Still, though, I stared at the Packmates category.
Throughout the evening and night, I’d pick up and put down those notes and stare at those scribbled lines over a hundred fucking times.
And the man in me sent silent prayers that, maybe, it wasn’t just games and wishes.