Chapter 20 #2
“Could I have some pasta please, alpha?” Eva asked, offering her plate for me to fill.
The sweetness in her tone drew a smile to my face as I took the dish from her. “Just the pasta? I think you should have a bit of salad, too… You’ll need the nutrients.”
If you decide to have our baby. I let that bit hang between us silently, deciding that a parentage contract was maybe a bit heavy of a topic during dinner.
While we were having dessert, however…
Eva nodded, and I took that as clearance to give her a bit of everything, our fingers brushing as I handed the plate back.
“This all looks incredible,” she said with a grin that felt better than my first Michelin star.
“Really,” Joon cut in, raising their voice to get my attention. “Amazing job, Marcus.”
Indigo snorted into their wine glass, and I shot the alpha a look that told him to shut up. If our omega wanted to be jealous I was getting a little attention from Eva, I wasn’t going to complain.
Cameo was filling his own glass, moving to do mine before offering me the bottle. “Grazie, Marcus. This is beautiful as always…”
“…But not quite like my Nonna’s,” the pack all chimed in at once, with various levels of success at mimicking Cameo’s soft accent.
Eva laughed, digging into her plate. “So…” she said, drawing the word out on a nervous breath. "How would this work, exactly?"
"How does what work?" Indigo asked, cracking a bit of fresh black pepper over Joon's plate before their own.
With someone new in the mix, it was easy to see the ways we’d settled together as a pack. And, whether or not Joon wanted to admit it, he was at its center. I was half sure that if I looked under the table I’d spot him playing footsie with Cameo.
"The, um… offer?" Eva prompted, color dusting her cheekbones in her embarrassment.
"Oh!" Cameo said, letting out a low laugh. "The baby? We'll negotiate the contract I drafted, of course."
"That's not very romantic…" complained Indigo, and, for the life of me, I couldn't imagine why they’d want it to be.
This omega wasn't here to be courted, she was here to act as a breeding mare to feed into Cameo’s delusions of the white picket fence, two point five children, American Dream.
Eva pushed her pasta around her plate, brows furrowed in confusion. "A contract? Like article B, subsection F?”
"Yes," Cameo said cheerfully, leaning to wipe a bit of red sauce from the corner of Eva’s mouth with a napkin. "We'll negotiate your rate, the duration of time, expectations of roles for both sides, limits, safe words, rules, you know, the typical things."
At the look of complete and utter loss on the girl's face, I spoke up, narrowly resisting the urge to click my fingers at her to get her attention—a bad habit I'd picked up in a house full of people who constantly wore headphones but was considered rude by just about anyone else’s standard.
"Have you ever been in a relationship dynamic before? You know, like… in the lifestyle?"
"Dynamic?" Eva asked, going even redder as her eyes swung between us.
"Y'know, been a sub," Indigo added helpfully.
The omega didn't need to answer, the tremble in her fingers and flush up her chest more than sufficient before she shook her head with a bounce of her pink hair. "I've never, I mean, before Halloween I'd never even…"
"Nothing wrong with being vanilla," Joon said with a shrug. "Have you done any research?"
"A little," she admitted. "And Tara is my best friend, so, um, we talk…"
“A good place to start,” Cameo praised. “Why don’t we go through some options and you can tell us your level of interest?”
“Or,” Indigo jumped in with a frown in Cameo’s direction when Eva looked like she was about to melt in her seat with embarrassment. “I can send you a questionnaire, you can look it over, and if you have any questions we can talk about it.”
“That sounds… yeah, like… way better…” she mumbled, continuing to push her food around her plate as she sank down in her chair.
“The offer is pretty basic,” Cameo said, either entirely oblivious or choosing to appear that way.
I’d learned pretty early on that the emotionally inept alpha was more than capable of picking up social cues, but more often than not he thought they were a waste of his time.
“We fuck you non-stop until you’re pregnant, you have our baby, we pay you a fat sum of money and you’re free to go.
” Cameo said, spearing a fat piece of tomato with his fork. “Easy.”
Privately, I thought the likelihood of a new mother happily skipping off into the sunset away from her newborn baby was a pipedream, but that was an argument to have with him later.
“It would probably make things easier if you, um—courted me, a little…” Eva mumbled into her plate, cheeks skipping past pink and to a shade that reminded me a bit of a boiled lobster. “It’d make me feel a little less like—”
“A human incubator?” Joon said. “Yeah, absolutely.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Indigo nodded.
I hummed, feeling vindicated in my private skepticism.
The odds that we’d spend however long it took to knock Eva up courting her, plus the time she was actually pregnant, and she’d still want to go anywhere after? Slim to none. The girl was practically panting for our entire pack as it was.
But I wasn’t cruel by any means, and if Eva wanted a bit of romance, I was happy to oblige her whims.
We already had an omega with commitment issues, the last thing my pack needed was another one.
Setting that aside for the time being, and internally cringing that Cameo was absolutely going to nail this girl on my beautiful countertop, I sighed. “Would anyone like a strawberry daiquiri?”