Chapter 46
Sure, I could’ve assigned this extremely tedious task to someone else, but while my scripts were running, there wasn’t much hands-on work for me to do.
It was simple, really. The bot crawled Eva’s donation data and messages, hunting for IP addresses that were within a reasonable enough radius for the user to swing by her place and ransack it.
Of course, if the dead man happened to be smart enough to use a VPN, it would do a half-decent job of throwing me off their tracks—if only temporarily.
But I wasn’t worried about that right now.
No, I was worried about whether or not the T-shirt in Eva’s photo and the one in this listing were the same based on a partial logo at the hip and a specific stitching around the collar.
I worked away at the list I’d made for a while longer, cross-referencing my purchases with the spreadsheet I’d built of Eva’s outfits and other belongings from the photos I’d taken in her flat. Crossing off the items that I’d already been able to locate.
Easier said than done, for the most part. Of the hundreds of entries I’d created, I’d only managed to track down a dozen of them at best.
Frustrating.
In the plastic container on my desk, my companions had become much less active in the daytime hours. Still, I enjoyed the companionship of the little nocturnal bugs.
They were comforting in a way that their fully-realized counterparts around the room were not. Maybe owing to the fact that they were still alive.
But soon, there would be more than a tupperware of worms for me to raise.
With a little luck, Eva would be pregnant any day.
That was sure to stop this ridiculous infighting. And, if it didn’t, I would put a stop to it.
There was nothing worse for a pregnancy than stress. Meaning that my packmates would need to settle their differences, and quickly.
Eva’s wardrobe, though a fairly dull project, wasn’t difficult. But her second problem, the lifetime ban she’d received because of Indigo and my carelessness? That was trickier.
I’d already reached out to my contacts who were within the company’s periphery with little success.
It seemed like I was going to have to be more creative than sending a few e-mails on this one, given that most of the responses I’d received so far were no more helpful than information that I’d find in an online search.
I clicked purchase on the vintage top, hoping that the early naughts style was even a hair closer to the design of the shirt that Eva had lost, and ticked it off my list, soaking in the small feeling of victory as yet another item fell to superior wit and skill for utilizing o-Bay.
A soft knock sounded against one of the panes of the windowed door to my office, and I looked up from the screen, catching a glimpse of creamy white thigh from where Eva waited in her pajamas outside.
“Come in,” I called, closing my tabs.
It would be more special for Eva if the replacements were a surprise, instead of a project that I was working on with no end date.
The vision was clear in my mind: Eva opening her closet doors, expecting the few basic pieces she’d managed to salvage, only to be shocked by even her hardest-to-find pieces.
She opened the door, timidly poking her head inside with a wary look at the walls.
My eyes lifted to follow hers, the corner of my lips tilting upwards into a smile. “See something you like?”
“No,” she said flatly, entering the room in full and closing the door. “Indi, Joon and Marcus went on their date, and I’m bored.”
“Bored?” I echoed, frowning a little. “Find something to do?”
“That’s what I’m doing,” she said, glancing at the plastic container on my desk like it’d stolen her loot after a boss fight. “But my alpha is a fucking weirdo who keeps disgusting maggots on his desk.”
“Whoa,” I said, pushing away from the desk in my rolling chair and offering my hands to the omega. “First of all, they’re silk worms. Not maggots—”
“Still gross, for the record,” she said, rounding the desk with an anxious look at the pinned insects lining the walls.
“And second, they have names.”
Eva took my hands with a heavy eyeroll that had me considering pulling her over my knee. “They’re disgusting, why the fuck do you have them?”
“To make silk,” I said, like it was obvious. Realistically… it was. What other reason would I have to breed silkworms?
“Right,” she muttered, her eyes narrowing. “Are you just going to disappear again tonight? Or are you at least going to make sure that the others come home first?”
My eyes caught on the bite mark on the side of Eva’s neck.
“What’s with the attitude, tesoro? Don’t you have two other alphas and an omega to keep you company?
” I took a deep breath through my nose, trying to get a hint of who made our little omega into an official member of our pack, but Eva’s earthy matcha and sweet strawberry overpowered all but whispers of anyone else. “A mate?”
“Does it matter?” she snapped, eyes darting towards the silkworms peacefully snoozing in their plastic enclosure on the desk. “I came looking for you, and you weren’t here, Cameo! What if something happened?”
“I’m sure whoever bit you could’ve handled it,” I said, my head tilting.
If Indigo were here, I think they would’ve laughed. I could almost picture the alpha shaking their head and giving me a thumbs down. That was the wrong thing to say.
Eva’s face screwed up, her nose scrunching. “Oh, right! Because it doesn’t matter which of you it is! Just that one is around!”
“What is wrong with you?” I asked with a confused blink. It was clear she’d sought out some kind of comfort, it didn’t make sense why she was upset.
Again, this seemed to be the wrong thing to say. The omega’s face reddened with an emotion I couldn’t quite place.
“I mean—wasn’t your mate the one you needed? What the fuck did I have to be around for if you—”
“So you only care about me if you get to bite me or fuck me, is that it?”
“What? No! I—”
“Sick and tired of your needy omega unless the need is sex, right? Well that s-s-sucks!”
Surely, this was the hell that my nonna swore I’d end up in if I stopped going to church. There was no other explanation for the entirely baffling sequence of events playing in front of me.
Tears started forming in the omega’s eyes as her hand shot into her pocket to pull out the switchblade I’d gifted her. The soft click of the mechanism opening music to my ears—even if they were trying to sew themselves shut in anticipation of yet another bout of crying.
“I never said that,” I tried, putting my hands up placatingly as Eva pointed the knife in my direction.
“You don’t care about me at all! I’m just a fucking hole to you!”
“Listen to me, you devil woman!” I shouted, trying to get a word in.
The omega burst into tears. “You’re such an asshole! I was scared! And you just fucking left me all alone!”
Wait.
Could it be?
Excitement skittered through me. Partly from the proximity of Eva’s knife to my neck, my cock responded to the anger in her eyes, even as I leaned away from her tears. And, because maybe, just maybe—she was acting insane because she was pregnant.
“You have three other—” I tried, but the tip of the knife pressed against my jaw, and the rest of what I wanted to say was lost. My mouth was moving before my brain could catch up. “Come sit in my lap while you do that.”
“Are you fucking serious?!” she shouted. “I’m holding a knife to you, and you’re making jokes?!”
“I’m not joking,” I said quickly, trying to smooth things over. “I really mean it, Eva.”
“YOU NEVER TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!” she screamed, bursting into fat tears that tracked down her face and dripped from her chin.
There was no other reasonable explanation. I tried, and mostly failed, to stop myself from grinning. The delight in my voice was unmistakable as I asked, “Were you looking for me to share good news?”
Eva hit my chest with her hand, pushing me a couple of inches away in my rolling chair, sniffling loudly. “No! I wanted to cuddle, and you just fucked off to god knows where!”
“You’re nesting,” I said, although truthfully I had no fucking idea.
Usually, nesting was a lot about pillows, blankets, and lighting or…
whatever. An omega’s need to make their space as safe and comfortable as possible.
But maybe, with the pregnancy hormones…?
“Do you think you’re such an emotional wreck because you’re pregnant? ”
“What?” Eva shrieked, the sound making my ears ring unpleasantly. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! Never mind the fact that I’d lost my job! And my apartment! And two of my packmates were fighting! And you—maybe I—you make me feel—I hate you!”
The wailing that followed her admission was so loud, and paired with so much snot leaking from the omega’s nose, that I stood up from my chair.
“You hate me,” I repeated, backing away from her.
No amount of sexy knife play was worth this. If Eva continued to insist on behaving like the world’s most disgusting faucet, I didn’t need to stay and witness it.
Especially if she hated me.
“Cameo—”
“No,” I said sternly, “Regardless of whatever omega issues you are having right now, that is not an acceptable way to speak to me.”
“An acceptable way to speak to you? Cameo, you never listen!”
“How can I do anything else if all you do is shout and whine!?”
She closed the pocket knife with a click and replaced it into her pocket, the silence between us almost worse than the hideous sound of her snorting her snotty nose.
A thought that I realized, nearly immediately, was the stupidest one I’d ever had, when Eva positively started screeching with tears.
“Stupid slutty crybaby cock whore Eva! Right! I get it!”
I blinked, staring at her open-mouthed for a few moments. My heart rate had elevated, a low whine in my ears making it hard to focus.
It was just… too much.
“I—Eva, I can’t talk to you when you are like this. I’m going to the garage until you… cool down.”
“D-don’t come back until y-y-you’re ready to apologize!” she shouted, but I was already moving out the door of my office and down the hall to the kitchen, the back door in my sights.
If this was pregnancy-related hysteria, I had no idea how I was going to deal with it for nine months.
Maybe Indigo would know what to do…
Once the door shut between us, I could finally breathe deeply again.
I unlocked the garage, stepping inside and turning on the light with a sigh of relief at the pressing silence.
Obviously, I couldn’t hide out here forever. Eva would eventually self-regulate and I’d be able to have a reasonable, adult conversation with her. Tell her how I really felt.
Probably.
Maybe.
I’d just… tidy up for a bit. Fix one mess and then go inside to fix the other.
Once my ears stopped ringing.