5. Elliott
Elliott
Iwas utterly exhausted. I could barely leave my bed except to go to the bathroom. My friends took turns making sure that I ate, and I lay in bed for five whole days before I finally was able to go outside and breathe the fresh air.
Keane walked with me to the ranch house for breakfast, one of the ops alphas following us. It wasn’t Jet.
Just thinking about what Jet had witnessed filled me with shame. Laura had told me that he’d stayed the entire time I was in the shed. Knowing that he’d heard me while I was in the throes of heat made me want to crawl into a dark hole and die.
“What do you think made you go into heat early like that?” Keane asked me.
I sighed. “It’s happened a couple of times before, a long time ago. And my birth father had erratic heats. He also had only one child when he was supposed to be super fertile, so who knows?”
“You’ll have to watch carefully for the signs from now on, then,” Keane warned, and I nodded.
A car horn tooted twice, and Keane and I both looked toward the driveway where Carter’s car had pulled up in front of the house. The passenger door opened, and Jackson climbed out and waved at us.
“Wonder what they’re doing here?” Keane said, lifting his arm to wave back.
When Trey got out of the backseat of the car with a small box in his hands, I said, “Oh, Trey’s brought me the herbal oils I asked for.
” I’d completely forgotten about them. Eric told me that he’d sold all my soap at the last market, while I’d been laid up.
He’d given me my part of the money from it, and I’d stashed it with the rest.
Carter headed for the house while Jackson and Trey walked over to us.
“Hey, it’s been a while.” Jackson hugged Keane and then me. “We heard you haven’t been feeling well, El. We were worried.”
“I’m okay now,” I assured him, then turned to Trey, who handed me the box of oils. “Thanks.”
“Jackson wants to see how you make the soap,” Trey told me.
“Oh, okay. We’ll do it after breakfast. Have you guys eaten?”
“No, we purposely didn’t because we want to eat Eric’s food,” Jackson said, grinning.
While their houses were being built, Jackson and Trey and their mates and kids were staying in a couple of campers parked on their property. If they’d still been at the Angel house, I wouldn’t have had to ask if they’d eaten: David would have made sure of it.
“Where are the kids?” I asked.
“We dropped them off at Mrs. Benson’s,” Trey said. “Both Bertram and Carter are helping the builders today.”
Audrey Benson was an older lady who lived a few miles up the road. Colt used to be her neighbor before he mated and married Angus and Ben. Rumor had it that she once had a crush on Angus.
“She can handle all three of them?” I asked.
“Yeah, she’s great with them,” Jackson said. “The girls love her.”
“Bertie’s pretty easygoing. He’s probably napping,” Trey said.
“Betas are usually good with kids,” Jackson said. “Funny, because no beta I’ve ever known has had more than a couple.”
Betas did always seem to be the ones in the childcare industry. As for betas who had their own kids, I wasn’t sure about them. A beta couple lived close to us when I was growing up. I remembered they had a little girl, but I didn’t think they had any other children.
“You’re both showing a little,” I said as we climbed the front porch steps after noticing that both Trey and Jackson had small baby bumps under their t-shirts.
“Yeah. I hope to have a boy this time. The girls are great, but so bossy,” Jackson said with a chuckle. “Little divas. What about you, Trey? A girl, or another boy?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Trey said.
Inside the cozy kitchen of the ranch, I glanced out the window of the door to the deck.
The ops team was out there eating at two long picnic tables.
My gaze was immediately drawn to Jet’s black hair.
At that moment, he lifted his dark eyes and they met mine, sending a jolt of awareness through me that confused me.
Looking away, I took a seat at the smaller table by the wall.
Carter was already halfway through his pancakes—or flapjacks, as a lot of people in the region called them. Eric set another platter in front of us. Steam rose from the plate, and I hungrily breathed in the scent of the pancakes before piling a few on my dish.
Carter, Trey, Jackson, and Keane were sitting with us, while Laura, the kids, Eric, and the rest of the omega group sat at the larger table.
I was ravenous, and the pancakes were delicious.
“Wow, where do you put it all?” Trey asked in wonder, watching me transfer another four pancakes and some bacon to my plate and pour maple syrup over them.
I shrugged, my mouth full.
“I’m glad you’re eating better,” Keane said. Although he and the others had brought me food while I’d been laid up, I hadn’t eaten much.
“Did that ops alpha really lock you in the work shed and sit outside the whole time?” Jackson asked me.
I nodded, blood flooding my cheeks.
“Kudos to him for keeping himself together,” Carter said.
At the other table, Nova’s nephew, Dawson, finished telling a joke, and everyone laughed.
He was a funny, quirky kid. I felt sorry for him, being only thirteen and living with a bunch of adults.
As soon as her son exhibited omega traits, his mother had registered him with the government as was required by law.
But after Nova heard what the SOS believed the government was doing with omegas, she told her sister, who brought Dawson to the ranch to hide him.
When the government officials came for him, Nova’s sister planned to tell officials that her son had run away.
But it was likely they’d check with relatives, which meant they would pay a visit to the ranch.
Everyone had been informed of the plan should that happen.
The first to know would initiate Code Red, which sent an alarm to everyone’s cell phone.
It meant that the ops alphas should immediately get the omegas into one of the five recently built underground bunkers situated around the ranch, all of them connected to a crudely built tunnel system leading to Angels’ property.
Once Trey and Jackson’s houses were completed, there would be an entrance to each of those, too.
Code Red would remain in effect until thirty minutes after all officials left the property.
Then Nova would send out a Code Green alarm, letting everyone know they could come out of hiding.
Because the omegas needed to hide as soon as they got the alarm, the ranch held frequent drills.
I hated them. Sitting underground was claustrophobic and scary.
But I understood the need for the drills, and I was glad we had a system set up in case anyone from the government showed up for any reason.
When our table finished eating, Keane, Trey, and I did the dishes. Dawson volunteered to help us and started clearing the tables.
“How’s your school work going?” I asked him. All of the omegas on the ranch took turns helping him, as we were familiar with the computer and book work.
“I’m writing a paper on Michaelangelo, but I keep getting flagged for plagiarism,” he said on a groan.
“You need to put all of it into your own words, or make sure you quote and cite the source,” Jackson told him.
Dawson sighed heavily. “Such a pain.”
“Not when you get used to it,” Keane said. “I’ll come by later and help.”
Dawson grinned. “Thanks, Keane.”
After we finished cleaning up, Keane said Trey was going to help him shovel cow manure so they could fish at the pond while Jackson went with me to make soap.
Inside the work shed, I tried not to think about my recent time spent here as I set the box of herbal oils Trey had brought me on the work table.
Wanting a distraction, I said, “Tell me about your childhood, Jackson.” I’d been curious about it for a while but had never asked before.
He told me about being an only child. His parents, whom I’d seen a few times when they’d participated in video chats with everyone, were professionals.
His mom was a doctor as well as an expert in alpha/omega studies, and an alpha; and his dad was a businessman and a beta.
They never trusted the required government registration of omegas, so when they realized their son was an omega, they didn’t register him and, instead, made plans for him to live with a beta woman when he reached his age of ripening.
“That must have been hard on all of you,” I said as I gathered items and placed them on the work table.
“It would have been much harder if I’d been alone at Gleesa’s,” Jackson said. “Gleesa was the beta woman. David, Ben, and I became like brothers.”
“Did your parents stop having children because they were worried they’d have another omega they’d have to send away?” I asked.
“They were worried, but my mom wanted one more. Unfortunately, she was never able to get pregnant again,” Jackson said, watching me pull a bag out of the refrigerator. “Is that the goat’s milk?”
“Yeah. I freeze it in bags, but I’ve been thawing some in the refrigerator today in preparation for making another batch of soap. Hey, could you plug in that immersion blender? I’ll need it later.” I ducked to pull the hot plate from the shelf under the table.
“Sure. Do you have to freeze the milk to keep it fresh?” Jackson asked.
“That and to keep it from scorching when I add the lye. It will smell bad if it scorches.”
“Oh. What else can I do to help?”
I considered. “You can grab a pot and start melting the shea butter on the hot plate.”
I showed Jackson how to use a steel bowl in the pot as a double boiler and melt the shea butter slowly on the hot plate. As the temperature was warm inside the shelter, the coconut oil we’d use was already in liquid form, so we didn’t have to melt it.
We worked together in companionable silence for a while before I asked Jackson if he liked living in the North Platte region. He and Carter had only been there a few months.