26. Elliott
Elliott
I’d started weekly sessions with Dallas. His methods were different from Gail’s; instead of a forthright approach, he sat back and let me talk, only prompting me every once in a while.
Jet had gone with me to the first appointment because I still didn’t want to be away from him.
Secretly, I was beginning to worry that he was getting sick of me, not that he acted like it or anything.
But who would want someone with you twenty-four seven?
I practically didn’t want him to go to the bathroom without me.
I wasn’t quite that bad, but it was close.
We’d moved out of the camper on Jackson’s property and into the cabin over the past weekend. The cabin had been Lynn and Emma’s and seemed like a palace compared to the camper. And it had a normal shower, which made us both very happy.
As we entered the house, excited shouts from the five beta teens who had been at the ranch for almost two weeks carried over on the wind. It sounded as though they were playing an outdoor game.
“I’ll make us some dinner,” I told Jet.
“I’ll help,” he said. Maybe he wasn’t really sick of me.
While I threw together a casserole, he cut up vegetables for a salad.
“How was your session with Dallas? Did you like him any better this time?” Jet asked as he peeled carrots over the trashcan. I’d told Jet that my last session had been uncomfortable.
“Actually, yes. Instead of sitting in silence staring at each other, I talked to fill the uncomfortable silence. And in all my rambling, I figured something out.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “I know why I feel so insecure.”
Jet stopped peeling and put the carrot down. “That’s great! Want to tell me why?”
After putting the casserole in the oven, I shut the oven door and turned to him.
“Even though we mated, something is missing. We didn’t have a mating ceremony.”
Jet looked thoughtful. “Yeah, but a mating ceremony has a mating in it, and we already did that part. Do you want a wedding like Ben, Angus, and Colt had after they mated?”
I’d already talked out my thoughts in my session with Dallas and come to a conclusion on what I wanted.
“No, I want to celebrate our mating. And for you to mark me. So, we’d call it a mating celebration, I guess.”
“Okay. That sounds great to me. What kind of tattoo do you want?”
“You have to decide that,” I said, picking up the head of lettuce from the counter and beginning to wash it in the sink.
Behind me, I could hear Jet peeling carrots again. “I’ll think about it, then,” he said.
A few hours later, after we’d eaten, gone outside to check the goats and chickens, and then taken a long shower together during which I’d ended up on my knees with Jet’s cock in my mouth, we lay in bed naked, talking.
Recently, Jet had received official word on what happened to his brother on the day he’d gone missing.
Clayton had been picked up by government officials near the apartment building where he lived with Jet.
Once he’d arrived in Capital City, he’d been detained with other unregistered omegas for a few days at the facility where they all were ultimately given a meal laced with poison.
Mass graves recently discovered on government property had produced hundreds of bodies of omegas, and dental records from by relatives provided identification.
Clayton’s remains had been cremated and would be sent to Jet in the near future.
I felt so terrible for him. He’d assured me that he was okay—that it was actually a relief to know for certain—but my heart still broke for him.
I hadn’t heard anything about my birth father. Was he in a mass grave somewhere? They’d known he was an omega x, so there was a chance they’d found him useful and kept him alive. But where was he? Kristopher was currently trying to help me get access to my father’s dental records.
I was thinking about this when Jet rolled to his side and idly traced the line of my hipbone with his fingertip.
“I think I want to mark you somewhere that people can see,” he said, bringing up our earlier conversation.
My cock stirred, because that was kind of hot.
When I looked at Jet, he read my thoughts on my face and smirked.
Planting my palm on his forehead, I pushed him backward. “Get over yourself.”
Jet laughed, then asked, “When do you want to have the party?”
“I don’t know. See what Laura says. Soon, though.” I felt better just knowing it was going to happen.
The week before, Laura had confirmed with a blood test that I was not pregnant. Jet immediately asked me if I wanted to start using condoms.
“Jet, I can’t get close enough to you. Do you really think I want a layer of latex between us?” I’d asked him.
“But…what if you get pregnant?”
“If I do, I do. I love kids, and I love you.”
And that was the end of the conversation. Secretly, I wondered if something was wrong with me, though. I was an omega x…the most fertile of the fertile…and Jet and I had sex all the time. Why hadn’t I gotten pregnant yet? Could it be the same problem? That I didn’t feel mated?
***
When we told Laura about the mating celebration, she had been oddly determined about the date of it.
Despite the fact that I wanted it to be the first weekend after the teenagers left the ranch, she said it had to be the second weekend but wouldn’t give me a good reason.
At first, Jet argued for what I wanted, but then he suddenly did an about-face and agreed with Laura.
Whatever. If he could deal with an extra week of me trailing after him, so be it.
And I do mean trailing after him, because he’d started his new job as head of the Omega Safety office in Jessup, and I went with him every day.
Dallas had agreed to be the therapist, and, if I was reading things right, he was wooing Ren.
“Wooing?” Camp repeated when I told him. “Who uses that word in this century?”
“What else is there? He’s trying to get into Ren’s pants? He’s talking to Ren? That’s so high school.”
Although we laughed about it, I knew we were both worried about them getting hurt. A beta/omega coupling was a sure failure.
But, considering Ren’s cluelessness and Dallas’s long-time crush on him, it would probably be a while before we needed to worry about it.
Finally, the day of our mating celebration arrived.
The afternoon was sunny and breezy—perfect for having the party outside, and my brothers had gone all out with the decorations, hanging multi-colored streamers everywhere as well as a huge banner that read: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR MATING, JET AND ELLIOTT!
Carter had flown his favorite tattoo artist out to the ranch to do our tattoos. We were both getting stylized initials—each other’s—inked on our bodies. I wanted mine to be tattooed over Jet’s heart, and he wanted his tattooed on my neck.
“Right here,” he said, drawing an J and an R with his finger under my jawline on the left side.
“That big?” It had felt like he’d traced them on half my neck.
Jet had only grinned at me. I guess he hadn’t been kidding when he told me he wanted everyone to see them.
So hot.
We did the tattoos as the main event, since the actual mating had already happened. Jet went first, and then me. He held my hand the entire time because it hurt and halfway through, I was threatening to quit, insisting that just a J was sufficient.
When it was finally over, I couldn’t wait to look at it in the mirror.
Underneath my jaw on the left side of my neck in thin, loopy calligraphy, were the initials of the alpha I belonged to: JR. It was noticeable but not flashy or too dark.
I was very pleased.
Grinning at Jet, I lifted his shirt to stare at the tattoo of my initials under a clear adhesive bandage. ER with a small heart at the end of the R’s loop.
Releasing a happy sigh, I stared at it.
“Good?” Jet asked.
I nodded.
“Food!” Nova yelled, and we all trooped over to the table. Riku had arrived that morning and brought an alpha named Max with him. Riku said he was just a friend, but with the way Max looked at Riku, I wasn’t sure about that.
When, in the middle of the festivities, I heard a yelp followed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh, I swung around to see Max lying on the ground with Dallas standing over him looking ready to kill him if he moved. Ren stood to the side, hands covering his face with Riku laughing nearby.
From the victorious look on Riku’s face, I quickly deduced that he hadn’t told Max he had a twin, and that Max had helped himself to what he thought was a handful of his boyfriend’s ass—or something equally personal—although he and Riku supposedly weren’t boyfriends. Interesting.
Dallas had not appreciated whatever Max did and punched him square in the jaw.
“Friends, huh?” I said to Riku, who was still laughing.
I heard a car on the drive and was about to turn to see who it was but got distracted when Nova pushed a glass of champagne into my hand and Camp toasted us.
“To Jet and Elliott’s mating!”
Everyone echoed the words, and we all drank.
Everything suddenly got quiet.
“What?” I asked, looking around at my friends. When I noticed everyone’s eyes were trained behind me—though Jet was smiling at me softly, his dark eyes full of love—I said uncertainly, “Jet?”
“Turn around, baby.”
When I didn’t immediately do it, he took me by the shoulders and gently guided my body to face the opposite direction.
I froze.
Standing a few feet away from me was someone I hadn’t seen in a long time.
Someone who looked just the same, but different.
Someone I would know anywhere but couldn’t believe I was really seeing.
“Dad?” I whispered.
A smile spread across my birth father’s face. “Elliott. My sweet boy.”
My dad stepped forward and tugged me into his arms so that my cheek was pressed against his chest. His heart was beating at least as hard as mine was.
“How are you here?” I asked, regaining my senses and hugging him tightly. Taking in his familiar scent, I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears building in them.
“I made sure I was too useful for them to get rid of me,” my dad said. “I was worried about you, though.”
Pulling back, I looked up at him, and then we both tried to wipe off each other’s tears, but it was useless—they just kept coming.
Laughing, we gave up and hugged again.
“Will you introduce me to your mate?” Dad asked after a moment.
Sniffling, I nodded and stepped back. In a shaking voice, I said, “Dad, this is Jet, my mate. Jet, this is my dad.” Then I started sobbing.
Both my dad and Jet tried to hug me, then tried to give up and let the other one do it, only to leave me standing there crying alone, then they both attempted to hug me again.
Laughing through my tears, I wrapped one arm around Dad’s waist and the other around Jet’s, and we all three hugged.
When I finally turned around, everyone was crying except for the kids, who were oblivious to the situation.
While everyone was watching me, they’d helped themselves to the large sheet cake on the table and now it was all over them, and Roger was running around with icing in his fur, barking.
And Steve and Pickles had escaped the goat pen and were nibbling on some streamers nearby.
Ignoring the melee, I introduced my father to everyone, and we toasted him with champagne.
“Laura, you arranged this, didn’t you?” I accused.
“You kept trying to change the date,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
“It had to be today because your father had his ticket already.” Behind her, Trey and Jackson, heavily pregnant, had started herding Steve and Pickles back toward their pen while their alphas objected and tried to help them.
The kids continued squealing and Roger barked over all the noise.
Off to the side, Jet was talking with my dad.
Laura continued, “Jet had Kristopher looking for your father. When he finally found him, your father really wanted to surprise you. When you said you wanted to have a mating celebration, well, this was the day of his flight.”
Impulsively, I threw my arms around her. “That must have been why Jet suddenly caved. I thought I was losing my touch.”
She squeezed me. “Pretty sure that man would give you the moon if he could.”
Suddenly feeling pretty damn proud of myself, I smiled impishly at her. “I mated an alpha.”
Laura ruffled my hair fondly. “You sure did.”