Chapter 30 Ben
Chapter thirty
Ben
When Laura arrived, that evening, she brought Keane and Elliott with her, along with the CEO and the president of the SOS.
The CEO, Kristopher Gatlin, was a nicely dressed alpha whom I judged to be in his fifties, with graying dark hair and a serious manner about him. His mate, Jermaine, the president of the SOS, was a blond beta about fifteen to twenty years younger than he was.
Laura introduced everyone, and Maddox and Colt brought some chairs in from the kitchen. As everyone was taking seats, Jermaine smiled at me and said, “In your ninth month?”
“Fifth,” I said.
His eyes grew wide. “Your fifth…”
“I know I’m really big,” I said, and shrugged. “Laura doesn’t think I’m having twins.”
“Alright, everyone,” Laura said. “We’re ready to have our discussion. Kris?”
The older man looked at where I sat with the other omegas. I hadn’t even noticed that we’d all sat together.
“It’s nice to meet you all at last. Jermaine and I are familiar with your situations, as we’ve followed you through Laura and the Michaels.
Thank you for inviting us here. We are excited to speak to you.
Let me tell you a little about us. I have been with the SOS for thirty years now.
When I was fourteen, my life changed when the government came for my best friend, Wyatt.
We knew it would happen, of course. He was registered.
We’d promised to always keep in touch, and I waited years to hear from Wyatt, and so did his family.
At first, we thought he would write or call when he settled down.
Then we thought he would when he was older and placed with an alpha.
But none of us ever heard from Wyatt again.
“His parents contacted the government multiple times and received what they called the runaround. They chased phone calls for a year before receiving a letter telling them that Wyatt had been placed with an alpha who worked for an oil company in Texas and all was well. But no real information. Wyatt’s parents contacted every oil company in Texas, but without a name for the alpha, they got nowhere.
Finally, they decided to go to the capital and demand to find out where their son was.
They couldn’t even get past the doors of the Omega Registration, Collection, and Redistribution Office.
“After that, Wyatt’s parents went to the press, but no one would pick up the story.
Defeated, they returned home. Throughout all this, they kept me informed.
My desire to know what happened to Wyatt, along with my indignation and sense of wrongness at how his parents had been treated by the government program, steered my interests to law school.
While I was there, Wyatt’s father called me and told me about a small group called the Society for Omega Safety that believed the government was lying to us about omegas.
So, when I graduated law school, I sought them out and have been working with them ever since. ”
Kris looked to his spouse-mate. “Jermaine?”
The younger man smiled. “I met Kris after he came to my university and spoke about the SOS. A lot of people thought it was a conspiracy theory, but I was interested. Like Kris, I had known an omega growing up. We hadn’t been close, but I had been affected by his departure when we were adolescents.
My parents had explained to me that he was an omega and why he had to leave, and I was very upset.
I never forgot it. So, when Kris spoke at my university, I went to the front to see him after his presentation. ”
“The rest is history,” Kris said, chuckling.
“Jermaine and I eventually took over the SOS when the founder—Celia Franco, a woman who had twin boys taken by the government—passed away. The Society has grown substantially, particularly in the past decade or so, as the word has spread and parents are beginning to demand information on their omega children. Laura has tirelessly researched the omegas we’ve been able to save. ”
“What have you learned about that?” Colt asked. “Have the omegas you’ve rescued told you anything useful?”
“As of yet, we do not know the location of the omega house. Our omegas have all been rescued in transport and know nothing. To date, we have no real evidence. Even the omegas that Laura has worked with for the past five years had no useful information for us. We don’t know that their kidnappers were affiliated with the government. ”
Colt exchanged glances with Angus and Maddox.
Clearing his throat, Kristopher said, “I understand you have questions and, perhaps, some information for us?”
“We do,” Angus said. “Have you ever heard of omega x?”
Both men frowned.
“Omega x?” Jermaine said. “No, I can’t say that I have.” He looked to his spouse-mate, who remained quiet, brow furrowed. “Kris?”
“I…I have, actually. When I first started SOS. I’d forgotten about it.”
“Where did you hear it?” Jermaine asked him.
“I saw it written down. Do you recall reading about the first omegas the organization rescued? It was shortly after I joined the group. We’d received an anonymous tip that there was a pickup of registered omegas returning to the capital.
Our team intercepted the car, and the driver had a list with him with three names and addresses on it.
The word omega x was scrawled on the paper.
We didn’t know what that meant or if it meant anything at all.
We left the driver unconscious in his car and took the three omegas to our facility.
Due to the circumstances, they couldn’t return home to their families—the government would just come back for them. So, we put them with foster betas.”
“Were you previously aware of people like Neil Havers and Bart Fothergill, who turned Ben and David, respectively, over to the government?” Maddox asked.
“No, and we don’t know how the government gets the word out so alphas like them can be recruited into turning over unregistered omegas. We did find out that Neil Havers had a lot of debt that his family wasn’t aware of, which explains why he wanted to leave the country.”
I shuddered, remembering how I had agreed to mate with Neil and he’d happily turned me over to a woman affiliated with the government before leaving the country.
“How did you hear the term omega x?” Jermaine asked.
“Elliott is one of the seven omegas who were kidnapped five years ago. He was the one singled out by the captors and whose omega father was also taken that night. Recently, he told us he heard the kidnappers say that his father was an omega x.” Laura went on to explain the abilities Elliott believed both he and his omega father had, and that they believed Ben had them as well.
I was asked to explain about his dreams, premonitions, and supposed healings, and I did as well as I could.
“Couldn’t the part about Trey be explained by the omega bond?” Kristopher asked. “Alphas and omegas can feel each other over a bond.”
That was something I knew that David and Maddox had experienced.
“Only two of them had the feeling something was wrong, though,” Colt said. “If it was omega bonding, wouldn’t all of them have felt the danger to Trey?”
Looking at Laura, Kristopher said, “Could these abilities be something that all omegas innately have that they just haven’t tapped into?”
“I suppose that’s possible,” she said. “But Elliott overheard the kidnappers refer to his omega birth father as an omega x. And you saw the term written down. It has to mean something.”
“If they truly have the abilities that you’ve told us about, I’m sure there are people out there who want to exploit them,” Jermaine said. His gaze went to me. “Ben tells me he’s only five months along in his pregnancy and that you say, Laura, that he isn’t having multiples. Why is he so large?”
“His body is physically ready to give birth,” Laura said. “I’ve concluded that his gestational period is much shorter, but I have no idea why. Everything seems to be fine with the baby, but he could not have gotten pregnant any earlier.”
“Perhaps it has something to do with being an omega x,” Jermaine said.
“Perhaps.”
“The government has granted at least one other omega to someone in this town,” Colt said. “We’ve wondered if it’s to make us look bad, in case we’re spewing conspiracies to our neighbors.”
“It could very well be,” Kristopher said.
There was a lull in the conversation, and Jermaine said, “I find your alpha/alpha/omega dynamic quite interesting, Mr. Angel.” He could have been addressing me, Angus, or Colt, since that was all of our names, but when he looked up, it was at Angus.
“I understand that it’s unusual.”
“I would have thought it to be impossible for two alphas to share a mate.”
“We don’t just share one, the three of us are married.”
“But not mated,” Kristopher specified.
“No. We might overcome that someday, though.”
I saw Colt glance at Angus when he said that and had to hide my smile. Angus was determined to get Colt to allow him to mount him one day.
Later that night, when the three of us settled into bed, Colt brought up what Angus had said.
“You seem awfully sure of yourself, Angus.”
“I just didn’t like him thinking we aren’t ideal mates, that’s all,” Angus said. “Just because we’re two alphas doesn’t mean we can’t be proper mates.”
“Doesn’t it?” Colt asked.
With a frustrated noise, Angus looked at me. “What do you think, Ben?”
“What do I think about what? Are you asking if I think Colt will let you fuck him?”
“No, I didn’t say that—”
“Yes, that’s exactly what he’s asking, Ben,” Colt interrupted.
“How would I know?”
With a beleaguered groan followed by a lot of grumbling, Angus turned his back to us.
Colt chuckled. “Come on, Angus.”
Rising onto his elbow Angus pointed his finger at him. “You can’t say we won’t ever mate. You don’t know.”
With a sexy grin, Colt crawled over me and onto Angus, pinning him down from the back, chest to back.
“Oof! What the hell are you doing, Colt?”