Chapter 14
Kip
Something’s off. I can’t sleep, can’t get comfortable. It’s like something’s agitating me, but I can’t quite put my finger on what that is.
At about four o’clock, I finally give up on trying to rest. I get out of bed, tiptoeing past Kaden’s side of the room as I head for the kitchen. Maybe a snack will settle my addled nerves.
I find Mags standing in front of the coffee pot, staring into space while sporting a pair of men’s pajama pants and a rumpled t-shirt.
She’s got a bite mark on her neck.
“Mags? You okay?” I’m afraid to ask what the mark means. I know Nik is capable of marking an omega without bonding, but that’s during a con. What happened between him and Mags last night?
“Bonds’re funny,” she slurs. “I’m asleep, but I’m not asleep.”
Oh, shit. “Do you need some help? Maybe I can make the coffee, while you go and have a seat.”
She looks like she’s asleep on her feet, and she might well be. I’ve heard that newly formed bonds can be difficult to navigate at first. If they’re bonded and Nik is asleep, she might not be able to function well enough to operate the coffee maker.
I guide Mags over to the couch and set her down before fixing a pot of coffee.
She’s dozing lightly when I come back with a cup in each hand, so I sit quietly next to her and provide a shoulder for her to prop up against until this passes.
If this passes? I don’t know enough about how the bonds between alphas and omegas work to know if this will be a permanent state for her.
If it’s anything like the twin bond that Kaden and I share, it should be manageable. I know when Kaden’s hurt or hungry, know when he’s upset and when he’s happy, but I can separate his feelings from my own. Maybe the mate bond is just a stronger version of that.
After about twenty minutes, Mags jerks awake with a start. She blinks and sniffs the air, then smiles serenely.
“Kip. My earthy Kip.” She rests her forehead on my cheek. “Hey! There’s coffee.”
“Does this mean Nik’s awake?” I ask.
Mags grabs one of the cups of coffee and takes a long drink. “Uh-uh. I mean, maybe? I’m awake, but I’m still asleep, so probably not.”
This is going to be confusing for a while. “Okay, so Nik’s probably sleeping. What happened last night?”
She giggles. “He bit me.”
“I see that.”
I’d be happy for her if there wasn’t a hint of darkness behind the sleepy eyes. Bonds are supposed to be beautiful, so why does she seem a bit upset?
“He’s not thrilled with me,” she continues while staring into her mug. “He wanted to, but I didn’t. I mean, I did, but I didn’t. I was afraid this would happen. Now Nik knows. I didn’t want Nik to know yet. Ever? I don’t know.”
She’s not making a lick of sense. “Okay, so Nik knows something through the bond. Is it a bad thing?”
Keeping secrets is kind of Mags’s main thing. She’s better than all of us at it, and it’s gotten us through some tough jobs in the past. If this bond messes with that, I can see how upsetting it would be to her. Her secrecy is her strength.
“It’s not bad, except that it is.”
I lift her chin and look into her eyes. “Mags, if I’m going to help you, I need to know what’s going on. What is it that Nik knows that’s so terrible?”
“He knows how I feel.”
My heart shatters. Mags wouldn’t care if Nik knew her feelings unless she had feelings for him.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
To hide my own pain, I wrap my arms around Mags and pull her into a deep hug, taking care not to spill coffee over either of us. A burn like that would surely wake Nik up, and then I’d have to face his alpha rage all over again. “I’m sorry, Mags.”
“I fucked up.”
“No, you didn’t. You let Nik in, and that’s okay. It’s okay to have feelings for people, and it’s okay if they know.”
She shakes her head, and tears drip onto my chest. “Not if they know I don’t want to feel.”
I don’t know how to handle this. If I understand her nonsense correctly, Mags has feelings for Nik, but she doesn’t want them. Now Nik knows, and she knows that he knows, and all I wanted was a late-night snack.
“I’m sure he’s not mad at you, Mags.”
“He’s not mad. He’s heartbroken.” Her head snaps up, smacking me in the chin. “Fuck! Kip, what if he leaves?”
I put my palms on her cheeks and hold her steady, fixing my gaze to hers. “Calm down, Mags.”
“What if he leaves?” Her chest rises and falls rapidly as she starts to hyperventilate.
“Nik won’t leave you. He can’t. Baby, you’re bonded now. He wouldn’t be able to leave you if he tried.”
“H-he can’t?”
“No.”
She stills, and for a second I think maybe I finally said something right.
“He can’t leave …” Her whispered words should be comforting, but I get the impression that they’re not. “Oh, Kip … I trapped him.”
Kaden stumbles in just as I’m about to lose my shit. I can’t handle an upset, irrational Mags.
“What’s going on?” he mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “I just woke up with the weirdest feeling.” He blinks, then freezes when he sees me and Mags on the couch.
I realize what it must look like. I’m holding a crying Mags, who has a fresh mark on her neck.
Kaden doesn’t know that it wasn’t me who marked her, or at least in his groggy state he hasn’t caught on that it couldn’t have been me.
If he was more alert, I’m sure he’d sense that Mags and I aren’t bonded.
“Jesus Christ, Kip, you couldn’t fucking cool it for one night?”
“It wasn’t me, Kaden.”
My twin scoffs. “Like Mags would just let Nik mark her.”
Mags sniffles and sits up straighter. She wipes her tears and laughs hysterically. “Fuck, this night can’t get any worse.”
Kaden joins us on the couch and steals my coffee. He downs the whole cup, then pauses for a while. I can sense the gears turning in his head as the caffeine wakes him up and helps him process information better.
“Okay … So, Mags and Nik are bonded. That’s a thing.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. If I have to go through the whole confusing explanation with Mags again, I’m going to scream. “Can we just maybe ignore the elephant in the room for a bit, please? I’m getting a headache.”
“I know.” Kaden winks when I glare at him. “Twins, bro.”
A fresh light flashes in Mags’s eyes, looking suspiciously like the light she gets when she’s figured out a con. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?” I ask, though I’m afraid I already know.
“Omegas can bond to whole packs, right? I mean, we all know that’s a thing. And you two are twin-bonded. Maybe if I bond to you two, it’ll confuse the mate bond enough that Nik will forget what he found out last night.”
That’s what I was afraid of. Mags is treating this bond like it’s a grift she can run on Nik.
“We can’t do that to Nik, Mags. It’s not right, and it’s not fair to Kaden and me, either.”
She shakes her head and waves her hands excitedly.
“No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong. This will work.
You see, we’ll all bond, and then we can still run our jobs like always.
” Kaden and I stare blankly at her, and she huffs in frustration.
“No one’s going to let an unbonded omega in their house when they need a heat helper crew, but if I’ve got a full pack bond, they’ll have to trust us! It’s genius.”
“What about Nik? He can’t do his part now that he’s bonded to you.”
Kaden has a point. The bond won’t let him mate with another omega unless she’s in the pack, too. If we try to run our usual game, it’s just going to get convoluted beyond belief. We’ll be in a never-ending cycle of bonding and mating.
Mags ignores his logic. “So, we won’t pimp him out anymore. That’s fine. We can still work with this. Nik can … He can act as security. Plenty of wealthy families hire alpha guards to watch over their omegas during heats.”
“Mags …”
“It’ll work! You guys just have to bite me, too.”
Without another word, I get up and walk out of the living room, down the hall, and out the front door. Mags shouts my name, but for sanity’s sake, I don’t go back.
How can she be so callous? Is she that oblivious to the people around her? Even if Kaden didn’t have feelings for her—and I’m pretty sure he does—for her to just demand this of us is bordering on abuse.
I refuse to bond with Mags if she doesn’t care about me. I’ll go solo if that’s what it takes.
I’m not subjecting myself to this anymore.