Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sage
I’m a jumbled mix of nerves and excitement as Brooks drives us all to the nest store in his big work truck. We decide to go to one about an hour away in the opposite direction of where Steve and Josh live, just to be safe and hopefully avoid anyone recognizing me from the fliers they put up.
As soon as we walk in, I’m overwhelmed. My omega instincts start screaming with excitement, but my human brain doesn’t know where to start. I freeze only a few feet inside the store, staring around at all the colors and sections.
There’s even more than I expected. Everything from comfy clothing for everyone in the pack to waterproof sheets, extra soft blankets and pillows, electric candles and nutrient-dense snacks.
“Where do we start?” I ask.
“Let’s get the basics first, then we can work our way up to all the extras depending how you’re feeling,” Vee says.
She leads the pack over to the bedding section, and I immediately start running my hands over the wall of sheets. My fingers keep moving back to a silky smooth set, but it’s pale blue, and my eyes drift toward the darker shades.
“Should we ask if they have this set in other colors?” Brooks asks me.
Riley pipes up before I can decline, not wanting to be a bother.
“I saw a store associate a few aisles over, I’ll run and get them!”
He returns a few minutes later with a beta woman wearing a huge smile and holding a tablet.
“I hear you’re setting up a fresh new nest!
” she says. “I’ll get an account started for you.
Here’s a shopping scanner. You scan the barcodes of whatever items you want and it’ll pop up on my end, then we’ll start pulling things out for you.
If you want different colors of anything, we can almost always accommodate.
If we don’t have it in stock, chances are we can order it.
Scan it in and we can confirm everything at checkout, okay hun? ”
She hands me the scanner, and I accept it reverently.
“Okay,” I murmur, sinking into Brooks’ side and letting his steady warmth strengthen me. “Thank you.”
“Of course, deary. Have fun!”
It turns out, shopping is endlessly fun.
I make the mistake of letting Riley have the scanner at one point, and he starts scanning things left and right.
I squeak in horror when I realize what he’s doing, but Vee smirks and slings an arm around his neck as I snatch the scanner away from the trigger-happy beta.
“That’s too much,” I say.
“Nothing is too much for you,” Vee counters, and Riley nods in agreement.
My eyes ping between them, anxiety and excitement swirling through me. It causes my scent to fracture, waves of sweet alternating with sour, and Brooks crouches down in front of me. I try to look into his eyes, but they’re too knowing. Too soft, too caring to the point that it feels scary.
“Hey,” he says, quiet enough for my ears alone. “We want to spoil you, okay? We would love nothing more than to buy every single thing your heart desires, and then even more that you didn’t know you wanted. We want to do this, and so do our alphas.”
That makes my thoughts pause. These two alphas are countering everything I thought I knew about their designation, so if he says their alphas want this, maybe even need it if the strain underlying his tone is any indication, a good omega would accept it. And I want to be a good omega for them.
My inner omega wants the same thing their alphas do, so I lift my gaze, meeting Brooks’ warm brown eyes.
He smiles, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and my hand drifts to his beard without my permission.
I scratch my fingers against his rough jaw, and he tilts his face into it, comforting us both.
My scent settles back into a sweet floral, and I step forward, silently asking for a hug.
He doesn’t make me use my words this time, simply stands and envelopes me in his arms so his soothing chamomile and patchouli surrounds me.
“Sage, you have to feel how soft these blankets are!” Riley calls, breaking the cocoon I’d wound around us.
Brooks drops a kiss on the top of my head, then releases me with a grin. My heart is so full I fear it might burst as I let his comfort and quiet joy sink into me, then turn to the wild beta demanding my attention.
The blankets he found are softer than the puppy I pet on a walk once and I need them. I pick out navy bedding, plush blankets that feel like clouds in various shades of dark blue and turquoise. It reminds me of Lake Michigan, and I decide to go with that theme.
“Those are beautiful choices, Petal,” Brooks says.
Praise from my alpha buoys my confidence in my omega, and I move forward with more purpose. I scan a couple of soft beige and emerald green pillows, and Riley tosses a few fluffy blue and purple ones into our cart with a grin.
“I’m going to go check if I need to move anything around in the truck, be back in a few,” Brooks says.
I hardly notice his absence. I’m entirely immersed in running my hands over the plethora of pillows and plushies lining the next aisle.
“I need to get away from these before I buy them all,” I mutter.
“Maybe we can go look at paint colors? Have you decided what you want for the walls?”
Vee leads us to that area of the store, but instead of heading for the paint chips, I get side-tracked by the wallpapers. Such gorgeous patterns and all manner of colors and relaxing designs.
“Ooooh,” I breathe, running my fingertips over a sapphire blue wallpaper that looks like ripples on water. “Can we do wallpaper instead?”
I turn to Vee, but she’s disappeared too, and I raise my brows at Riley.
“Uhh, I think she went to see if they have people who can install it for us,” he says with a shrug. “She’ll be back.”
I grimace when he mentions others installing it, but he doesn’t notice. I try to tell myself that it’s fine, but ever since they told me about the nest being my space, I’ve felt increasingly protective over it. I don’t want anyone I don’t know setting even one toe past the threshold.
“I love that pattern, though,” Riley continues. “Reminds me of the beach.”
Maybe I can learn to put wallpaper up myself? It can’t be that hard. I scan the barcode with a lingering twinge of unease at spending so much of their money. My omega can’t resist, though, so I try to embrace it.
Brooks and Vee catch up with us in the lighting section. I can’t get Riley’s idea of twinkle lights out of my head, and I gravitate toward them. So many options, and I have no idea what to choose.
“Can you help me pick?” I ask Riley.
They happily jump in, scanning a couple different strings and colors.
“How are we doing?” Brooks asks.
I hand him the tablet, and he scrolls back through the list.
“Okay we’ve got sheets and blankets, pillows, wallpaper—good choice, Petal, that’s really pretty—and plenty of string lights. What about curtains? And I was thinking, you saved a couple of those pictures with the drapey ceiling fabric, do you want to see if we can find something like that?”
I think there are hearts in my eyes.
I nod, a goofy-feeling smile on my face, and Brooks’ cheekbones flush above his beard. It’s adorable and I’m obsessed with it.
I sneak under his arm and flatten myself to his side as we head to the decor aisle. There are more items here than I could have imagined, but it seems they were all paying close attention to what I liked last night, so it takes hardly any time at all to find exactly what I need to complete my nest.
“This nest is going to be stunning. Anything else you want to look at, Sweetling?”
I shake my head, my omega preening from all their praise. “I don’t think so. I can hardly imagine everything we have already.”
“Let’s get this set up, and if it’s missing anything, we’ll come back,” Brooks says, scent marking the top of my head.
I squeeze closer into him, lavender and vanilla swirling around us, and then we’re confirming colors and sizes, quantities and patterns.
Vee handles most of it, so I kind of zone out, imagining what it will be like when it’s finished.
How my pack’s scents will blend and fill the space, all soft lights and gentle textures, with no whites or pastels to be seen.
They’re able to pack everything into Brooks’ truck, but when he goes to close the back, my omega whines in my chest.
He pauses and looks down at me with a concerned frown.
“What is it?”
My fingers itch to snatch some of the soft items back, to have them with me. My eyes dart from pillow to pillow to blanket, and Vee hums in the back of her throat.
“You want some of it in the front with us?”
I sigh and nod, then reach my hands out to figure out what I want.
“Is she nesting already?” Riley whispers behind me.
I hear him, but it doesn’t fully register; I just know my omega needs something.
My fingers land on a plush blanket and I tug it out, ripping off the packaging. Then I turn to Riley and wrap it around them, tucking the edges in securely.
“Um,” Riley says, wide eyes darting to Vee. “Okay, sure. I can be a burrito.”
I’m already pulling out two pillows, one with a knitted texture, and the other fluffier than anything I’ve seen before. I shove the knitted one into Vee’s arms, and the fluffy one goes to Brooks. Riley covers a laugh by burying his face in the blanket I’ve wrapped around him.
“You want our scent on these, Petal?”
“Yes please,” I say, my upper half buried in the back of his truck again as I search for what I want to have in my own lap.
My fingers brush on something they don’t recognize and I pause, then tug and wiggle until I can get it out. I tilt my head, staring at the croissant plushie with a cute smiling face on it.
“Ahhhh,” Riley says, and I turn to see them looking sheepish. “Well, that was supposed to be a surprise for you, but I guess the croissants out of the bag, so to speak.”
I stare at him, then at the soft plushie I’m already clutching to my chest.
“It’s for me?”
“It’s for you,” they say with a nod.
I rub it all over his face and neck, scent marking it, then I squeeze it to my chest and hop into the back of the truck. Amused chuckling drifts after me, and Brooks scoops the Riley-burrito into his arms, carefully depositing them in the back seat and buckling them in before we head home.