Chapter 42 Ayden
Calliope was in my arms, her head resting on my shoulder. My mind was a million miles away, trying to figure out how I kept fucking things up. First, I basically rejected Calliope, now I was doing the same to Cain. There wasn’t much I could do at the moment. Cain had taken off; Dax went after him, but I didn’t hold much hope the alpha would catch him.
“Get out of your head, Alpha.” Calliope’s voice broke me out of my thought loop.
“I keep messing things up.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.” I stared at her with an unimpressed look. “Lately.”
“Then why is Cain running from us—from this?”
I was desperate, looking at her like she had all the answers. “You do realize that you two have been so far up my ass for the last week that none of us have touched Cain.”
“As if you have been any better,” Ayden snapped. “You didn’t complain one bit. Couldn’t even think to take care of him anymore than we did.”
“That’s my failing to fix. Part of it is getting your heads out of your asses long enough to fix this.”
“We just cuddled with him…” She stared at me as I searched my memory. It was the night Dax had taken her to that auction. “Fuck. So, what do I do?”
“When Dax brings him back here, you do everything you can to make sure he feels wanted.” She sighed. “You still think he’s a beta and it’s throwing you off.”
“He is a beta.”
“Are you sure about that?” I started to say I was, but she kept speaking. “Rejection sensitivity, intense need for touch, and nesting are all omega attributes.”
“He hasn’t been nesting.”
She rolled her eyes so hard I swore I heard them move. “Did you even look in his room at the house?”
I didn’t respond, instead reaching into my pocket and pulling out my phone. There were cameras in all the rooms at home, so I scrolled through the system until I could pull up the feed in Cain’s room. Even without color it gave me a clear view of his bed and the open closet. Moving the angle with a flick of my finger, I zoomed in on the closet. Cain had taken blankets and pillows from all our rooms, or so it appeared. They’d been stacked in a corner of the closet. It was tiny, and the thought he had spent any time there made me hate myself. “Fuck.”
“We all missed it,” she sighed.
“So, what do I do?”
The sound of Dax’s voice coming into the room made me close down. Calliope leaned in, pressing a kiss to my cheek whispering, “You’ll figure it out.”
Cain came in and I reached for him, pulling him into my lap. I pushed his head to the side with my chin, kissing along the mark there. “I love you.”
“I know,” he whispered.
“I lost sight of the changes that have happened with us. That won’t happen again.”
“I don’t know what came over me.”
I sighed, pulling him back against me so Dax could sit at his feet. My hands went to work on his shoulders, rubbing the tension out of them. I followed that line of tightness until he was jelly in my arms. I moved down to one arm, rubbing the muscles until his arm relaxed. Putting my love and devotion into every movement of my hands, I was worshipping him the only way I knew how. By the time I was done, he was half asleep and releasing something close to a purr.
“You have to apologize like that every time.” Cain’s voice was distant but full of happiness.
“So, I’m forgiven?”
“I guess.” He swung his feet up, so they were resting on Dax’s lap.
We cuddled there for a while as Calliope cleaned around us. Dax and I both tried to lure her into the cuddle puddle with us, but she seemed happy to clean and busy herself otherwise. Dax was the first to break the silence. “So, what is this place?”
“It’s my shrine to the goddess I worship.”
I fought not to laugh at that. “Be serious, Cain.”
“I am.”
“Dax doesn’t know you’re joking.” I rolled my eyes. “He likes to keep the pictures he takes here.”
“Pictures?” Dax’s head popped up.
Calliope moved to the wall, hitting a few buttons until the shutters pulled back into the walls. We were left staring at pictures plastered along each wall. Dax stood, moving to the walls, hesitating to touch but wanting to. I watched as his eyes flicked to each image. They were simple candid shots of the pack. He knelt, I knew that wall well, the ones at the bottom were taken before we really meshed as a pack. Pictures of me and Cain and him and Calliope. Dax’s head moved up the wall, studying each phase of our pack. First heat. The first time we all slept together. As he stood, I knew what he would see next. Our vacation to Ecuador. Interspersed between them were small moments most people would see as insignificant. They weren’t to Cain. He saw beauty in everything, I didn’t even notice the camera in his hand anymore.
Dax turned to face us. “There are pictures of me here.”
That made my attention snap to his. “What?”
Calliope and I moved as one, Cain laughing as we approached Dax. I scanned the new layer, seeing images of Dax alone, sitting there. They were taken before he joined the pack. All the way through until last week. There were images of all of us together. I didn’t know what to think anymore.
We turned as one to face Cain, he shrugged. “I have a lead on Jeremy.”
“Cute,” I commented.
Calliope’s voice shook a little when she asked, “What lead?”
“That call I took,” Cain seemed relieved at the change of subject, “Jeremy books the basement of this omega strip club I know about.”
“Excuse the fuck out of me?” Calliope snapped. “Since when do omega’s strip?”
“They aren’t supposed to,” I growled.