Chapter Twelve – Warren
Nothing like sitting at the dining room table with a raging hard-on and the scent of our new housemate thick in the air. My cock strains against my pants so much it wants to become a knot and bury itself between her legs and never come up for air again.
I don’t have to look at Nic’s crotch to know he’s battling a hard dick, too. Something about that omega…
Fuck it all to hell. I didn’t even want her here. Nic was the one who was eager to bring an omega home. I was perfectly fine with our life before. I always laughed and made fun of the alphas who claimed an omega and then instantaneously turned into weak-willed simps whose only goal is to be at home, in bed with their mate.
Seriously, even the most rigid and hard alphas melt when they find their omega. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Omegas are meant to calm us, keep us steady and sane; we’re supposed to complete each other.
But life isn’t always a fairytale, and sometimes alphas don’t treat their omegas right. I know that more than anybody.
What if…
“Nic,” I whisper, my voice straining, much like my cock currently is. I’d have to do something about it, and it doesn’t take a psychic to tell me that a hand just won’t feel as good anymore. Not when there’s an omega in the house—an omega whose slick smells like sweet paradise.
“I know,” he answers me.
“I can’t—” Hell, I can’t even finish the sentence, but thankfully he knows what I mean.
“I know.” This time, when he says it, it’s softer, gentler, more understanding. “You just went a little too far. I can check on her later. Don’t worry about it.”
My hands clench so hard on my lap they start to shake. I’m feeling similar to the way I felt at the matching ceremony: itchy, but in a slightly different way. I need a distraction. I need something to get my mind off Mercedes.
She’s not supposed to be our omega. It’s so easy, when she’s close by, to let myself think she belongs to all of us, but the fact of the matter is, she’s here for Nic. I can’t be in the same room as her. I can’t let myself get too close to her.
What if I lose control? It’s obvious I start to think with my other head where she’s concerned—and that’s what I’m worried about. Losing all rational thought just like all those alphas we work with; it’s all fun and games until something goes wrong.
Nic is a good man. Even Darius is decent, when he’s not in a mood. They come from good stock, from a good family. They had a good role model in their dad. I wasn’t so lucky.
“Maybe,” I start, slow to glance at Nic, “we shouldn’t have dinner like this again, not until I can be in the same room as her without losing control.” I let out a laugh. It’s an awkward sound, and it dies in the air just as quickly as it surfaces. “How did you just sit there when she smelled so goddamned good?”
“I wanted to touch her,” he admits. “Of course I did. There’s something about her that just… makes me forget everything else. I knew it the moment I first saw her, while you were busy grumbling about your clothes. Maybe if you would’ve focused, you would’ve realized it, too.”
I grind my jaw. “That still doesn’t explain how you have such good self-control.”
He shrugs, like it’s not a big deal, but he should know it is. It is a huge deal, especially for me. “When I want to… touch her, I remind myself she must’ve seen a lot at that omega school. She’s not like the other omegas we met at the ceremony. She’s strong, but damaged at the same time. I won’t do anything to her unless she explicitly tells me she wants it.”
“But how? How can you hold back when her scent makes you go crazy?”
The way Nic looks at me makes me think he still feels sorry for me, and I hate it. I hate that look of pity, but there isn’t anything I can do to change it. My past is my past. My childhood is my childhood. Going back in time is simply impossible.
“Restraint,” he tells me. “You might not have showed it tonight, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. Restraint and trust.”
“Trust?” I question, eyebrows pinching together.
“You have to trust she’ll tell you when she’s ready.” He pauses, staring deep into my soul in a way nobody else can. In this way, he’s become a brother to me, even if we aren’t related by blood. “And you have to trust yourself. You aren’t your dad, Warren.”
That last statement hits me like a wall, and I feel a tight pressure on my chest. “How can you say that? You saw what happened the moment I got a whiff of her. I lost all control just like that—and if you try to tell me that it’s different, I’m calling bullshit.”
“Call bullshit all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that it is different, because you’re different. You’re an Alabaster now. You’ve been an Alabaster for fifteen years, and every year you proved to the world you aren’t like your old man. You can be better than him.”
I swallow hard. “What if I can’t? What if I try and I fail? What if—” These next words don’t want to come out, they’re like tiny razor blades along my tongue. “—I hurt her?”
Nic reaches over the empty seat between us and sets a hand on my shoulder. He squeezes gently and says, “You won’t. Even if you don’t trust yourself, I do. I trust you. Just look at what happened: yeah, you went a little too far, but when she told you to stop, you stopped.”
As someone with a negative worldview, it’s hard for me to look at the glass as half-full instead of half-empty. Sure, I stopped. Sure, I was able to pull back and regain some sense of self-control, but that doesn’t erase the fact that I initially snapped and crossed those boundaries to begin with.
His hand falls off my shoulder as he straightens himself out in his seat. “It’s going to be okay. This is still new to all of us. It’s going to be an adjustment. We’re all going to learn about each other. Day by day. We take it day by day, do our best, and things will fall into place, I know it.”
He’s so optimistic, even now. It’s something I always admired about him, something I was jealous of every now and then. He just doesn’t look at things like I do—which is bizarre to me, given what happened four years ago.
Just like that, everything could’ve changed for us. Everything could’ve taken a turn for the worst. Thank goodness the worst didn’t come to pass, but not everyone gets the chance to look death in the eyes and triumph. Sometimes people fail. Sometimes they die.
And that is the crux of it, isn’t it? This pack has never been the same since, and almost losing Nic made me spiral a bit.
Turning my attention back to the food, it’s easier to ignore my dick now that it doesn’t throb so much with the need to be inside Mercedes. I stab a piece of meatloaf and bring it to my mouth. My mind goes back to the moan Mercedes let out when she took her first bite, and it takes everything in me to not linger on that memory.
“What about Darius?” I say.
“What about him?”
“He met her. He scared her. You said it yourself.”
“And then he apologized. Maybe you should take a number from his book and talk to her later tonight.” Nic grabs his cup and takes a swig. “I’m not worried about Darius. He’ll come around.”
If I’m a work in progress, Darius is… I don’t even know. The man is hard to describe. No, wait, I know exactly how to describe him: an uptight prick with a rod stuck so far up his own ass he makes it his personal mission to make everyone else around him miserable on a daily basis.
“Time,” he tells me. “You and Darius just need a little time. It’s okay. We’ll get there.”
I’m glad he’s so confident. Hell, I’m glad he’s confident enough for all of us put together. Nic is so eager to have Mercedes here, for her to join our pack. You’d think, for a man who almost died, he’d have the most issues out of all of us.
But if you thought that, you’d be wrong.