Chapter Eighteen – Mercedes
The next day, it’s hard for me to focus on anything. I can’t stop thinking about the date with Warren, and if I’m totally honest, I’m nervous about the date tonight with Darius. Out of the three of them, he’s the one I’ve seen the least, the one I’ve spoken to the least. Our interactions involve him catching me in his office, using his alpha dominance on me, acting like he can’t bear to be in the same room as me even though his scent drives my inner omega wild, and then a half-assed apology—but only because Nic asked him to.
Yeah, I don’t think tonight’s date is going to go nearly as well as my date with Warren.
It is what it is, though, and it shouldn’t even matter to me. Getting close to any of them isn’t my goal. My goal is to find a safe place to get to, somewhere I can have a future where Jay’s shadow isn’t constantly looming behind me. That’s not here.
Warren did offer to take care of him for me, to kill him. If anyone deserves to die, it’s definitely that asshole, but I don’t feel right calling myself judge and jury, nor do I feel right letting Warren be my executioner.
Jay is my problem.
Still, for whatever reason, as I sit there in the living room, by myself, listening to the TV, my internet search is lacking. My laptop sits on my lap, and it hasn’t seen any movement in five minutes, so the screen shuts itself off.
My heart just isn’t in it today. It’s weird.
Nic only has two more days off, then he has to go back to work. It’s going to be weird, being alone in this house. Really, it’ll give me hours upon hours of privacy to look up whatever I want without being discovered or watched. I’ll have plenty of time to figure my shit out.
Or maybe I’ll feel like this still, and I’ll be paralyzed with indecision.
Ugh. I can’t let any alphas sway me. So what if I like Nic and I kind of like Warren, too? It shouldn’t matter. The one and only thing that has ever mattered was making sure Jay doesn’t lock us together forever by biting me during my first heat.
A bond like that? Unbreakable. Almost magical. There’d be no going back, no undo button. I’d be stuck with him, forced to be his omega forever.
Like I said, it really isn’t fair, being an omega.
Nic joins me on the couch after a while, and I shut my laptop and set it aside out of habit. Even though he told me he doesn’t mind me looking at other places to live, I still feel weird doing it in front of him. Plus, like I mentioned earlier, my heart’s just not in it today.
“So,” he starts, giving me an easy grin—and that grin makes me stare at his mouth a little too hard, remembering our kiss.
Warren only kissed my forehead. I supposed it was a good thing. First it’s just a kiss, then it’s me getting wet, then it’s them smelling my arousal thanks to my traitorous body, and then… well, it’s clear where things could’ve gone.
And at the rate I’m going, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to stop. Something about these guys just makes me want to give in to all those instincts I ignored my whole life.
“How was your date with Warren?” Nic asks me, grinning ear to ear. His brown hair is a bit messy, pieces of it sticking every which way. It gives him a cute, boyish look, and I have to resist the urge to lean into him and smell him.
The alpha who smells like fresh, warm cookies right out of the oven. Not a bad smell at all.
“He didn’t tell you?” I ask. It would feel weird discussing this with him, but these guys clearly share everything—and, in a perfect world, they’d share me, too. When alphas bond with each other and make mini-packs like this, sharing omegas becomes the norm.
“He actually got up before me and went to work early—something he’s never done,” he tells me. “So either he actually got some sleep after your date last night, or you kept him up all night.”
“I didn’t keep him up all night. I was in bed by eleven-thirty.”
Nic chuckles softly. “That’s not what I meant by keeping him up.”
My cheeks flush. “Oh. Well, um, I don’t know anything about that.” What Warren does when he’s in his bed at night is his own business, not mine. “It was nice, though. He’s… my first impression of him was wrong.”
“Do you know first impressions are wrong a lot of the time?” When I give him a strange look, he nods and goes on, “They are. First impressions are a way for our brain to try to make snap judgments and save us some processing time, but first impressions never get the whole picture, which is why they’re known to be not too reliable.” He coughs. “Sorry, didn’t mean to get technical or anything. I’m just glad your date with him was nice.”
“He told me about his dad,” I whisper. Even now, I can picture the pain in Warren’s voice, and I hate that he had to grow up with that. I hate that his mom is dead because of what his father did. “I saw the scars on his back.”
When Nic’s eyebrows raise, I add, “He burned his clothes in the firepit again.”
That gets him to chuckle. “He was complaining about being forced to dress up again, so I figured something along those lines would happen. I just didn’t think he’d open up so fast. Warren isn’t good at talking. He’s more of an action man.”
“He talked just fine last night.”
“Good. How are you feeling about tonight?”
I turn my head and look to the right of the room, where the windows are. Outside, the sun shines brightly. It’s a nice, pretty day. If I believed in omens, I’d say this is a good sign that tonight’s date will go well.
But I don’t.
“Are you sure Darius is even going to show?” I finally turn my gaze back to Nic and find him watching me with a worried expression on his handsome face. “I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen the guy since moving in. Call me crazy, but I don’t think having a date with me is high on his list of priorities.”
“He’ll show. He might be a little grumpy, but don’t take it personally. He’s… he’s always been the most serious out of us. He can definitely rub you the wrong way if you let him, but I trust him with my life.”
“Of course you do, he’s your brother. Pack and blood. I’m sure Warren trusts him with his life, too. I’m—”
Nic grabs my hand and squeezes. “You’re pack now, which is as good as blood.”
The alpha next to me is so full of reassurances, and a desperate part of me wants to believe him. If I was a normal omega, I’d believe I’m a part of their pack and therefore as deserving of Darius’s loyalty as everyone else.
I’m me, though, and I’m more of a realist than most omegas, I think.
“Don’t worry,” Nic tells me. “I’ll have another chat with him before the date and tell him to be on his best behavior. You have nothing to worry about, okay? You two just got off on the wrong foot, but don’t you worry, Mercedes, we’ll make it right.”
He’s so eager for me to be accepted and wanted by every member of his pack. He really does want me to be their omega.
Not once in my life did I ever dream about belonging to multiple alphas. Hell, I didn’t even want the one that kept coming around and reminding me I already had a claim on me. But three? Three just feels like… an insane number of alphas to an omega who never really thought about it before.
Three alphas. Three knots. Three mouths. Six hands.
Maybe they could come in handy during heats, but that’s about it.
“Hey, if all goes well, maybe the three of us can take you out on a real date,” Nic’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “An actual restaurant, where someone else will cook for us. Is there anywhere you’d like to go? Anything you’d like to see?” He takes my silence as thoughtfulness, when it’s really a quiet terror. “Just think about it, okay? Make a list and I’ll see what we can do.”
He gets up, but before he does, he lifts my hand and places a gentle kiss on my knuckles, and soon enough I’m alone on the couch once again.
Take me out into the real world, outside of this house? The thought shouldn’t horrify me, but it does. What if, by some miracle of chance, Jay finds me? I know the possibility is low, but it’s never zero.
Great. So if tonight’s date goes well, I have another date to look forward to on the horizon, one where my past could come to take me and drag me back, kicking and screaming.
I guess this means tonight’s date can’t be a repeat of last night. I have to make sure it goes terribly. With Darius as my date, that shouldn’t be too difficult.