34. Orso
Orso
Iglare at my phone as I doomscroll, more focused on the pounding music and the alpha throwing his anger at me two floors below than whatever crap is on the screen.
Artie’s shouts are still ringing in my ears, and my throat aches from yelling at him so much. I’m used to hollering during games and practice, but everything hurts more when we’re fucking bonded.
We haven’t had an argument like that for years, since before Artie joined our pack, at least.
I haven’t exactly locked myself in my room, but we don’t close doors in our house. Shutting my bedroom door is basically telling Artie and Mathan to leave me the fuck alone.
Mathan didn’t know why the car ride home was filled with stony silence, but Artie guessed I was going to explode the second we stepped into the cottage. So he got there first, firing off reasons why it would be okay to bite Kallis. And I lost it.
It took a few minutes of shouting for Mathan to catch up, and I expected him to be on my side when he realized what Artie had done.
I’m tucked up in bed, my olive military-grade sleeping bag tight under my armpits, grinding my fucking teeth because I can’t calm the hell down.
I thought Mathan would understand the basic fucking concept of not biting an omega without their permission, especially an omega who made it crystal clear she doesn’t fucking want one.
It wasn’t even about bringing someone new into our pack, which is a whole other thing. It’s literally just respecting Kallis enough to fucking listen to her and not fucking assaulting her—like I did.
A growl rumbles from me as I switch apps to read up on our next opponents. Not that it’ll be any use. I’m too stuck in my head to absorb any information.
What am I supposed to do? Apologize to Artie for tackling him before he sank his teeth into her?
If we went to Kallis and said, Hey, Artie almost bit you, is that okay?
It’s not like she’ll be overjoyed. Thank fucking God he didn’t actually do it, because it took me weeks to get over that single moment where Kallis and I cut our bond, or we tried to.
I still can’t get rid of that fucking memory of being connected to the three of them, either.
Though that might have been the dizziness from my head wound, as well.
My hand goes to the back of my head, scowling as I stroke the ridge of my scar like it’s some fucking fond memory instead of the bullshit that started all this. If I’d just listened to Mathan and worn a helmet, we could have begun on a better foot.
Artie would be wrecked if he felt what it’s like to be rejected by her. And I don’t want any of them to have to go through that.
Her face falls and hardens every time she looks at me, and I’m pretty sure part of her will always be wary of me, no matter how many times I apologize for biting her. I feel like I took something from her, and I don’t know how to give it back.
And Artie just went straight ahead and almost fucking bit her anyway.
My fingers are white as I grip my phone, but the music thuds away. I’d rather flick the breaker switch and cut off all the power in the cottage than go down to the basement and tell Artie to turn it off.
There’s a creak from the floorboard outside, and my scowl grows even deeper. “Can you stop fucking hovering?” I snap, and my bedroom door instantly screeches. Mathan likes old wood, so the doors are made of thick oak that creak when we open them fully.
“Thought you’d want some company.” My mate shrugs as he comes in, two beer bottles in one hand, a giant bag of Cheetos in the other. He’s already in his yellow-striped pajamas, because he’s usually tucked up in his pillow fort bed by this time of night.
We have different sleep patterns and preferences, so when we do want company at night, we usually head for Artie’s room. It makes him happy as well.
“I don’t want Cheetos, that’s for sure,” I say.
“Those aren’t for you,” he says as he pushes the door closed behind him with his heel.
He throws the bag to the center of the empty bed and offers me a beer.
“Are you still sulking?” he asks as he plops down and the metal frame creaks.
He pulls his right leg up, bending it, slipping his foot under his left thigh while it hangs over the edge, making himself comfortable.
“I’m not fucking sulking. I’m pissed off at both of you.” Though I won’t let Artie in if he comes knocking.
Kallis complained about all my shit being ‘too hard’, so how would she feel about my cheap pull-out couch with a bare two-inch-thick mattress, and the one-man sleeping bag I seal myself in most nights? There’s not exactly room for an omega here.
We’re silent as Mathan scoops up the Cheetos and gets stuck in, crunching away like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
He can wait me out until the whole bag is gone, and then he’ll just lie next to me until I’m ready to talk.
I used to give him the silent treatment when we first mated, but one time it took two days of him just hanging around before I finally broke and talked about whatever the hell we’d been arguing about at the time.
So it doesn’t work on him, and there’s no point trying.
“He tried to bite her, Mathan. What else do I need to say?”
Mathan pauses, but only so he can swallow a Cheeto and take a loud sip of his beer. But he doesn’t take his pensive gaze off me, and I want to shuffle around so I don’t feel like he’s staring right through me.
I was so sure any alpha I knew would say that biting an omega without permission is not okay. Mathan is one of the kindest people I know, so I can’t understand why he doesn’t agree with it.
“It’s my fault,” he says as he licks fake cheese dust from his fingers.
“What? What the fuck do you mean it’s your fault? He’s the one who nearly bit her.”
“Aye, and I’m the one who knew he might do it.” His head drops as his guilt begins to creep into the bond.
“What the fuck do you mean?” My jaw drops as anger bursts through me, and I snarl. I almost lunge for him and throw my fists, but his guilt heightens and is suddenly eating at me. “How the fuck did you know?”
He stares at his hands before inhaling a handful of Cheetos. If I were still Artie’s age, I would have exploded at him for stalling.
“He tried to bite her before,” Mathan continues.
“Or I think he did. He might have just wanted to kiss her neck when she was patching up his leg. But you were in the middle of the game, so you probably didn’t feel his rush of possessiveness.
” Mathan released a long breath. “I thought I’d be able to stop him if he tried anything with Kallis, but I was too wrapped up in her. ”
I want to bite back my anger, but it’s so fucking hard when I feel like he’s kept a secret from me.
That’s the same thing that happened with my mom.
She introduced all my dads to her new scent match and, once they were familiar with each other, she sprang it on me without warning.
I told Mathan from the day we met on the draft for the Golden Bears, and we knew we belonged together, that I couldn’t deal with secrets.
“And why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice icier than Kallis’s when she’s furious with me. “Have you talked to him about it?”
Mathan shook his head.
I need to take slow breaths to control the hurt that’s tearing inside me.
“I was waiting to talk to you about it, but we’ve been so full on with games and practice that there never seemed to be a good time.”
Closing my eyes, I knock my head back against the coarse brick wall.
I just have to keep breathing. When I sift through all of my anger, the one thing that remains is my need to keep my pack together.
I still groan. “Do you understand now why this is such a fucking problem? Why I keep calling her a distraction? I could have accepted being friends with her. But if Artie’s so far gone that he’s going to bite her without any discussion or warning, what the hell are we going to do?
” My fists clench as I start shaking, but I can’t stay fucking calm.
“We need to get rid of her. I can’t deal with this, Mathan. We’re fucking breaking.”
“There are other things we need to consider,” he replies.
I’m silent as my heart cracks. No matter what we’ve faced together in life, even the most fucked up situations we’ve had to endure, Mathan has always been on my side. Even when we’ve argued so much over Artie that I was terrified he was going to leave me, he was always our voice of reason.
“No, there fucking isn’t! It’s not a case of ‘I know, but…’ it’s that Artie shouldn’t have tried to bite her, and it only happened because he invited her to our practice and you made a fucking move. So why the hell am I about to get a talking-to about this?”
“Because we both know this isn’t just about Artie biting her, or even when you bit her,” he says, crunching five Cheetos at once like he’s making a point.
Which he is. But he doesn’t have to do it with a flurry of cheese powder.
I look away from him as I take a bitter sip, already annoyed by where this is going. Because I know what he’s doing, and he won’t let me avoid it, either.
“We’re not your parents,” he says softly. “We’re a pack, and my mates come first for me, no matter what I feel for Kallis. Even if my alpha side demands I claim her because she’s ours, my heart belongs to you, Orso.”
“It doesn’t fucking work like that. She’s a fucking omega, and Artie is always going to choose her over us,” I growl as I run my hand through my hair. Artie considers my scar her first marking of us.
“Fuck, Mathan, all he’s ever wanted is an omega. You really think he’s going to stick around if I tell him I don’t want anything to do with her?”
“That’s basically what you said when he fell in love with us.”
“This isn’t the same.”
“Of course it’s the same, Orso. Kallis’s designation doesn’t change the situation.
It’s no different from what we had to go through when we met Artie.
I told you then that I never wanted you to feel like I was choosing between you, and I don’t want you to feel like we’re forcing you into a position where you have to stay or go. ”
I growl again, but Mathan puts his bottle on the bedside table and reaches forward to take my hand.
“Orso, look at me.”
He sounds confident, but I can feel his nerves skipping through our bond and echoing in my body, along with Artie’s anger still pounding away.
“Can you still trust me? We’ve been together long enough that you should know I won’t leave you.”
I really want to keep yelling and just shout about all the emotions that spiraled through me as I watched the three of them together.
Because there’s no way they were just fucking around.
Artie and Mathan were so obsessed with her in that moment that I could have left The Woods, gone back to our cottage, and they wouldn’t have even blinked.
But then Artie would have bitten her, and we’d be in such deep shit that none of us could get out.
It was so hard for me to accept Artie when Mathan and I met him, even though we both instantly knew he belonged with us. My mom scent matched with a new alpha in her forties after the five of them had been together since they all presented, and it tore them apart.
I couldn’t deal with the thought that Mathan would only be interested in Artie, that I’d slowly fade into the background as Artie sucked up all his love. And now Kallis was digging her way into their hearts.
Letting Artie in wasn’t like discovering there was something missing inside me. It was that he expanded me, he helped me grow, and Artie showed me that I could be so much more than what I desperately clung to with Mathan.
But it took me at least six months to come to terms with my feelings, and Artie almost bit her within months of working with her? It was too fast.
“You didn’t see what you looked like,” I murmur, taking another quick sip before I speak up.
“You weren’t just messing around; you were completely absorbed in her.
I felt like I’d been kicked to the sidelines, like I was just a spare alpha there in case your omega wanted me.
You didn’t need me, Mathan; neither of you did, and it was scary as fuck not having you look at me. ”
Mathan’s brow furrows as he squeezes my hand.
“I’m so sorry, Orso,” he says, shuffling closer as his regret feeds through our bond.
“I thought that because she’d already asked you to come over and you said you were fine standing there, that you were okay.
You like to watch Artie and me, so I didn’t think about it… ”
I did like it. The three of them were so beautiful together that it hurt, and it felt right to have them locked in like that. I nearly bolted when I realized I wanted to see our goalies knot her.
It was just when I reached out to Mathan and Artie through our bond that I almost couldn’t feel them. It was like there was a cloud of honey hanging over us, muting our ability to sense each other, and that freaked me out more than anything else.
We go quiet, and I hope he’s taking in what I said. The fact that Mathan really thought I was alright with them fucking around after everything he knew about me stung too much. What scared me more than anything was the idea of waking up one day without him.
I hadn’t shared with my mates that I still have a ghost of a connection to her because I wanted to keep them safe, but I need to protect myself from Kallis as well.