Chapter Seventeen #2
Tiffany again took Alison’s hand, as she had when she’d arrived, and tugged her toward the house. Tiffany guided her past the guest bathrooms downstairs, going to the second floor and into what was clearly her room.
“Don’t you sleep with the alphas?”
Tiffany glanced around the room decorated with flowers and bright painting. “What? Oh, yeah. This is the room where I keep my stuff and where I usually sleep. Kieran, Kane and Marshall each have their own room, but usually one or all of them end up in here.”
Which explained the massive bed. It looked as large as two kings up against each other.
How does someone even find a bed that big?
Before she could think too much about it, Tiffany guided her through the room to her private bathroom.
It was bright, done in mostly whites and marble.
“There’s medicine in the drawer if you have a headache or anything, and feel free to jump in the shower if you just need to rinse off from the sun.
” Tiffany offered a sweet smile. “Or if you want a bit of privacy where people can’t hover. ”
Alison closed the door behind Tiffany after a quick ‘thank you’. Just getting away from the party had already helped settle her stomach and her nerves.
It again told her this wasn’t a place for her. Even if she pretended she was capable of and wanted a relationship with the alphas, this entire friendship-and-family thing was something she lacked the skills—and possibly the genes—for.
She thought about her family, about her uncaring father, about her beaten-down mother, and the truth was that she didn’t know anything about how to behave or form connections like the ones between these people.
Daniel, Kyle and Trent might have already become part of this group, but she never would.
Yet another reason why we’d never work out.
She opened the drawer Tiffany had pointed to, and sure enough, a pharmacy’s worth of medication was there, all labeled and organized. The benefit of being mated to a doctor.
She found the pills for her headache, but before she grabbed them, her gaze caught on something else.
A blue box, one of six stacked together.
Pregnancy tests.
Was Tiffany trying?
She seemed far too young to be a mother, and yet some omegas got pregnant far earlier. Or perhaps they had the tests just in case, to check after a heat.
A person could wait the weeks until their period started, but the nice tests, like these, could check a bit earlier. At the very least, they could get a positive while still in the ‘late period or pregnant?’ stage.
Which made her stomach roll again.
Alison did the math in her head, quick and frantic. Five weeks had passed since her heat.
Five weeks and no period. She was still in the range of it being possible, since an omega could get her period between four and six weeks after a heat, but her exhaustion and headaches and all of it turned sinister.
She grabbed a test with shaking hands, reading over the directions three times when she couldn’t seem to absorb the information on the first two goes.
She took the test, then set it on the counter and paced.
Please, be negative. She repeated the words like one of those stupid self-help affirmation tapes, as if she could will that into the universe by sheer belief alone.
Her stomach was worse, her breath quick.
She hadn’t really considered becoming pregnant to be a possibility.
She wasn’t the mothering type. What the fuck was she going to do if it was positive?
She couldn’t have a child. She had no idea what to do with a kid.
She hadn’t really had parents, so who the hell was she going to emulate?
And all those issues ignored that she’d be walking away from the alphas the second the case was over. The last thing she wanted was a reason for them to argue about it.
She glanced at the clock, dread settling deep inside her as the seconds ticked away until she could check.
Finally, it was time. The test sat on the edge of the counter like a trap, as though if she didn’t look, it couldn’t hurt her, couldn’t be true.
She crept forward as though trying to avoid being noticed, like she could see it without it seeing her and that would somehow make things okay.
Her stomach rolled as she looked at it, as she read the tiny window for the answer. As quickly as she did, she bolted for the toilet and up came everything she thought she’d kept down.
Two lines. I’m pregnant…
Kyle’s gaze had shifted up toward the house every minute since Alison had left.
He’d seen the look on her face, the paleness of her cheeks.
She’d needed to get away. She didn’t handle get-togethers like this well, it seemed. Which he couldn’t say he fully understood.
She’d known these people better and for longer than he had. Sure, she might have kept her distance from the alphas, but she knew the omegas. She’d been friends with them, even if she didn’t talk much about it.
So why she couldn’t just relax and have fun, he didn’t understand.
“I don’t think you should see her anymore,” Dylan said.
Kyle jerked his gaze back, ready to bare his teeth until he realized the alpha was talking to Tracy and not him.
“She isn’t that bad.”
“You just told me she broke some man’s arm,” he deadpanned.
“To be fair,” Kara said, “the man grabbed a waitress’s ass. I feel like that’s almost wearing a ‘please break my arm’ shirt.”
“I broke a man’s hand when he grabbed Ashley’s ass,” Erik added, no repentance in his voice. “Hand is better. You put an arm in a sling and it’s fine. Hand? All those little bones? It’s a far longer lesson.”
Ashley’s mouth gaped open before she shoved Erik’s arm, as if scolding him.
He caught her and pulled her into his lap despite her weak protest. “People who touch what is mine don’t deserve to have unbroken limbs.”
Kyle chuckled at the exchange. The more time he spent with these people, the more he found himself missing this sense of family. He’d moved around with Daniel so much, been away from what little family they had for so long, he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed the feeling of belonging.
Maybe we should think about setting down some roots.
Trent had done it, creating himself a life there. Why couldn’t they? Hell, maybe all of them could move forward.
“You are missing the best part of the story,” Kara said, as though breaking the arm of a man wasn’t the most interesting bit.
“The man’s friend got all upset. I think they were planning on double-teaming the girl or something, the perverts.
” A snort of laughter from a few of the others—given that they all shared women—said what they thought about that statement.
“So he gets in Alison’s face, and he is huge.
I mean, he makes Trent here look tiny, and Alison is just standing there, doing that blank face she does, letting him go off.
He throws a punch but the idiot is already pretty drunk, so she dodges it, and when he’s off balance, she’s able to slam his face down into the table.
I think there might have been teeth on the floor. No one ever grabbed Anne’s ass again.”
The name caught his attention. “Anne? The omega who’s missing?”
That sucked the humor from the story out of the room, the reminder that while the get-together might be fun, reality wasn’t so forgiving.
Claire answered, nodding. “Yeah. I met her a few times, and she was—”
“Is,” Tracy said firmly, as if the belief were enough for it to be true.
Claire seemed less convinced but took the correction anyway.
“Is very sweet. She’s only in her early twenties, never calls any of us for anything.
Any omega going missing is hard, but her?
She’s just the sort of person you think the world should leave alone.
Like, there are those ones who are just too fragile, too good, who shouldn’t have to deal with the bullshit of the world. That’s Anne.”
Trent again cast his gaze up, toward the house, pieces fitting together a bit more about Alison’s dedication to the case, about how quickly she’d been willing to leap into something most people would take a minute or two to consider.
Worse, he thought about what would happen if they were too late…
He didn’t think Alison would ever forgive herself if something happened to her friend, but he hadn’t found the world to be an overly kind place.
* * * *
Daniel had pressed his lips together when Alison hadn’t come down for dinner.
He wished she was storming around, throwing a fit, because he knew exactly how to handle that.
Hell, he enjoyed dealing with her temper tantrums.
Instead, she’d been quiet when they’d returned from the party.
In fact, she hadn’t really recovered after going to the bathroom.
She’d assured him she wasn’t sick, but she’d never engaged with anyone else.
She would sit off to the side, close enough that no one felt she was left out, but far enough to not be part of the conversations.
Then again, was it that different from the start of the party? Alison didn’t seem like she fitted, or at least like she wanted to fit.
She watched over the omegas, always tense when they were curled up with an alpha, as if she were waiting to need to jump in and save someone.
The best way to describe her was a lifeguard, there on duty, sitting above everything else but not a part of it.
Which seemed silly, since he’d never met a group of people who seemed happier or more content with their mates and their lives.
Still, she had watched.
When they got back to the house, after a changeover at the hospital and collection of new medical documents to prove the visit, should anyone have tailed them and asked, she’d gone to her room for a shower.
That had been two hours before and she hadn’t left yet.
“She might be getting herself pretty,” Kyle said, a grin on his lips. “You know women have to do all that shaving to get ready.”
Daniel gave him a glare in return. “I don’t think that takes two hours.”