Page 25 of Broken Alpha (Unwanted #1)

His lips crashed into mine, surprising me briefly.

He pressed into my body, pouring his emotions and unspoken words into our kiss.

His cheeks were damp with tears, their saltiness mixing into our kiss.

He released his pheromones as his purr returned, telling me without words that he happily returned my affections.

He was mine, and I was his. And no one, not even my parents, could take him from me.

“Where the fuck did he go?” I mumbled to myself, going down the condiment aisle of the grocery store.

I don’t want to say that Aidyn had been distracted lately, but I could tell that something was making him rather flighty.

He suddenly got the impulse to make me his favorite dish during his stay with me this weekend, and since I needed to pick up groceries anyway, it was the first stop we made after class.

Except halfway through our shopping, Aidyn exclaimed he had forgotten something and had run off to grab it, but he never came back.

So here I was, wandering through the grocery store, looking for my lost Omega.

I found him standing at the seasonal display at the front of the grocery store, where they sold a few decorations for the upcoming holidays, which happened to be Halloween.

I had actively been avoiding this section, if I was honest. Every year, I drop hundreds of dollars on Halloween décor I didn’t actually need, purely because Halloween was my favorite holiday and I’d take it over Christmas any day of the year.

While I was not actually a fan of horror movies — and let’s be real, today’s “horror” is just someone throwing around as much gore and blood as they can in a scene — the holiday was still my favorite, and I had a certain set of movies I watched every year.

As I approached him, I noticed he was staring at a group of plushies sitting on the shelf beside a carton of chicken broth.

A throw blanket with bats on it was in his hands, and I watched him repeatedly squeezing the fabric, running his thumb over its texture, and something clicked in the back of my brain.

Aidyn’s Omega was looking at potential nesting material.

“Hey,” I said, smiling as he jumped at my voice, pulling him from whatever trance he was under.

“Oh, hi!” he said, rushing to put the blanket back on the shelf, grabbing the broth carton, and putting it in the cart. “Sorry, that should be all I needed. Did you get all you needed?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I realized that you don’t have a nest at my place. Did you want to build one there, too?”

“What do you mean ‘too’? I don’t have one at my own apartment, remember? I don’t even know how to build one.”

“There is no right or wrong way to build one, Aidyn. Just let your Omega take over; he knows what to do. If you see anything you’d like, put it in the cart.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have the money for it right now.”

“That’s not what I said. If you like it, put it in the cart. We can go to a larger department store this weekend if you’d like. They have stores specifically for nesting Omegas. If you feel safe in my apartment and want a place, we can ensure you have a nest; I won’t move it when you’re not there.”

Aidyn looked at me before turning to the decorations.

Hesitantly, he grabbed the throw blanket again and put it into the cart, watching me to see if I’d tell him no.

I smiled at him, encouraging him, while he began to study the shelves, finding the perfect items, and finally letting his Omega instincts take over.

I wondered, and not for the first time, if he had ever given in to his Omega.

He had told me he had grown up with Beta parents, so I was curious how much his lineage impacted his life like mine did.

I couldn’t imagine resisting what I was or feeling that every instinct I acted on as a dominant Alpha might be wrong.

With each item he put into the cart, I could see a sense of contentment change the expression on his face.

His shoulders lowered, slowly releasing the tension he was holding, and it occurred to me that I had been a shitty Alpha.

I hadn’t noticed how stressed and worked up he was, how he was pretending to be okay so he didn’t come off as high maintenance and a burden.

He would be staying with me until Monday evening, since it was a holiday, which meant he had already told Harllow that he was seeing someone and didn’t need to hide the fact that he wouldn’t be home for a few days.

The Halloween decorations also signaled that we were halfway through the school term, meaning we would spend his first unmedicated heat together at the end of it.

I couldn’t imagine the stress, anxiety, and uncertainty he must be experiencing.

Nests were places where Omegas could decompress and feel safe and protected.

It bothered the fuck out of me that he didn’t have one in his own apartment, so he was just carrying this weight around with him every day. I needed to do better.

Glancing at the cart, I noticed that Aidyn had added two throw blankets, string lights with mesh bats on them, and two candles and was currently looking at the plushies again.

He had moved a squishy ghost beside a squishy bat together, eyeing them both as he decided which one belonged in the cart, his eyes dancing between the squishy creatures as if the others on the shelf didn’t exist. Only these two were making the cut, apparently.

He reached out his hand, letting it hover above the bat before it darted forward quickly and grabbed the ghost instead, making its way into the cart.

He began to walk toward the check-out lanes but stopped long enough to cast a second eye at the bat, now sitting alone on the shelf, smiling it's weird, soulless smile.

He shook his head, tugging on the front of the cart to wheel it toward the lanes.

Jesus fucking Christ, could he be any more adorable?

As I moved past the shelf, I grabbed the bat, settling him beside the ghost on top of the groceries.

Aidyn watched its movements; his eyes zoned in on the plush like a cat, and I could see the fight in his eyes.

He was worried it was too much, that he was too much, and he would put it back if I gave him the option, which is why he didn’t have it.

“We can’t leave his friend behind. That’s rude. He’d be lonely,” I reasoned.

Aidyn raised those beautiful green eyes to me; the battle was still there, but the large smile that spread across his face was fucking worth it.