Page 23 of His Reward (Omegas After Dark: Omega Auction #2)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Boston

Marco Monteverdi was a total bastard. It was unbelievable to me that someone pushing thirty could act like such a child around his brother, but I guess jealousy did weird things to people.

What concerned me even more were the subtle hints he’d dropped about the whole dating-marriage-kids plot Mr. Monteverdi had spelled out a month ago right in front of Lucien’s face. I didn’t think Lucien had picked up on those hints, but the fact that they’d been made rubbed me the wrong way.

Mr. Monteverdi had pushed me to speed things up with Lucien multiple times in the last month.

He’d even “sweetened the pot”, as he called it, by suggesting he would buy us a family home and set up trust funds for any grandkids we gave him.

The man was bound and determined to turn Lucien into some sort of happy-sad story of an omega who had once had a chance at greatness, but had ended up with the consolation prize of traditional omega spouse and family roles instead.

It set my teeth on edge that the things I wanted the most, a life with Lucien as my omega, dovetailed with Mr. Monteverdi’s selfish and demeaning plans for his son.

“So that’s it, then?” I asked Dr. Barber as the man finished up Lucien’s discharge exam. “He’s cleared to go home?”

“Well, he still needs daily therapy for the next week to keep those scars from tightening up,” Dr. Barber explained. “We’ll gradually reduce that to every few days, then every week, and so on. But yes, for now, you’re as good as gold, Lucien.”

I felt the slight jolt from my omega at Dr. Barber’s unfortunate choice of words.

“Thanks, Dr. Barber,” Lucien said, standing from the bed and walking over to the closet where he kept his things. “It doesn’t really feel like goodbye, though. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it,” Dr. Barber said before leaving.

Lucien waited until the man had left the room, then turned to me with an unreadable look and said, “Good as gold.”

“Well, you are,” I said with as big a smile as I could manage.

Lucien huffed. “Tell that to Marco and my father.”

I headed over to the closet to help him pack his bag.

“They’re idiots if they think something like a little scar tissue is going to keep you from competing again someday,” I said as I took the armful of things Lucien had pulled off of shelves.

I grabbed the bag from the top shelf and took everything to the bed to pack it.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Lucien said, following me with more stuff.

“What, pack your bag for you? I don’t mind,” I said with a shrug.

“No, I mean trying to boost my confidence by telling me I’ll be a champion again someday.”

I straightened and stared at Lucien. “Do not, and I repeat, do not let your father and Marco get to you,” I said. “I have no idea why they think you don’t have any fight in you, but they’re wrong. Dead wrong. I, of all people, know how resilient and determined you can be.”

I’d added a touch of Dom to my voice as I spoke to him, and Lucien rewarded me with a pink-cheeked grin that could almost be described as bashful.

We hadn’t spoken overtly about anything kinky in the last month, not with Lucien’s recovery as intense as it had been, but maybe now was the time to start again.

“I keep bouncing back and forth between wanting to prove to them that I’m as strong as any alpha,” Lucien said, depositing the rest of his clothing on the bed, then rubbing his forehead on his good side, “and being so tired that I just want to crawl under a blanket and forget who I used to be.”

I stopped packing and looked at him. “You’re Lucien Monteverdi,” I told him. “Nothing can take that away from you.”

“Yeah, but what does that mean?” Lucien asked on a tired sigh, then helped me finish packing the rest of his things. I sensed that was the big question he was wrestling with, now that his body was healing. Souls healed at a much slower rate.

When we reached the lobby waiting area at the end of the hall, Mrs. Monteverdi was there but Marco was nowhere in sight.

“Are you ready to go home, sweetie?” Mrs. Monteverdi asked with motherly expectation in her eyes.

“Yeah, Mom,” Lucien said, exhaustion weighing down on him.

“I’ll just pull the car around and—”

“Would you mind if I just had Boston take me?” Lucien interrupted her.

Mrs. Monteverdi blinked, her excitement fading a little. “Oh.” She glanced between me and Lucien. “Um, well, if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything,” Lucien rushed to console her. “It’s just that I might get all emotional, and I’m not sure I want my mom to see that.”

I couldn’t tell if Lucien meant that or if it was just an excuse. Mrs. Monteverdi glanced at me with a calculating look, then her smile returned. “I guess I can’t blame my baby boy for being all grown up, can I, Bos?” Her smile returned full force.

It was my turn to blush. “It’s nothing like that, really, Mrs. Monteverdi,” I said.

She had, of course, been there for a lot of her husband’s plotting and planning where me and Lucien were concerned.

I had a feeling her thoughts on the subject were close to my own, that she wanted the two of us to get together and was annoyed that her husband was trying to play puppet master.

“I thought I told you to call me Bea,” she said, stepping closer to pat my cheek.

“Take care of my boy,” she added with a wink, then stepped back.

“If you need anything at all, give me a call,” she told Lucien.

“I’ll do some cooking and bring containers over to your place later so all you have to do is heat them up, okay? ”

“Mom, I can take care of myself,” Lucien said, rolling his eyes. I could tell he loved the attention his mom was giving him, though.

There was a bit of a delay filling out the paperwork for Lucien’s discharge.

I didn’t mind. I waited until it was done, then walked beside Lucien as an orderly wheeled him to the elevator, then down to the exit level and to the doorway.

I jogged around to get my SUV, then drove it to the front door and helped Lucien climb way up into the passenger seat.

I could have sworn I saw a few people taking pictures with their phones nearby, and as much as the alpha in me wanted to go after them to ask who they were and why they were taking my omega’s picture, I let it go.

“It feels weird not being in a clinical setting after all this time,” Lucien said with a sigh, sinking back into the leather of his seat and closing his eyes.

I pulled out of the hospital’s entryway and onto the city streets. “At least you’re out in time to see all the Christmas decorations.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lucien said, opening his eyes and looking around as we drove toward the beach part of town, where Lucien’s condo was.

I’d never been there, but I had the address and typed it into my GPS.

“I’d totally forgotten Christmas is only a few days away.

Time sort of blurs together in rehab.” He grinned at his joke, then went on with, “Don’t you have family to spend the holidays with? ”

“Papa lives in Norwalk,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll go out there sometime next week. He knows how busy I’ve been.”

“And your dad?”

“Haven’t heard from him in eight years,” I said tightly. “Even then, I heard one too many excuses about why he left Papa for a younger omega to have even a shred of respect left for him.”

Lucien just nodded. He knew I was an only child, so he didn’t ask any more questions about family. “What about the guys at the firehouse?” he asked instead.

I smiled. I loved my papa dearly, but Roscoe, Ernie, and the guys were my real family. “They’re fine,” I said. “They keep asking about you.”

“Me?” Lucien asked, surprised.

“Yeah. They were there for the fire, too.”

Although if I was honest, part of the reason they kept asking about Lucien was because the amount of time I spent with my omega who wasn’t really my omega had started to eat into the time and attention I was supposed to be putting into the firehouse.

I’d accidentally missed more than one training session in the last month because I’d been at the rehab hospital.

All of the plans we’d started to come up with for ways to raise money had been pushed to the side because I didn’t have time for them.

I’d missed a few administrative deadlines to apply for things the company really needed on top of that.

Ernie had given me a talking to, and there’d even been an email from the area commander that I didn’t want to think about.

But Lucien was more important than all of that.

“What?” Lucien asked, making me realize I’d been silent for too long.

“What do you mean, what?” I asked back, playing dumb.

“Something’s bothering you that you’re not telling me about,” Lucien said, his gaze far too penetrating.

“I’m not—”

“Spill it,” Lucien cut me off.

For some reason, that made me grin. “Hey. Which one of us is the Dom here?”

“I can be vers if I need to be,” Lucien teased me in return.

I laughed. It was the right combination of words and gestures. The mood in the truck, which had turned tense, eased again.

“Okay, some of the guys, only some of them, mind you,” I started, “think that I’ve been spending too much time with a certain celebrity skater and that it’s affected my work performance.”

“Boston,” Lucien scolded me, sounding a lot like his mom. “You can’t shirk your duties just to spend time with me.”

“Shirk my duties?” I peeked at him before making a turn that would take us to the main street in Lucien’s beach neighborhood. “Are we in the nineteenth century now?”

“You know what I mean,” Lucien said, settling back comfortably into his seat. “There’s no way that being a firefighter means you can take a lot of time off to take care of some poor, scarred omega.”