Page 137 of Omega's Flight

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Omegas mate for life, supposedly." Except that I'd been doing mated things with Cas and enjoying them thoroughly, so that obviously was a myth.

"Really?" Francine didn't believe me either.

"I know, I know." Bax and Holland were proof of that. "It's just not done. Not with an omega, anyway. No divorces for us, just repudiation." Quin's mother had done something like that, ripped up her mating contract and taken her pup home with her. But she was an alpha and her mate had been an alpha. It was different for omegas.

Unless we decided it wasn't.

I pulled the blanket a little tighter around my shoulders. "Okay, I'll try it. I'll talk to Degan and see what he says."

"And what about Cas?"

Yeah, she wasn't going to let me get away without dealing with that.

"I'll talk to him too."

She nodded and looked down at her desk, where I expected she had notes of questions she wanted to ask, or wanted me to ask.

"So, tell me more about what things change for a girl omega when their parents finally figure it out?"

I reached for my mug of tea and settled into my role as ambassador for the omega community to the human.

C H A P T E R 9 5

C as looked up gratefully when the door to his office opened. "Raleigh!" He stood up and scanned the room for a chair that didn't have too many papers on it. "Hang on."

"No, it's okay," Raleigh said softly, smiling. "Come for a walk for a bit?" He held out a hand and waited.

Cas glanced back at his desk, covered in mid-year reports that still needed to be checked and transformed into the proper format, then looked at the omega waiting patiently in the doorway for him. "Let me get my jacket," he said, and mentally set his alarm clock a half hour earlier for the next week.

Outside, he made sure the door was locked and looked to Raleigh for instruction.

"Woods okay?" Raleigh asked.

"Sure."

They walked out of town in a companionable silence. Cas could feel that there was something Raleigh wanted to talk about, but instinct told him that this was something Raleigh needed to come to in his own time, like he'd shown up at Cas's door of his own volition.

In the woods, Raleigh made a noise similar to a sigh, and his lips curved up into a small smile. "I wish Jackson-Jellystone had kept more of their trees." He tilted his head back to stare up at the branches above them. "How old are these trees, anyway?"

"Pretty old," Cas told him, looking around with new eyes. "Some of them, from right around the pond, have been here since the enclave was founded. They get younger as you get farther out."

"Huh." Raleigh turned his attention back to their path again. "Do you mind going over there? I'd like to visit with Isaac again."

"Sure." Tentatively, because Raleigh was still giving off that strange electric feeling like the air before a thunderstorm, Cas put his arm around Raleigh's waist. Raleigh moved half a step closer, so their hips brushed on occasion, and Cas relaxed. "How are the pups?"

"Pip has a new joke for you. Are you sure you're still okay with that? Some of them are pretty rude."

"She's enjoying it. I don't mind—I've heard worse." He winked at Raleigh. "I've been slacking on my revenge jokes. I should start working on those again."

Raleigh chuckled in response. "No, don't, it'll just wind her up again." His expression went distant and they finished the last of the walk to the pond each wrapped in their own thoughts.

The canopy over them opened up as they entered the little grove. Sunshine gleamed off the surface of the water, the only movement coming from the corner where the spring that fed it bubbled into the body of the pond. Cas followed as Raleigh skirted the edge, heading for the clump of trees where his pup was buried.

Raleigh sat down with his back against one of the tree trunks, his fingers coming through the grass between them. Cas leaned against a tree opposite and watched as he plucked a single flower from the tiny grave.

"I wonder where these came from?" he said, spinning it between his fingers. A sweet, innocent scent drifted up from the tiny white petals as they moved. "I know the purple ones were Holland and Bax, and Bram planted those white ones, and that blue one is mine, but I don't recognize these."