Page 84 of Omega's Flight

And when the door closed behind them, it was just the two of them alone in the hallway.

C H A P T E R 5 9

I wasn't sure why Cas's pot of water boiling away on Garrick's stove had made me so happy, but it did. Maybe it was simply knowing that he cared about Garrick enough to perform that homely task —none of the alphas I'd known would have bothered, or even have thought of it in the first place. They'd be trying to fix things, trying to find things they could do that would make the situation go away, not considering that maybe there wasn't anything they could do.

But Cas did.

I leaned against the wall, my hands behind my back like I was afraid I might reach for him, and we stared at each other in the dim quietness of the hallway. My body still didn't notice him, which frustrated me. I was starting to think that maybe his was noticing mine.

That was awkward—how long would that interest last? Long enough for me to shake off Degan's hold on me? I'd asked Bax, about a week after I'd realized I was missing Cas's regular drop-in visits by the house. He'd thought about six months and had laughed that he'd been madly in lust with Abel right from the first time they'd met, only he'd been too determined to be a good omega to see it. "Holland was smarter than me in that way," he'd said. “Once he made up his mind, got past the idea that repudiation was the end of everything, he threw himself at Quin and Quin was smart enough to catch him." He'd patted my hand comfortingly then. "Don't worry, these boys dig in like two alphas fighting over a juicy bone." Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Six months. I was three months away from the last time I'd seen Degan. Would he wait three more months?

I could fake it. I knew what my body did, knew the way I was with my mate. I could do those things, consciously.

But I didn't want to be mated again. Except I did, if I could have someone like Cas. I just didn't want to be owned. And that's what an omega's mating was, being given away to your new owner.

I wanted to be free of the guilt, as well, that I'd somehow failed. That I was an unnatural omega.

Maybe I just needed to talk to Bax again. "I should get back. I promised I'd play runner in case they needed anything while they got the new omega settled."

"Julius." When I raised my eyebrows, Cas explained, "His name is Julius. His sister is Minnie, short for Araminta."

"They must have been really short on unused names," popped out of my mouth before I could stop it, and I clapped my hands over the lower half of my face to put an end to any other rude commentary.

Cas laughed and leaned toward me, then took a step back. "Like Casimir?" He turned toward the door. "I'll walk you back. I haven't been to the food tables yet."

I pulled my hands away from my mouth long enough to say, "You alphas and your appetites," then clapped them back over my mouth again. What had gotten into me tonight?

"I've been working," Cas said plaintively, but he was too smart not to have caught all the ways what I'd just said could be taken. "I bet all Holly's cookies are gone already."

They were, but... "I might have set some aside..." They'd been for Holland and Quin, but I'd also managed some brownies, little pieces of the Moonlands baked by an elderly gentleman who lived at the far north end of the town, almost right in the woods. They wouldn't miss a couple of Holly's cookies.

"You," Cas said firmly, "Are a genius. And a child of Lysoonka." He held out an arm like a grand old gentleman and waited for me to put mine through it.

I hesitated, or at least my body did. My heart did a swoop and fluttered at the gesture, and I ignored the indifference of my body to cater to this foolish heart of mine for once. Cas grinned when I looped my arm through his and, somehow, a laugh found its way up and out of my mouth.

"How's Pip?" he asked as we made our way out into the cool nighttime air.

"She's good. Doing well in school. Not constantly in trouble, just most of the time."

"And Ann and Henry?"

"Henry's learning to write his name!" I crowed. "I'm so proud of him. And Ann is reading an entire grade level higher than they expect." We sidestepped a laughing couple as they headed for Cas's building, so focused on each other they barely noticed anyone around them.

Our conversation died after that and we walked in silence until we'd gotten to the pack building.

"I hid the cookies in the library," I blurted out. "On top of the shelf with language books."

He slanted a look at me, the spitting image of the Trickster Wolf. "Do you need a lookout while you retrieve them?"

That made me laugh. "Probably not, but you want your cookies, right?"

"I do." He made a gesture that I read as lead the way and followed as I rounded the corner toward the library doors. Most places here weren't locked and it was only a moment's work to slip inside and retrieve the little tin of sweets I'd set aside when I'd noticed Quin's and Holland's absence from Full Moon. We huddled in the doorway like guilty teenagers and shared Holly's cookies, sweet and rich, with bits of fruit in them that burst open with unexpected flavor on the tongue.

Eventually there was nothing left but the brownies and a couple of the balls of fried dough that were traditional in the pack on Full Moon. "I should take these up to them," I said, with more reluctance than I'd expected.

"Do you have a key for the elevator?"