Page 42 of Omega's Heart

He stared at her for another long moment as the tension in the room rose, then held out his left arm. “Right, let’s get this over with. Take your blood so I can get out of your way.”

“Kaden!” I hissed.

He glanced up at me, then with a visible effort pulled back the crackling energy surging around him.

Adelaide approached his extended arm cautiously, carrying a half-dozen little test tubes of all different colors. Her expression was tight, but her hands stayed steady as she drew the samples, one after another, the tiny vials filling with a rich red that had its own energy. I could have sworn I felt Kaden himself in the filled test tubes.

She put the vials away in the basket at the side of the counter and washed her hands in the little sink. The stream of water shook oddly and it took me a moment to realize it was because her hands were shaking. “That’s it. I’ll call you when I have the results back.”

Kaden didn’t say anything until I nudged his shoulder. He started, said a strained, “Thank you,” and then began rolling for the door.

“You okay?” I whispered to Adelaide before I followed him.

She nodded, already almost entirely back to her normal self. “I forget, sometimes, how much of a throwback those boys are. They normally keep themselves reined in much tighter.”

“Yeah.” I thought I did a creditable job of hiding my surprise. He didn’t seem primitive to me. “He’s not handling this very well.”

“Are you going to be okay??” she asked.

“Of course!” Why wouldn’t I be? “He won’t hurt me. It would offend his very soul,” I added and quirked a smile in her direction. “After all, no one hurts omegas.”

“Maybe in White River,” she said softly as I followed Kaden out the door. “Please be careful, Felix.”

C H A P T E R 2 6

G uilt made Kaden’s temper even sharper than it really needed to be. Not that this was entirely unexpected—just entirely unwelcome. And it wasn’t Adelaide’s fault.

Damn, Adelaide. She’d done her best to gently break the news to him and tried to lead him toward the idea that he could still live a full life in the wheelchair. Which he could acknowledge but… not in the enclave. Not with so many of their roads not really roads, but pathways created by the pounding of feet against soil. Not with the limited means at his disposal.

Still, he was Quin’s brother, which carried with it certain responsibilities. One of which meant he’d had to sit there and listen while he felt the blood drain out of his face and Adelaide’s voice fade like she was speaking down a long tunnel, taking on an almost echoey quality as his brain struggled to cope with the disappearance of the oxygen it normally felt entitled to.

The other responsibility would be longer in the doing. He’d have to go back down at some point and apologize. Did you bring flowers to a mated gamma when you’d just been a total asshole to them? He didn’t know. Bax seemed like a good resource for that kind of information—he’d call him. Later.

Long years of hiding his emotions let him make it out of the clinic before anyone suspected just how upset he was, but the shitty mood it put him in only got worse the farther he went. So, when he found Felix right behind him as he opened the apartment door, he forgot himself and his determination to treat Felix better than the omega’s own pack had treated him, and let his frustration and terror of the future pour out over his quiet companion.

What set it off was something stupid. Kaden opened the apartment door, growling his frustration because he couldn’t get enough leverage to slam the door open from his place trapped in that damn chair. Felix put a hand on the door and pushed it wide, then started to follow Kaden into the apartment.

Kaden turned his chair sideways in the open door and blocked Felix. “What do you want?” he snapped.

“You don’t seem like you should be alone right now,” Felix said simply.

Of course Felix would see how broken inside he was. “What would you know?” Kaden spat back, desperate to drive the other man away. The omega’s calm acceptance of Kaden’s disability was just salt in the wound and he needed to be alone until he could come to terms with this new version of himself. Again.

He wasn’t only his missing leg. There was more to him than that. He was still an alpha of the pack.

Wasn’t he?

Could you be an alpha if you couldn’t walk? His mouth felt dry and his heart raced, not with the heavy thudding of the hunter, but the rapid fluttering of the prey.

Felix put a foot on part of the chair and pushed so that it spun despite Kaden’s best efforts to hold it still, then shoved him into the apartment. “I didn’t notice you making any plan to deal with this.”

“What plan is there? I’m a cripple. Probably best that I get used to that. I’ve got another forty years of being a drain on the pack.”

If he’d expected the omega to wince, or back off, or even leave, he discovered he was following the entirely wrong path with this one. Felix only tipped his head to the side, a bit like a pup encountering a new and fascinating insect, then nodded. “I get it. You’re angry. You’ll get over it in time. I know I did.”

“You’re not crippled.” Kaden spun the chair away and rolled farther into the apartment as if he actually thought he could escape the nosy omega.

Felix followed him inside. “Give me your phone.”