Page 108 of Curvy Nerdy Omega

Could someone have purchased their services to make sure data was erased from the Valor servers? Or maybe they’d even gone as far as to hire them to kill Gideon Valor.

“Valor has never worked with the Grimm pack.” Liam crossed his arms over his chest, watching me like a hawk. “Not officially at least. I have hired them for cleanup more than a few times but I also have dirt on them I doubt your agency files have.”

“What dirt?” Frankie sounded unreasonably excited to hear this new gossip.

I turned my cup so I could see the little axolotl with glasses while reading a book on it. The tea was still hot thanks to the mug warmer Cas had ordered at some point.

All this felt so new and strange, but it wasn’t hard. That was probably the weirdest thing about it. Change was hard for me, but this…this actually made all the shit I normally struggled with easier.

I didn’t have to remind myself a million times to eat before I felt sick to my stomach since Cas was always setting food in front of me whenever it was time to eat. I didn’t have to throw out eight cups of tea because I kept forgetting to drink it before it got disgustingly cold now that he got me this. I didn’t even have to clean up or dress myself if they made me pass out from exhaustion during sex.

They weren’t interrupting my work either, or demanding my attention, but if they had something to add to the conversation, or a way to help, they offered it to me without hesitation. They wanted me to expect their help – enough so that I never had to ask for it.

Somehow, the biggest change in my life was the easiest and I was still trying to wrap my head around that.

“Frankie, you may be Lucy’s family, but I’m not giving you dirt on Grimm for free.” Liam snickered when Frankie stuck her tongue out at him. “Get your own dirt. I worked my ass off for this to make sure they wouldn’t sell information about me to the highest bidder. I’m sure you could find something just as good if you wanted.”

“Fine. See if I help you win over my father then.” Frankie went back to her computer with a huff.

Frankie approved of my alphas.

My eyes started to burn as the emotions rose up to make the lump in my throat even worse than it already was.

The person I trusted most approved of my alphas and she wasn’t throwing me away, but curating a new relationship dynamic while still ensuring I was being well taken care of.

It almost felt like that moment at a bonding ceremony when the alpha parent of the omega placed their hand in their new alpha’s, trusting them to take care of someone precious to them as they relinquished the majority of their duties.

This was my new family.

“Lopez has hired Grimm here and there, but mostly for protection details and that kind of thing,” Frankie went on. “I don’t really know anyone in that pack. They bring only the bare minimum members to the legacy events, but I’ve never seen any of them openly work with Steele.”

I cleared my throat and reminded myself I had to focus.

“Why did you ask about River specifically?” Cas gripped Liam’s hair and pulled back, making the other alpha close his eyes in bliss. “She has no power within her pack. So, what could she possibly have to do with the contract or Gideon?”

Are you jealous? I could hear that thought loud and clear.

I rolled my eyes and clicked on the Steele file, selecting the dossier on the alpha Randolph. “River may be an omega princess from a legacy pack but she has five different bachelor’s degrees she got before she was twenty-five: environmental design, city and regional planning, architectural engineering, interior architecture, and architectural design. By the time she was twenty-eight she had three master’s degrees in mathematics, aeronautical engineering, and architecture. As the cherry on top of all that, she just finished her doctorate in metallurgical engineering at thirty-one. She’s not just smart, she’s a goddamn prodigy.”

Her father allowed her to do as much school as she wanted but it didn’t seem like he was letting her use it which infuriated me to no end.

“I don’t know what they have her doing now, but she’s very publicly active which gives her connections to every wealthy pack in the city. If there’s something weird going on, she would know what it was. She’d know if someone in her pack wanted Gideon dead and who might be trying to get into the Valor servers.”

I skimmed her father’s profile, not impressed at all. His picture gave me bad vibes even if he was objectively attractive.

“Why didn’t you like River?” I directed that question to Liam, genuinely curious. “She seems like the kind of person you’d be interested in.”

“I like her as a friend,” Liam agreed. He set his hand on Cas’s thigh and studied me through slitted eyes while the other alpha played with his hair. “But as an omega…there was something off about her. I didn’t like it.”

“River is the only omega born in the Steele pack in two generations,” Frankie added. “They’ve been using her as a bartering tool. Only a few days after her legacy debutante ball on her eighteenth birthday, her father announced her engagement to someone from a wealthy pack, I don’t remember which one but they weren’t a legacy.”

I vaguely remembered that.

River was a year older than Frankie, who was only three years older than me and Francisco was in a bad mood the whole week after River turned eighteen. I could never figure out why, but if she’d been married that young…

“I thought they broke off that engagement?” I opened her eldest brother’s file next.

“They did, but not six months later she was engaged again.” Frankie grimaced and reached for her energy drink. “That one did go through with the marriage and it lasted three whole months before it was annulled. River’s been married a total of three times but she’s had a lot of other engagements that fell through for one reason or another. The weird thing though is that Steele never tried to marry her off to any legacy packs other than Valor. I don’t know why they let that one fall through.”

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