Page 14 of Curvy Quirky Omega

She was going to run us both ragged and I couldn’t be any fucking happier about it.

CHAPTER 6

Liam

What the fuck was I thinking? Why couldn’t I get my shit together? Lucy had every right to be angry with me, and I still couldn’t figure out where my head was at.

Sending her off with Cas seemed like the best option when it felt like, at any moment, I was going to do something that would make all this a thousand times worse.

It would take some time, but I’d get my answers eventually if I tortured every single member of the Steele pack, right? Cas could handle the rest of the Aegis employees since Dane was the only one from the direct bloodline to Valor that we hired.

A shame I couldn’t strap my brother to the metal chair next and interrogate him instead.

That was the only way we’d ever get into his encrypted drive because I had no fucking idea what his key might be, which meant we were fucked.

Shoving open the door to my bathroom, I ignored the way it slammed into the wall and studied the massive, luxurious ensuite I paid River Steele an obscene amount of money to design for me. She did the entire building actually, and it was worth every penny.

Only a genius like her could maximize the square footage and maintain the integrity of the building while finding a way to make all my insane requests work.

She was a good friend, but nothing more because I’d never felt anything with anyone the same way I did with Lucy. Cas was probably the closest, but even still…all this time, I’d thought it was normal to feel this way about your other half – your omega.

Maybe I was wrong though, because it made no fucking sense to me that my brother would plan to run away from the Valor pack and leave his omega behind. Why would he do that? If he really loved her the way I loved Lucy and Cas, why wouldn’t he at least give her the choice to decide?

I ran my hand through my hair and felt something hard and crunchy. Right, I’d smeared blood in my hair like a psycho and Lucy hadn’t said a single word about it. Just told me she’d remove me as her point of contact if I couldn’t get my shit together.

Why was she so good at that? How could she mean every single word and still love me the way that she did?

I don’t know why I was surprised. I’d never been able to compete with her work. Lucy only ever kept me around because I was useful to her.

Yeah, my omega loved me, but she was a practical, logical person. I couldn’t help her, so she’d told me to stay here while she took Cas with her to the server room instead.

I ran my hand over my face and laughed, knowing I was being a total fucking idiot right now, and I still couldn’t stop myself from getting worked up about it.

Turning the shower on, I tried to calm my thoughts, but there were too many things I didn’t understand – too many things I didn’t know how to deal with. I stripped out of my bloody clothes and got into the cold shower, staring at the wall without really seeing it.

My brother was going to run away from Valor without telling me. He’d been laundering money and squirreling it away. Money he got from the Steele pack. I couldn’t decide if I was more upset that he’d gone to Dane instead of me, or that he’d looked me right in the eye and told me I was overthinking all the fucked-up deliveries from Steele.

He lied right to my fucking face without blinking an eye.

And I prided myself on being a decent alpha. How fucking embarrassing. I couldn’t even see that my own brother was betraying us all—blinded by the inherent trust I had in him.

Gideon had always pretended he could handle everything even when he struggled because he was the older brother. It was his job to look out for me, but when things between us shifted, he’d started withdrawing.

After college, I’d joined the main company and worked my way up through the ranks, getting help from my brother along the way.

But three years ago, we had an incident with our mother that changed everything. I could remember it like it was just yesterday – the precise moment he realized he needed my help more than I needed his.

The alpha of Valor had set me up on a blind date with River Steele. I’d gone just to appease her, but when things didn’t work out the way she wanted it to, our mother had turned on Gideon.

She’d told him to divorce Melinda and marry River so she could finally have some grandchildren.

That was the first time Gideon stood up to our mother, and I hadn’t realized what it had cost him until today.

He’d insisted on staying with Melinda, and our mother had lost it. That was no small thing when you were one of the strongest legacy alphas in the country. She’d tried to force him to divorce Melinda with her aura and pheromones, and Gideon had taken it.

I’d watched my mother almost kill my brother because they were both too stubborn to back down, and I did what I had to do to protect both of them. I’d stepped in front of Gideon and forced my mother’s own pheromones back on her until she was choking on hers and mine.

All I wanted was to protect my family, but Gideon saw it as any normal legacy alpha would. He’d seen it as a declaration that I was stronger than he was – that I would be the one to protect him instead of the other way around.

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