Page 177 of Captive Omega

All I can do is peer up at him and wish I could tell him he’s more than enough for me, and that, if I didn’t have a life to go back too, I would happily stay with him. But I can’t.

This life isn’t mine.

His lip quirks in a half smile and he dips his head again, giving me a kiss so sweet, I want to wrap my arms around him and not let him go. “I’ll see you later, bloodthirsty omega.”

“That kiss wasn’t the least bit friendly,” I call after him. “Friends don’t kiss each other like that.”

He turns around, smiling as he walks backward to the house. “That might be because the way I feel about you isn’t the least bit friendly.”

I tilt my head as I scrutinize him. “If it’s not friendly, then what is it?”

He stops. “You want me to tell you how I feel about you, bloodthirsty omega?”

His stare is intense and a little heated. It isn’t the heat or even the intensity that makes me avoid his gaze. It’s the underlying softness and the way my heart contracts in response. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough,” he says. “And I have seen enough to know exactly what I feel. Those feelings aren’t going anywhere, and neither am I.”

He salutes me then, and I can’t help but smile.

“Why did you salute me?”

He looks at his hand like it belongs to a stranger before lowering it. “You know what? I couldn’t tell you. Just felt like a saluting moment.”

He grins and walks away, whistling.

I shake my head, smiling as he steps into the house. Garrison has a phone pressed to his ear as he stands in the doorway, and our eyes clash as he squeezes Vaughn’s shoulder when he passes.

Turning away from the house, I get to my feet to do a slow circuit around the pool as I process my feelings for Vaughn, Blaine, and Garrison. I like them, and it’s getting hard to want to return to the life I always hoped I would go back to.

I slow my steps, close my eyes and tilt my head back, basking in the early afternoon sun's warmth.

I yelp when something bites me. Wrenching my eyelids open, I slap my bare arm, hoping to hell it wasn’t a wasp. I’m not allergic, but that really fucking hurt.

“Resa!” Garrison yells, distracting me. He isn’t holding the phone anymore. His expression is severe. Angry, even, as he charges right at me.

“Something bit me,” I try to tell him. My tongue feels thick in my mouth and a hot flush sweeps over my body as I hunt out this elusive wasp. It must have been a big one to leave a smear of blood on my arm.

“Resa!” Garrison yells again.

He’s feet away, yet his scent is overpowering. Now that I’m thinking of it, so is mine. Thick and pungent, syrupy sweet. My breasts ache and my belly cramps. Almost as if…

No. I shake my head as I squint at the grass stretching toward me.

Pregnant omegas do not go into heat, so that can’t be what this is.

Garrison yells something else. His voice is both distant and loud, which makes no sense at all, and the grass is still stretching toward me. That’s okay. It looks soft.

I stretch toward it with a happy smile.

Chapter 50

Garrison

I’d been pretending to be on a call as I watched Resa from the patio doors.

As work piles up, with Roman and Frost doing more of the fieldwork, I find reason after reason to stay home. It’s getting hard to remember why I made business my life.

Resa has stopped talking about leaving, and every time I see her, she’s making a place for herself in our home. She’s making a space we treated as more of an office feel like home.

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