Page 40 of Captive Omega

He places the plate with a flourish on the kitchen island. “But the best kind,” Vaughn confirms.

I hesitate.

No one seems to notice. They’re all back to laughing, chatting, in Garrison’s case, turning the pages of his newspaper. Everyone is busy doing what they must have been doing while I was upstairs. It makes it a little easier to ignore my throbbing feet, wariness about alphas, and slip into the room to take a seat on a leather bar stool at the kitchen island.

Vaughn, on the other side, holds a bottle of maple syrup aloft. “Want me to cover you?” he offers with a grin.

“Vaughn,” Garrison rumbles warningly.

“The pancake. Not my fault you have a filthy mind,” Vaughn says with a sparkle in his eyes that warns he was absolutely not talking about the pancake.

This man…

I take a seat. “No, thanks.”

I don’t let go of my knife. I don’t know when it happened, but it’s become my safety blanket. I transfer it from my right hand to my left and take the fork he offers me.

Expecting more flirtatious behavior from this beta, I blink in surprise when Vaughn leaves the maple syrup beside my plate and walks over to the dining table.

When he bends to grab a cup of coffee, Blaine leans away from the table, so there’s not even the slightest chance of them bumping shoulders.

Confused by what I just saw, I nearly drop my fork when a voice comes from opposite me.

“Juice?”

It’s the white-haired man with dark eyes. The one who nearly hit me in the face with a pancake.

“Uh, thanks.”

He fills a glass with orange juice, pushing it toward me but keeping his distance. Could be because of the knife I’m gripping or the way I lean away. I’m not sure, but I’m grateful for it.

“Frost,” he says, pointing at his chest.

That can’t be his real name, can it?

“Resa.”

“You’re probably curious about my hair.”

“She is not curious about your hair,” Vaughn snorts. “Stop thinking everyone is curious about it.”

“People are. I’ve been compared to a selkie. She might wonder,” Frost says, sounding defensive.

A selkie? Is he being serious?

Vaughn rolls his eyes and continues his conversation with Blaine.

“My heritage is Nordic, but mostly mysterious.” Frost continues as he puffs out his chest, “One bitter winter?—”

“Frost. Sit down,” Garrison orders. Then he looks at me for the first time. “He is not a selkie.”

Frost flashes me a boyish grin, making me think he’s closer to thirty than the forty I thought him before. He wanders back to the table, sitting down.

I’m cutting into my pancake when someone clears their throat.

The older man who caught my pancake is washing a plate at the sink. “Roman.”

What is up with these names? Frost? Lex? Roman?

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