Page 68 of Broken-Hearted

“Could you tell me how? Because I don’t know how to be an omega.” This is the true reason for my call. The bone deep fear I’ve had all these years.

If Mom was still alive, she could have taught me, but the only omega I know is Regan.

“You know what Jackson once said to me when I said something similar?”

I shake my head, though she can’t see me. “What?”

“You speak about yourself like you’re a defective battery. That’s what he said. I’d wanted to help Riley, who was alone and hurting, and I was afraid if I couldn’t, he would die because he had no one else in the world.”

I recall Riley, the quiet, dry humored teenager in Dawley. Although he didn’t smile often, Regan always had a way of pulling a smile out of him.

“How did you help him?”

“I was just me. Because being an omega isn’t something we do. It’s who we are. We have this incredible ability to untwist the knots in a person that only we can see.”

“But how?”

“There’s no one way, Clara. It’s how you read a person. Everyone needs something different, and only you can see what that something is. Talis told me Nathan is smiling a lot.”

I snort. “We’re sleeping together. Any guy would go around with a smile on his face when he’s having sex.”

Regan is silent for a beat. “And is that all you’re doing?”

I sip from my almost forgotten cooling coffee.

“He jokes, he laughs, but he’s distant,” Regan says when I don’t respond. “The Nathan that my packmates are telling me about is something new. If I had to guess, I’d say it went a lot further than him having sex.”

Someone yells in the background and Regan yells back, “I’m coming!” Then she says down the phone. “I better go. Jackson needs me. We have new arrivals.”

“More?” I ask, surprised.

The house was busy before Martha and I turned up nearly two months before. I hadn’t thought there was more room for new arrivals until the cabins that Jackson was looking to build were up.

“Just a couple. Not sure we have much more space left, but if anyone needs a home, we’ll do all we can to help them.”

I know.

We say our goodbyes and I hang up, setting the phone down on the ground to pick up my coffee, not ready to go back in yet.

I’m sipping my coffee, enjoying the quiet forest as the cool wind dries the damp ends of my hair, when footsteps head this way.

A beautiful, dark-haired woman appears with a grin, and I smother my disappointment that it isn’t Nathan. It’s Hallee.

“Hey, Clara! I thought it was time I came to thank the woman responsible for making my best friend so happy.”

“Best friend?”

“Nate. Mind if I join you?”

“Sure. I’m just having a coffee. Want one?”

“No need,” she interrupts, sinking to the ground beside me. “Kier is taking me to dinner in town, but I’m helping him deliver a carving to someone first, so I can’t stay.”

“A carving?” I frown.

“He’s a carpenter. If you ever want anything made, he’ll be happy to make it. Anyway, I insulted Nate before and he just grinned and waved at me.”

“You insulted him?” I blink at her.

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