Page 30 of Knotting Before Them

“I don’t think it’s sustainable,” Wylder said. “Other places have alphas just like us, alone. Maybe no one mated outside the community yet, but once they found out about Julia…”

“Yes.” I nodded. “How… How am I an omega and I never knew?”

The idea that my parents lied to me was still heavy in my heart. I loved them fiercely, but it was hard not to carry some resentment. I knew they did what they thought was best for me. I knew I was raised with privileges many only ever dreamed of, but throughout my whole life, I carried this weight in my heart, and only now did I understand why.

I was grateful for the art, for the opportunities. I was grateful for the travels and the memories we made together, but I craved a home. I wanted to settle. I wanted the truth that they never gave me.

“Do you know where your parents were born, Julia?” Theo asked as he put a sandwich in front of each of us.

I nodded, taking a bite, “But I never visited. I only met one of my dad’s brothers.” It was the time he brought us to see the diablada. “My dad never let anyone get too close. He said he didn’t like the place he came from, so we never visited.” The boys exchanged a look, and I asked, “What are you thinking?”

“It’s impossible to know,” Theo started.

“She needs to be from a community,” Wylder pointed out. “It’s the only way.”

“We can investigate that later,” Noah ended the argument. “The most important thing is that Julia is not only a miracle to us.”

Theo nodded. “I know when Kent reached out to other communities, the leaders didn’t want to confirm it, but it seemedlike they were dying out too. You are a miracle, Julia. It could mean hope for a lot of packs.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” I shook my head. “We don’t even know where I’m from. It doesn’t mean more omegas will be out there.”

“But maybe,” Wylder said. “If anyone said to us twenty years ago that there was the smallest chance an omega was out there for us? That could have changed everything.”

“Like what?”

“Like this house,” Noah said, his cheeks turning red.

“What’s wrong with this house?” I snorted.

The house was perfect—every single window, every single room. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen.

“It’s …” Noah couldn’t even say the words.

Wylder tsked. “Noah’s parents passed the land to him. He was supposed to bring his pack and his omega here. We were going to decorate, to get it ready, but then…”

Silence fell.

These poor men. They thought they were going to be alone forever. Everyone was mated in the village, and they were left behind like toys no one wanted to play with. My heart broke for them.

“To be fair, I was just a child twenty years ago. You had to wait,” I joked.

Noah nodded, kissing me on the temple in a way that made me feel he was going through a lot of emotions. “And it was worth the wait.”

I blushed, Theo laughed, and Wylder threw a small piece of bread at me that got stuck in my hair.

It was so normal with them, so seamless. My rational side knew I should resist more. It wasn’t every day someone told you that you’re an omega, that you had to mate a pack.

I was feeling defeated, and then suddenly, I was part of an us. I should be feeling overwhelmed, and in a way, I was a bit, but the good kind of overwhelmed.

It was the kind with butterflies in your stomach, the kind that makes you with giddy with possibilities.

I didn’t want them to be wrong. I didn’t want to poke the bear and find out that I actually wasn’t an omega, that I was just plain old Julia, destined to be alone.

A hand gripped my hair, tipping my head back to meet Wylder’s ferocious eyes.

“Break time is over.”

“What?” I chuckled.

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