Page 83 of Glass Omega

But we needed to talk about this. To work out how the hell something like this could ever work.

I also needed to tell the two of them what had transpired in the three days that Edison had been stuck in his rut. The branch families had somehow known that Edison was out of commission because they’d shown up several times to try and hold meetings, claiming they didn’t need Edison’s final approval for the things they were trying to get passed because they had quorum.

They also weren’t very happy that Edison had written that if he was ever hurt or killed and he had no heir, that I would step in and make decisions until the next heir could be chosen.

It was a hammer that I’d had to use several times over the past three days to keep the branch heads from stealing everything down to the damn silverware.

I wished I could have told them why he wasn’t up for any of his scheduled meetings or why he couldn’t come out to tell the branch heads to fuck off himself. But I knew that revealing that he was in a rut was a dangerous idea. Alphas were the most vulnerable during their short ruts and even more so during their omega’s much longer heat.

If the branch heads wanted to try and get rid of him, which I wouldn’t put past them, a rut would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

Keeping that in mind, I tried to go into his room several times to try and rouse him from his rut only to be growled at by the wild-eyed alpha who was usually bent over his omega, mid-thrust.

So I handled it on my own with a little help from our security guys and a lot of help from Oona who’d done the most interference with the branch heads, distracting them with whiskey from the cellar and asking them about their children and grandchildren.

How she managed to remember all of their names, I would never know. I’d learned early on that Oona was not a woman to be trifled with and the last three days had only cemented that knowledge.

Pulling on a pair of dark sweatpants and a gray shirt that reminded me of the color of Perrie’s eyes, I stared glumly at my brown leather jacket which, for the second time in two months, would need to go to the dry cleaners.

“She must have something against it,” I muttered to myself as I draped it over the drop of the dresser to at least let it start drying as I turned back to the couple in the bathroom.

Perrie was now sitting naked in Edison’s lap, her fingers curling into his chest as they seemed to be in the middle of a serious conversation.

Emboldened by our earlier kiss and her silent permission to touch her, I finally let myselfactuallylook at her body.

Despite being as short as she was, her legs were long and they led up to her tapered hips and waist. The breasts which had been a palmful in my hands earlier were perfectly formed with a pair of pink nipples topping them off. My eyes traced up the column of her neck where, when she turned to me upon hearing my re-arrival back into the bathroom, I got a good look at the fresh bond mark that Edison had placed there.

I never thought Edison Keane would bond with anyone. He usually kept everything but me at an arm’s length, so it was surprising to see Perrie wearing it now and I couldn’t help but wonder what it felt like to share that kind of physical proof of a connection with someone.

Somehow, Perrie had felled the notoriously anti-love alpha and had done it in two months flat, bringing her track record up to two-for-two because as soon as she kissed me I’d known I was a goner too.

I’d spent so much time and effort resisting Edison and Perrie that the moment that I realized she was missing it was like the world as I knew it was crumbling away underneath my feet.

For one, Edison would never have forgiven me for letting the same thing that happened to his mother happen to her and for two, I never would have forgiven myself for it.

When we tracked her to the party and I found her on the ground with blood on her lips I had to force myself not to shove her little brother’s head under the water until he drowned.

While Edison had been the one in the end to go into a panicked rut, I had barely staved off my own as my inner alpha, which was almost always silent, was shrieking in my head for me not to let him take Perrie away from me and her nest.

But Perrie wasn’t mine and that was the only thing that held me back as I watched him carry her away.

After that, I threw myself into making sure that shit didn’t burn to the ground in Edison’s absence, finally seeing this afternoon that he’d calmed down enough to sleep and let me take care of the exhausted omega.

Because all my instincts wanted to do was take care of her. To bathe her and soothe her, and care for her every need. They’d certainly been having a fucking field day when she insisted I feed her by hand.

“Rhodes?” The omega who seemed to be taking up every corner of my mind right now, cut through my rambling thoughts and I realized that I was still staring at her body like I was a young alpha who couldn’t control himself.

Clearing my throat, I hurried forward to grab the platter of food next to Edison, ignoring his smug smile.

“Let’s talk in the room, it sounds like the maid is done,” I muttered, my neck warming as I turned on my heel and hurried out of the bathroom before I could make any more of a fool of myself.

I settled in on one of the small couches that faced a gas fireplace that the maid must have lit and waited for Edison and Perrie to come out of the bathroom.

When they did emerge, Perrie was also dressed in Edison’s clothing, the sweatpants she had on needing to be rolled up several times so she could walk, and Edison having changed into a pair of work out shorts and a shirt.

The pair settled down on the couch opposite of me, Perrie reaching forward to snag a piece of rolled turkey off of the platter to munch on while we waited to see who would be the first to speak.

Edison, always having hated nothing more than a long drawn out silence, finally sighed. “I suppose I should be the first to say that I am not angry about you and Perrie kissing.”

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