Page 16 of Riley Goes Home

“Yes.”

Eloise appeared at my shoulder, smiling, really smiling for the first time, it felt. Her eyes locked with mine, a moment of connection there but not for long. Into the water, that’s what pushed at me. Now. I could resist pregnancy cravings and exhaustion, even the need for food, but not this. The moment my feet slid into the water, all the pain, the heat of the day slipped away. This was where I was supposed to be. Another step, then another, the water bubbled around my feet, some strange need rode me. My conscious mind was shoved aside for a feeling of perfect connection. Not just to the grotto, the sound of the water bubbling, of birds chirping filling my ears. No, I heard them too.

One woman bent double, her face screwed up in a grimace of pain which then turned into a panting smile as her mates clustered around her. They soothed her through the contraction and then helped her through the next. Another woman, herhead thrown back, her throat letting out an animalistic cry similar to a wolf’s howl as every muscle in her body clamped down. Then a much more familiar figure appeared.

Blonde, slight, and looking a whole lot younger than she did now, Eloise lay back in her mates’ arms. Little pants cancelled out every sound other than the men’s encouragement. Together they worked, together they laboured until… I blinked at the sound of a splash and saw that Eloise was standing there in the water with me, her pants pulled up to her knees. She smiled as I saw the remnants of the vision. Fen, that’s who was born, somehow I knew, though I saw none of my mate in the baby’s quivering arms and red face. Another blink and he was gone, just leaving his mother standing there. She smiled at me, a soft, tremulous thing that I never would’ve thought Omega Vanguard was capable of expressing.

“You see it now.” A slow nod and then she waded towards me. “I’m sorry, Riley. I’m not sure if you can ever understand how much. I should’ve brought you here the minute the boys saw you as more than a childhood friend. I should’ve been the one to guide you through this process. I could’ve taught you everything you needed to know about being an omega, and instead…”

Her breath caught in her throat and she swallowed hard, trying to clear it, with little luck, so she was forced to forge on.

“Instead, I let my own stupid pride get in the way of yours and my sons’ happiness.” She shook her head sharply. “Never again, I promise you that. I’m glad you came home, darling, because otherwise I’d never have a chance to say this. I never should’ve pushed for you to leave Bordertown. If I’d listened to my wolf, the town would have a brand new omega leading it.” I glanced at Cheryl and saw how pale she had become. “A beautiful, brilliant doctor who could help heal the community as well as show them the way forward. My sons… You…”

Some people got more emotional in the face of other people’s outbursts, but I went the other way. A cool, clinical calm settled over me, stripping every response from me. I observed Eloise like I might a specimen under a microscope, unable to formulate a response or judgment, instead just forced to watch as her expression changed. Real misery radiated off her, turning her scent sour, but that wasn’t all. Her eyes met mine and I watched the moment hope flared to life there.

“It’s not too late.” She gripped my hand hard, her fingers branding my skin. “You might think it is, but it’s not.” Cyrus, Cheryl, shifted restlessly at the top of the steps, probably because, like me, they’d never seen this side of Eloise. “I can, we can, make things right. This is where you were born, where your sons need to be born, like every other generation before them. Can’t you feel that?”

I didn’t want to answer that question. An uncomfortably large mass of complex emotions rose at the mere suggestion of considering the past. It felt like I couldn’t sort through them, not without pulling the giant hairball apart, one strand at a time, but each was inextricably wound up in the others. I just stared, knowing I was expected to respond but unable to say anything, so Eloise spoke for me.

“Come on. Everyone’s waiting for you.”

Chapter 11

Ryan

“What the hell is this…?”

I didn’t ask the question too loudly, just hissed it at Fen as soon as we walked into the town hall. I’d seen it set up for community meetings or as a command centre during bushfire season, but back then it was considerably less… blue. It felt like someone bought up every single blue decoration possible and vomited them over every surface. Blue balloons were stuck around the doorway, blue bunting pinned up on the walls, and right in the middle of the room was a table covered by a blue tablecloth, the surface mounded with cakes and gifts.

“Mum,” Colt growled as he crossed his arms. “This has her name written all over this.” He glanced at Fen. “You told her, right? You told her we aren’t coming back here? You?—”

“Spoke to our mother at length, spelling out the exact conditions of our return?” Fen snapped. “Of course I did. No need to thank me.”

“She’s just going overboard again.” Haze strolled over to the table and picked up a blue iced cupcake, ignoring the many looks he was getting from the ladies that had congregated here.Bloody hell, I think one got a little fluttery when he bit into the cake. “Mm… nice.”

He munched his bloody cake as I looked around, identifying exits, calculating how far the car was from the hall, right as our dads walked in.

“Well, doesn’t this look nice.” A heavy hand landed on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and how the hell did that have me feeling like I was five again? “We don’t usually get an invite to these kinds of things,” Dad said. “But your mother figured it was time to be a bit more progressive.” He stepped forward and smiled at the ladies, and that really got them twittering. God, I’m pretty sure Blanche was old enough to be my mother, but she blushed like a girl in the face of his attention. “Looking good, ladies. We appreciate all the work you’ve done.”

“All the work for what?” Blake’s deadpan delivery had everyone turning around, and he stood in the doorway, not taking a step forward and obviously considering if he would.

“The baby party thing,” another one of my dads said with a wave of his hand. “When the women get together and make cakes out of nappies and stuff.”

A baby shower. I felt like my stomach dropped through the floor, because while my father might not know what it was, I did. It was an opportunity for those women closest to the expectant mother to cluster around her, show support, and play some really weird games. Candy had explained some of them with way more animation than I thought was needed. I knew this because she, Janet, and all the mothers and carers of those we worked with had been planning a shower for a while now.

One that wouldn’t look like this.

It wasn’t just the over-the-top decorations that grated on my nerves, but the fact that the hall was filled with acquaintances, people I knew from years ago. Not the women Riley shared herlife with. The last time she walked into this room, she was a teenager.

And she wasn’t right now.

My mate looked too pale with red spots burning in her cheeks as she looked around her, taking it all in. She tried to smile, that’s what had me moving forward, and failed. “Fuck this…” I muttered to myself, hearing my dads make a sound of protest, but it didn’t register. Nothing could when my mate was in the room. I moved as fast as I could, weaving between the clusters of women, barely restraining myself from picking them up bodily and moving them out of the way when someone stepped in my mate’s path.

“Riley…?” I knew that voice, that face, and I stared at the woman for just a second. Nikki, that came through eventually, right as she took Riley’s hands. “Oh my god, girl, look at you!” As I strode closer, I processed Nikki’s words, searching for indications she was being rude or snide, but didn’t find it.

“Nikki…?” Riley blinked like a woman surfacing after diving deep into the water, her hand gripping Nikki’s. “Holy crap, how have you been?”

“Oh, same old, same old.” Nikki pulled away for long enough to dismiss her life’s achievements with a flap of her hand, but I remembered now. She married a guy who now ran the garage and she ran the business side of it, making sure people actually paid their invoices. “But you…” She moved forward, her tone dropping low enough that no beta could hear what she was saying. “Is it true? You’re pregnant with the next alphas of the town.”

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