Page 109 of Fragile Heart

Sounds good. Pray for me. About to attempt Walmart.

I grimace. Walmart is awful on a good day. Walmart after spending the last hour with me while I sorted through the three different check-in processes the Council required to get me into this specialty office? No, thank you.

Good luck.

When I tuck my phone back into my purse, the Alpha that’s been harassing the poor receptionist for the last five minutes has his eyes on me. I drop my other hand to the paperwork, too. The guy’s a jerk as it is, and the last thing anyone needs is him trying to hunt me down later. The receptionist, to his credit, keeps his back straight and his chin up as he turns away from the man and focuses on me.

“Finished, Mrs. Ashford?” he asks.

I keep my flinch at the name internal.

Even if this doesn’t work, I need to do something about my last name. No way I want to spend the rest of my life being called Brett’s name.

With a slightly trembling hand, I pass him the paperwork. He flips through it, double checking I didn’t miss anything, and then nods.

“I’ll get it into the system.” He offers me a smile. “The process should, hopefully, be smooth sailing since you had the bloodwork results with you. Getting those is the part that takes the longest.”

He grabs a card and circles one of the four name and number pairings.

“This is the case worker that’s been assigned to your case,” he says. “He’ll send you an email update when everything’s been finalized in the system. That should be by this afternoon, but he might wait until everything batches over the weekend to officially send it to you.”

He pauses, and I offer a nod.

“And then he should call you once it’s been processed and the new information packet is available for pickup. Again, thatshould happen quickly. Probably by the end of next week barring anything wild happening.”

I grab Camden’s hand as he circles around me again. He drops his truck, looking up at me with a frown.

“Thank you so much,” I tell the man.

He nods.

“Bye,” Camden says as we leave the small waiting area. The man smiles and waves at him. Camden giggles. He looks up at me once we’re in the hallway. “He was really nice even though that guy was rude.”

I nod and beeline for the closest exit. “He was very polite. And you did a great job being patient through all of that. I have one more quick project, and then we’ll go get that treat. Want to help me with it?”

He nods and grins. “Always, Mommy Bri!”

“Perfect. Let’s go get it from my car.”

He skips instead of walks with me to the parking lot, bouncing a bit on his toes as I dig out the small box shoved under the passenger seat. I pull up the address of the thrift store and get it sorted in my phone’s map. It’s only a couple blocks away. We’re halfway down the block when he finally gets curious.

“What’s that?” he asks.

He holds out his truck, pretending to drive it through the air.

“It’s some things from when I was still married,” I tell him truthfully.

The last couple things I couldn’t part with when I moved here. The two watches I’d given him and the tickets to the movie we saw on our very first date nearly a decade ago now.

“What are we doing with them?” he asks. Not a moment later, he frowns and looks up at me. “You were married? Like Nana and Grandpa Scott?”

I nod and squeeze his hand. “I was.”

“But Papa says you’re an Omega.” He frowns, and that line forms between his eyebrows. He taps his truck against his leg in thought. “Betas get married. Omegas bond. That’s what Papa says.”

Nerves tighten my chest. He bounces in place while we wait for the light to change.

“Not all Omegas bond,” I manage to say around the lump in my throat. “Bonding isn’t something that can be taken back, so it’s never done without a lot of thought.”

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