Page 68 of The Omega Project

“She means soulless, right?” Silva quips, earning a nudge in the ribs from Cass.

“Okay,” Jack says, getting to his feet. “I think this calls for a bottle of bubbles.”

“Better make it a magnum,” Griffin says, uncoiling from the couch like a silky snake. “In fact, I want another look at that wine cellar of yours.”

The two omegas head towards a door across the room while Lexi asks Dr. Finchley a question about her article, no doubt to take the heat off me. I almost fall back onto the couch, Soren scooting over to cuddle me close.

“I wish I’d recorded that,” he murmurs in my ear. “There’s no way Finn’s not biting you after a declaration of love like that.”

I turn to look at him, taking in his hazy eyes and soft smile. It’s hard to concentrate on anything when he’s so close, his spicy-sweet scent in my nose. “I was defending Finn, not declaring anything.”

He cocks a brow at me. “Sweetheart, haven’t you worked out that protecting each other is our love language?”

But now I’m worried I’ve blurted out pack business instead of keeping my mouth shut. “I said too much, didn’t I?”

“I’d say just about the perfect amount,” he smiles.

I grab my cocktail and take a healthy swallow to douse my dry mouth. The group’s reaction to Finn has ignited an itch under my skin and I squirm as I try to pick up the thread of the conversation. I’m pretty sure I haven’t summoned a spirit by mentioning Finn, but the discussion seems to have taken a darker turn.

“Do you think trauma has something to do with it?” Maddie asks, looking around the group. “Could negative upbringings or other types of harm be part of the switch equation?” A familiar pain flickers in her eyes, like she’s poking at an old bruise. “It's just that we have foster kids, bad parents, and other stuff in our backgrounds. Could that be a common link?”

“What do you think?”

Dr. Finchley directs the question to me, but it's Soren who pipes up. “I thought the same thing until my mate said that while good families are a gift, and bad ones a curse, packs are always a choice. Maybe on a cellular level, I triggered Em, but I believe that the part of me that makes good decisionschoseEm. And for some crazy reason, she chose me.”

Jack and Clark are returning from the cellar with the champagne, and Griffin tips his regal head at Soren as he opens one of the bottles with a flourish. “I like that theory. I don’t know if it’s biology, fate, or instinct, but if I was in the same situation again, I know I’d choose Maddie.”

Maddie’s eyes tear up and she gives her omega the kind of kiss that makes my toes curl. They’re murmuring something in French, and it’s hard to look away from such open adoration, but I quickly turn my gaze to the champagne Clark passes me.

“I'm also wondering if it's our beta’s influence,” Clark says with a mischievous grin. “We were all pretty attached to our betas before we switched.”

It reminds me of his beta sandwich story, and as Soren gives a throaty chuckle, I feel my ears burn at all the shared moments with Derek. But the attention seems to have turned to Lexi, whose blush is even brighter than mine.

“Okay, okay,” she splutters, waving her hands. “Mattie hasgraduated, okay? And I’m no longer his teacher, so you can all stop sniggering like a bunch of school children.”

I’m not sure who Mattie is, but Jack is laughing so hard he almost pours champagne on the floor. “But Miss Novak,” he says in a throaty growl, “you’re always going to be poetry to our ears.”

“That’smusic, mate,” Silva says from the screen, his arm back around Cass and a beer raised to his lips. “And if you want to talk about betas with superpowers, you should drop by the next time I go alpha…”

“No more knot stories,” Cass admonishes him, grabbing his beer and taking a sip. “They’re all going to think we’re sex-crazed rockstars.”

“Like I said, living the dream!”

Everyone laughs at Silva’s ear-to-ear grin and Maddie sits forward, holding up her glass of champagne. “I think we can all agree that our beta mates are definitely a gift.”

We all raise our glasses, toasting the betas in our lives, and then Silva turns his electric eyes my way. “Speaking of superpowers, what’s yours, Red?”

“What do you mean?”

Maddie can obviously see how starstruck I am, because she reaches over and pats my hand. “Well, when you bond your pack, you often inherit a little something. Like a new ability. For me, it’s languages, because one of my mates has a very fancy tongue.”

“Only one?” Griffin asks, sliding her a look that could melt the butter out of a scone.

“True,” she admits, brushing the man’s flawless cheek. “I got extra lucky.”

“For me, it was a power boost,” Kat says quietly. Instead of champagne or a cocktail, she’s holding a glass of dark liquor, and she swirls it as she looks around at us. “It happened just before my championship fight, which is one of the reasons I went public as a switch. It wasn’t fair to face my opponent when I’d just had a Hudson Hooker upgrade.”

I gulp, wondering if that’s code for something sexual. I know it’s not polite to think that about your friends’ mates – and I’m hoping that this club might one day call us that – but Hudson Hooker in a pair of tight rugby shorts is practically a national monument.

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