Page 37 of His Innocent Omega
“Look, I was just trying to help,” I started, and there was no mistaking the long-suffering sigh from Bash over the line, or his muttered,“Goddess help us all from alphas just trying to help”.
“Wyatt needs rest. He needs time to heal. He shouldn’t have to take care of a baby by himself.” Considering Bash had gone through a pregnancy, birth, and raising his and Jamie’s oldest son on his own, in a foreign country for eight years, it probably wasn’t the best argument I could use on the man. “I may have picked the lock on his door after he got Jules down and went to bed. I may have gone upstairs and gotten Jules from her crib and brought her downstairs and took care of her all night.”
Not sure how to decipher the deafening silence echoing from the other end of the phone, I just plunged ahead, right over the cliff I’d been teetering on. “And when Wyatt woke up and realized the baby hadn’t woken him up all night, and then he saw her crib was empty, he might have gotten a tiny bit upset.”
Silence. Crickets. I couldn’t even hear anyone breathing on the phone. Pulling it away from my ear, I checked the connection.
Finally, Bash questioned very slowly, his voice filled with sarcasm that somehow sounded ten times more sarcastic with his accent, “Did you just say he might have gotten a tiny bit upset? Honestly, did you just say those words? Out loud? I imagine the poor man went into a full-blown panic attack! Because I don’t have to imagine what went through his mind! The same things that would have gone through mine! Might I remind you that you are the fucking sheriff? Breaking and entering, kidnapping…” Bash’s voice trailed off, before disgust littered hisvoice, “I literally have no words for you. None. Jameson, get your friend under control, because I can’t even deal with this idiocy. I need a cuppa to calm my nerves.”
“What in the actual fuck is wrong with you, Becks?” Jamie hissed, sounding dumbfounded and pissed off all at the same time. His usual joking sense of humor had vanished. He was dead serious and sounded like he thought I might have lost my mind. I was beginning to wonder if maybe I had. “Like, seriously, are you having some kind of mental episode? Is this actually you having a mid-life crisis? Do we need to call someone? Because what in the actual fuck is wrong with you?” He repeated his first question.
“I don’t know!” Shouting, I startled Jules, who let out a small cry of annoyance at being disturbed. Soothing her, I shushed her quickly. Wyatt’s sobbing had quieted down in the other room, and I stood and peeked around the corner at him. Goddess, was I seriously hiding out in the kitchen from a crying omega who weighed next to nothing soaking wet? Yes, yes, I was.
“Look, that’s not what started his crying,” I told them, though I knew it all had more than likely been contributing factors. “He’s upset because Jules seems to like me better, which is nuts because she’s only a couple of days old. He said nothing is going like he planned it, and it’s all a lot harder than he thought it would be. I couldn’t really understand the rest because he was crying so hard. There’s been a lot of crying, okay. Like buckets of tears. You know I’m no good with tears.”
Jamie was my closest friend. His family had basically adopted me, made me feel welcome in their homes and in their hometown. They were the only family I had now, even if we weren’t related by blood. If I couldn’t admit the truth to them, who could I admit it to?
“I don’t know what to do,” I told him honestly. “I don’t know what to say to him. He–we–need help.”
Everything in my world had been upside down and backwards since I had pulled Wyatt over. Had it only been a couple of days ago?
“He doesn’t want me here, but I can’t seem to stay away from him. Either of them. They’re mine, Jamie, and I need to take care of them both. But I’m fucking it all up royally.”
For some reason, caring for Julianna came surprisingly easy to me. Maybe because Jamie and all his brothers and found family were popping out pups fast enough to make my head spin, and I had suddenly found myself surrounded by babies at every family function. Whatever the reason, bottles and diapers and the two a.m. feeding last night hadn’t fazed me. And Wyatt was right; Jules was one chill baby for me.
But I had watched him pacing the floor with her last night through his still curtainless windows. Her loud frustrated, angry cries had traveled all the way to me sitting in my car. I had forced myself to not go back and knock on his door and try to help last night. Knowing he didn’t want me there. It had taken everything I had to keep my ass planted in my car, until he had finally gotten the baby settled and taken himself to bed.
Because I had wanted to be inside, helping take care of our daughter. Taking care of my omega. It was my job as his alpha to make sure he was resting and healing, but he was determined to fight me every step of the way. My wolf didn’t care that we barely knew each other–didn’t know each other at all–all he knew was we were fated mates, and that was our pup. My alpha pheromones were in hyper-drive, and it was a new and weird experience for me.
Whatever Jamie started to say, I missed as Wyatt stomped intothe kitchen, hazel eyes red rimmed and glistening from his tears, but filled with fiery anger.
“Hold on,” cradling the phone against my ear and shoulder, I waited for the explosion I could see was building.
“Get out!” Wyatt hissed, reaching for the baby, “And give me back my daughter!”
“Oh fuck,” Jamie muttered in my ear.
Oh fuck was right.
Chapter Seventeen
Wyatt
Why the fuck couldn’t I stop crying?
This was ridiculous.
I was being ridiculous and I knew it. But I couldn’t seem to stop, no matter how hard I tried.
Swiping at my face, I snuffled my nose, which was now stuffed up. My eyes felt puffy, and I had a headache brewing. And I still hadn’t gotten any coffee, which probably wasn’t helping, either. Or food. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten. Breakfast in the hospital? Had I managed lunch yesterday? No, I hadn’t, or dinner either.
Did I have post-partum omega syndrome?Is that why I felt like my body and emotions weren’t my own? Or was it just everything that had happened over the past few days–because there had been a lot of shit–finally coming to a head and boiling over?
Grayson certainly hadn’t helped the situation with his breaking and entering, kidnapping, and any other charges I could think to add on. Not that I was actually going to press charges against him, but it made me feel better mulling over the possibility. I mean, who did that? Had he thought any of his actions through? From everything I had read about him that I could find online on my phone, he certainly seemed smarter than his behavior would lead a person to believe. Once I located where my laptop had ended up in this moving mess, I’d be able to do a deeper dive on him.
But he couldn’t just barge into our lives and start taking over like he seemed to think he could. He couldn’t just come into our home anytime he felt like it, and he couldn’t just take Julianna. No matter that he hadn’t actually left with her, that wasn’t the point.
It was a massive invasion of privacy on top of being downright terrifying! Julianna and I might not be getting along great at the moment–this parenting stuff was way harder than I had imagined–but she was my child. The fear I had felt when I had discovered her missing from her crib–along with realizing she hadn’t woken me up last night–had been nearly paralyzing. With that had come the knowledge that I would tear someone apart to protect my child. Never before had I felt the powerful feelings I had in that moment. Knowing I would gladly fight someone to the death if it meant protecting my baby.
