Page 109 of Brandy Snap: Part Two
“Is that…Is that all you care about?” I asked, pushing at his upper arms to force him to look at me. “You just want my attention?”
“It’s not just that, it’s…” He trailed off as his hands shook against mine. “It’s like… I don’t know how to explain it…” His head snapped up, and he met me with a determined gaze. “It’s like you’ve released this huge thing that I thought I was going to have to put up with for the rest of our lives. Like, obviously it would be pretty smart to talk about having kids with Sin and Cas before they bite you, but we aren’t exactly top tier in the conversation department.”
I was too muddled and hurt to respond to his joke.
My body was still hard, still rolling in how he’d laughed. I needed an explanation of his reaction and not just how he felt.
“Kai, I’m really hurting right now,” I said as patiently as I could. “Just tell me what’s going on. I can’t take sitting here and waiting while you search for what you want to say.”
“Shit, fuck, yeah. God, that was the worst fucking reaction I could have ever had,” he groaned as he kneaded his hand against his lips. “I literally don’t deserve you.” He shook his head before he met me with a determined look. “Okay, it’s like… Sin and Cas’s families, right? I mean, it’s not exactly hard to see that they are all cunts, and Zania and Vivian are fuckingrelentlesswhen it comes to making sure they have kids. Like, it’s borderline creepy how invested they are. To be honest, if it was down to me, I’d just harvest their cum and dole it out to all those omegas hoping to fuck my alphas so they could breed a tiny army and take over the world, but whatever. Morals, I guess.” He shrugged dramatically.
“Kai,” I pressed my hand against his chest, sending him the same pulse of warning that Sin did all the time.
“Okay, yeah, so… Those omegas, hell, fucking everyone in their circles see me as some kind of freak. Literally, the onlyreason they accept me is because of my fashion design. But they won’t shut the fuck up about how I’m worthless just because I don’t have a fucking vagina. People are obsessed. And it’s been five years of non-stop harassment for all three of us. That’s why…” He blew out a harsh breath. “Brandy, one of the reasons I hated you was because I thought you were going to have my alphas’ kids and suddenly everyone was going to love you and you’d be the new star of the pack.”
My brow creased as I pulled my hands away, but he caught me before I could distance myself. “But they’ve all been putting me down because of where I come from and who I am? Even you did that.”
He grimaced again before he shook his head. “Look, they’ve had me for five years and they don’t give a shit about me anymore. But a brand-new shiny toy turns up and Cas and Sin get someone new to protect and I become old news. It doesn’t matter where you come from for them, it’s what you represent.”
“Do you really think your alphas don’t care about you?”
“You’ve only been here for a few weeks and you’ve already seen what it’s like. As long as you gave them a kid, people would lose their fucking shit. I mean, I’ve hadyearsto stew over this. Basically, as soon as you had a baby, I’d be pushed straight into the background. Maybe I could be the cool uncle in killer heels that drops awesome one-liners and teaches them about sex and makeup when they are older, but there would be nothing for me there. You’d become the main omega in our pack. Sin and Cas would absolutely dote on you. All those fucking bitchy omegas would get over their thirst and invite you to everything. You’d be part of the most important cliques, and no one would give me a second glance.”
“I really can’t see that ever happening. People seem to care more about where I come from than anything else.”
“Yeah, but you’re just so amazing that people won’t care.”
He said it so easily, even though he was one of those ‘people’.
But I still had an idea of what he was talking about. When Rosa had Tommy, all of our friends, family, and neighbours flocked in to take care of her. She was the centre of attention, and she absolutely lavished in it. It only made her worse, because she still expected everyone to bend over backwards for her even though it’d been a year since people stopped fussing over her.
It was after Mum had her stroke, and we did need the help, but I was pushed aside because everyone else knew how to take better care of Tommy than I did.
I knew what Kai meant about fighting to be seen, but I’d decided a long time ago that it wasn’t worth the struggle. So I’d stepped back, and let my jealousy fester because I wanted people who cared for me without having to ask.
It wasn’t that I wished I was an omega so I could raise a family, even though it did hurt to see happy packs doting on their babies. It was that I wanted a pack who would take care of me because I was so tired of taking care of everything myself. It took presenting for me to realise the difference.
“But I can’t give you what you want. Sin and Caspian want children, and I—”
“Who the fuck told you that?” Kai cut me off with a low growl, and I flinched back. “How the hell do you know if Sin and Cas want children? Have you already talked to them about it?”
My eyes widened at his ferociousness, and I shook my head. “It’s not exactly something that comes when all we do is shout and fuck,” I said.
All the tension vanished as quickly as it appeared.
This time, we both managed to grin, and he massaged my hands as an apology.
“But have you ever asked me about it, though?” I asked him, maintaining my hard gaze.
“What?”
“You were getting upset over the fact I was going to have their children, but did you ever ask me if I wanted them?” Because now that I could understand Kai’s reasoning, even if it didn’t make his reaction okay, it was another step closer to being accepted.
He blinked at me, as if hadn’t considered that an omega might not want children.
“I kind of don’t want to ask,” he confessed. “What if you tell me something now and you change your mind in the future?”
“But I can’t. And I had to make my peace with it. What did you think was going to happen before you presented? Did you want kids?”
