Page 49 of Our Haunted Omegas
“I told you so, though,” Cobalt sighed.
For a moment, I could feel them gathered there. My parents along with my carrier’s brothers, Nicky and Cedar. Their mates would be there and probably their friend Adrian too. So many brains trying to work out what happened along with our grandparents’ people.
I rubbed a circle on my forehead with my heel as the shadow hand crawled across the end of the bed. Only this time I wasn’t the only one to see it. We all did.
“Hi, hand,” Odie sighed as if he’d had all he could take of this magical excitement. “Why are you haunting us?”
The hand disappeared as if it would rather finger crawl back into whatever void it crept out of than make small talk with us. That was good to know.
Chapter Nineteen
Odell
Two days after Reve died, Cobalt watched me take a shower. His eyes roamed all over my body, following the soapy lines my scrubbing left behind. I took my tine, drawing soapy circles on my body but my mind was a million miles away. Some deep primal part of me yelled that I should be terrified of whatever the hand was since it continued to pop up everywhere we went. Even now it perched on top of the little bar in the shower watching along with my mate as I made a show of cleaning myself.
Only I wasn’t afraid of it. Everything under the sun gave me anxiety. I was certain another war would break out if someone breathed too hard in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was certain my crippling neurosis would make me a horrible carrier. I feared that Cobalt would find me boring and look for better places to bury his favorite body part. The hand didn’t scare me. What had it done? In some undesirable way, I felt as if it protected me. It found Reve taking porn photos of us and took him out. It didn’t make me figure out what to do with him. It took care of the issue at hand. It hadn’t hurt Crilus either. The hand had only pushed him away from us and near the edge of the property line. It stopped when I said I didn’t like what it was doing. It vanished anytime I told it to stop haunting us. Sure, it came back but guarding someone was a full-time job after all, wasn’t it?
I focused my thoughts on the soapy circles, trying to think about the hand without thinking about it. If I thought too hard about it the others would know and be pissed off that I didn’t want the hand to leave. What if someone else spied on us? Whatif one of those horrible things that happened only during my anxiety spirals happened for real? If it was around to rip people asunder Cobalt wouldn’t have to put himself in danger to protect me. With the spirit behind the hand around, I could have my babies in peace.
“Nest,” the hand whispered and I startled away, nearly slipping on the soapy shower floor.
Cobalt dashed into the shower with me as if he phased through the shower door but it was open and letting the hot air out as soon as his arms closed around me.
“You still have your clothes on,” I said, looking up at him through my wet lashes.
“Did the hand---”
“It didn’t knock me over,” I shook my head. “I slipped. It’s not here to hurt us. If it wanted to hurt one of us it already would’ve.”
“Are you getting Stockholm syndrome, mate?” Cobalt asked, raising a brow.
“We’re not prisoners. We can leave. We’re on our matingmoon or we’re living here. Whatever we decide, but we’re not prisoners. Come on. I’ll rinse off and you can put dry clothes on and we’ll go outside. We’re not prisoners of the spirit,” I said, stepping back under the water and rinsing off.
Nest.
That’s the word the spirit had whispered. The spirit had to be more than just a hand. If it were merely a hand it wouldn’t have been able to speak to me. It wouldn’t have been able to say nest.
Nest.
I didn’t need a nest. I wasn’t pregnant. Even if the condom didn’t work, nothing would show up on a pregnancy test yet. Probably not even on an ultrasound just yet. Not even the newest one that could hear a fly fart on the moon. Not even Ambry, whowas trying for a baby, could be pregnant enough to be seen on medical testing.
“Is there a nest here?” I asked Cobalt as he ran his fingers through my hair, helping to rinse the shampoo out.
“There’s a nesting tower, but I don’t think there is a nest up there,” he shook his head. “We can check, though.”
I opened my eyes long enough to risk a glance at him. The water made his white T-shirt cling to his skin, showing off his chest and abs and I almost shooed the hand off so we could have some privacy. Only we didn’t have a condom with us and I didn’t trust waterproof condoms to actually be waterproof. So I let him finish rinsing me off. The hand vanished somewhere along the way and I was grateful because drying off led to Cobalt jacking me off and I didn’t want an audience. Reve had been enough of one to last me a lifetime. After cumming I felt clearer headed enough to suck him off before we dressed and headed out to check on the nesting tower.
“It was a lookout tower built during the war,” Cobalt explained as we walked the length of a football field between the house and the tower. It wasn’t as close as I would’ve liked for nesting but I guessed it was that far away for safety. If I was trying to off my enemies I’d take out their watch towers first.
“The inside has been remodeled, though. The first floor is mostly storage – extra non-perishables, toiletries, and blankets and stuff. Things you’d need to bed down and wait out a battle or siege. The word siege twitched something inside my brain and I leaned against Cobalt mid step.
Siege.
That’s exactly what the musty and musky bomb shelters were made for: A city under siege. I squeezed my eyes closed and Cobalt pulled me in close. He patted my back, following the pace of our in sync hearts. On my ankle, another hand patted.Whatever was going on I had an extra protector. We had an extra protector.
“I’d still like to see inside, if that’s okay,” I announced a few minutes later.
The past was back in London. It wasn’t here with me in the woods. This was our fresh start. This was our nesting tower. Cobalt swiped his family identification card and the door swung open.
