Page 27 of Lavender and Lightning

I shake my head with a fond smile. Lucas smiles back, and he takes my hand before dragging me back down two flights of stairs and into my room. I can’t help but laugh as he shoots me a grin before gathering up an armful of my discarded blankets. He makes theatrically exaggerated coughing and gagging noises before throwing the blankets on the bed.

“What are you doing?” I ask through my giggles.

“We have to get the blocker off somehow,” he says before launching himself onto the pile of linens.

I roll my eyes, holding the dirty laundry tight to my chest and joining him. My breath whooshes from my chest with an ‘oof’ and Lucas rolls onto his back. My face hurts from smiling as I feel him wriggling like a worm all over the lumpy pile below us before he finally settles with his shoulder pressed to mine. With the clothes in my hand, the scent of the blocking detergent is much more tolerable.

“Jason’s your little brother, right?” Lucas asks after a moment of silence.

I nod. “By ten months.”

“Your mom’s poor vagina,” Lucas says with a wince.

I shrug. “When a wife is called upon to do her marital duty, she answers.” I’d heard that line more than once after I’d presented as an omega, and it’s never gotten any less stomach churning.

“That’s… wow, that’s fucked up. I’m sorry,” Lucas says, letting out a low whistle.

“It’s okay. They never said anything, but I think my parents were always disappointed I’m a girl. Being an omega helped, but only because they could trade me like cattle to the highest bidder,” I sigh, staring at the ceiling, blinking tears away before they can fall.

“We should have traded. I’m the family disappointment for being a beta male,” Lucas says with a dark laugh.

I turn my head and find Lucas staring at the ceiling, his eyes distant. He senses my gaze and turns to look at me. I get lost in the swirling depths for a heartbeat, my stomach clenching as his eyes flick around my face.

“Are you the youngest?” I ask, curiosity overcoming my trance.

“Yep,” he starts, popping the P, “and an accident. My dad’s an alpha and my mom’s an omega, but they never bonded. Even after twenty-plus years of being together. My sisters had already presented by the time I came along.”

I roll over to face him more fully, trying to keep the sympathy in my chest off my face.

“Did your parents have a pack?” I ask slowly.

“My dad had one, I guess. But he left with my mom and sisters while she was pregnant with me. They claimed it was because we were being offered military housing at a different base. My oldest sister, Heather, said the rumored real reason was because Mom went into heat out of nowhere and rode it out with another alpha from the pack while my dad was at a training thing,” Lucas answers, turning to stare into the space above us without really seeing anything.

I frown at the distant, almost sad look in his eyes. I’m familiar with the expression, having seen it plenty of times on my own face. I sense there’s more to the story, but I don’t want to push right now.

“It must have been rough, dealing with three omegas and their cycles,” I say, trying to lighten the mood with a chuckle.

Lucas laughs with me, but still doesn’t look at me. “Yeah, it was the worst when they would sync up. I only remember it happening a few times before my sisters found mates, but it always drove my dad out of the house for days at a time.”

“How old were you?” I ask, a little alarm coming through.

Lucas shrugs. “Eight? Ten, maybe? It was before I came into my designation, so it didn’t bother me—”

“Who took care of you?” I ask, sitting up suddenly, eyes wide.

Lucas looks at me with confusion pulling his lips into a frown. “I did?” he answers, more of a question than a statement.

I stare at him, seeing a much younger Lucas, with untidy dark hair and chubby cheeks, limbs too long for him yet, alone in a house with three omegas in heat. He may not have been affected by the pheromones, but without his father there to keep other alphas away, it’s a miracle he didn’t get hurt by another alpha trying to get to the omegas. Not to mention having to take care of himself while they were lost in the breeding haze.

“Don’t look like that, Lydi-bug. It’s not like they were all the way out of it. It was more like they had bad cases of the flu. And I didn’t have to do anything super intensive unless they were all down for the count, and that only happened, like, less than half a dozen times my entire life,” Lucas goes on, his casual tone making me sadder.

For all my family’s faults, I don’t ever remember a time when an omega went into heat without a laundry list of precautions in place. My mother and father went away for the week, leaving my brothers and I in the care of our aunts and uncles. Once I started going through my cycles, I was told about the early warning signs so I could make sure I was brought to a safe location away from the pack—and the world, in all honesty. There was a cabin on Lake Pontchartrain that had been specially built to block pheromones from escaping, with super reinforced doors and windows. And I was never alone, usually accompanied by a trusted female beta from our church. The other omegas who’d mated into the pack always had their children taken care of by someone. Even if Lucas’s father and mother weren’t bonded, an alpha abandoning his partner and daughters and leaving them vulnerable seems almost impossible. Nothing and no one could have pulled my father away from my mother when she was in heat.

Lucas lets out a heavy sigh. “I think they never thought to shield me from the reality of their heats, because they thought I’d end up like them. I mean, the odds favored it. My dad always tried to nurture the alpha into me, but nature won out in the end, much to my father’s and my mother’s disappointment.”

“I’ve never heard of a parent wanting an omega for a son,” I respond, tracing a stitch in the bedspread under us.

“I think they were hoping for anything but beta. I’m ordinary. No extra special instincts or healing or compulsion powers. Just… garden variety person,” Lucas says lowly.

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