Page 224 of Stolen Omega

“Well, that’s not going to be a problem anymore,” she says, smiling brightly. “It never will be again.”

I hug her for maybe the eighth time since she arrived, which was less than half an hour ago.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you so much,” she says. “I hated not being able to see you. It fucking sucked.”

“At least we both met our mates,” I tell her. “It’s funny. Didn’t we always used to say we’d end up in packs? Well, we both did.”

She nods. “That’s true, but I think your pack was supposed to be back up dancers and mine was supposed to be a football team? So, we did get it a little bit wrong.”

There’s a knock at the door.

“That’s probably Harvey,” I tell her.

“Harvey? Do you have a sixth mate I don’t know about yet?”

I laugh. “Not every man in my life is mated to me.”

I open the door, and sure enough Harvey’s standing there.

He smiles. “Ready to hit the stage?”

“Ready … No, wait. I’ll be there in two minutes!” I close the door and dash past Brooke to the bathroom.

If there’s one thing that sucks about being pregnant, it’s how fun the kid seems to think it is to jump on my bladder. I’m probably lucky I haven’t been hit with morning sickness yet, but the constant peeing is starting to feel like a bad joke.

It was kind of a shock to find out my implant stopped working over a year ago, but the confirmation that I was having a baby when I went to get checked out made me so excited that I came out of the doctor’s office babbling about cute onesies and baby names instead of telling my waiting mates outright that I was really pregnant. Suffice to say, they figured it out pretty damn quickly.

Brooke’s standing by the door waiting for me when I come back out of the bathroom.

She shoots me a concerned look. “Morning sickness?”

I shake my head. “Pee break. This kid is the tiniest jumping bean in the world.”

She smiles. “As long as you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry, I have five mates who are looking after every single tiny thing I could ever worry about.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to be an auntie. It’s so exciting!”

“I can’t believe I’ll be a maid of honor while I’m eight months pregnant,” I tell her. “I hope this little jumping bean doesn’t decide to come early.”

“Are you kidding? That would be awesome. Become a wife and an auntie in the same day? Best day ever. Okay, come on. We need to get this show on the road.”

She opens the door, where my new personal assistant is waiting to lead us backstage.

Harvey decided he liked the change of scenery when he was working with me, and I like having someone to talk to when I’m working, so I offered him the job with a pay raise, and he said yes.

Anna was with the old record company, and I doubt she would have wanted to stay with me after I ditched them. Mandy’s self employed, so she stuck with me when I offered. She even said she could help introduce Brooke to some industry friends when she’s ready, which was nice of her.

Russ and Archer are still my bodyguards. They trust Harvey because I trust Harvey, and they’d like to hire more men, but honestly, my stock is going to go down after these final concerts.

I won’t be rewriting my songs to make them more marketable anymore, and I won’t be dressing like a fashionista and doing insane amounts of promotion, either.

My music will be from the heart, and I expect that means it’ll be worth a little less, from a commercial standpoint. To me, it’ll mean the world to put out work that I’m passionate about.

I don’t care if it makes me any money. I never cared about the money.

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