Page 25 of Pack’s Prize
I had felt so desperately alone in my apartment. It had been a long time since I’d slept in an empty house. Sure, I could hear my neighbors through the thin walls, but that was different than having people who shared your space. Your life.
Not, I reminded myself,that I was really sharing these men’s lives.They were just kind enough to let me stay with them temporarily. They had offered to pay my rent, hadn’t they, the first night at the club, in exchange for pulling this off. This arrangement was simply a convenience: I would beon-call, or whatever, and they wouldn’t have to pick up the tab for another apartment’s rent for a few more months.
At Elias’s insistence, I had put away the few clothes I brought over with me in the closet and the low dresser, and I went to retrieve my pajamas now. I pulled open the drawer, expecting to see just my cut-off sweatpants and my old tee-shirt, but stacked neatly beside them were the blue and white striped cotton pajamas I’d worn last night. Someone–one of the men–had washed and folded them before tucking them away, into my drawer, and I smiled.
They may not want an omega, but they certainly know how to take care of one,I thought, stripping off my jeans and top, then unclasping my bra, rubbing at the place where the underwires had rested during the day. I slipped on the pajamas, the soft, worn material like a caress against my skin, and padded into the ensuite to get ready for bed.
I would start looking for a place tomorrow. It would be Monday, and the alphas would, presumably, need to go to work.The gallery.Could I visit it? Not tomorrow, but sometime soon? I didn’t know much about art, but it seemed like an interesting profession. They were interesting alphas, I thought as I tucked myself into the same bed I’d slept in the night before, still smelling faintly of cedar and now of my own sweetness. They didn’t want an omega, but they were certainly taking care of me as if they really were courting me, taking me in under their protection and their very roof. It should have felt the same as my time with Roman–after all, wasn’t my time here pretty much just a formalization of what I’d had with them? But somehow it felt different. Better. Safer.This is what itshouldfeel like, I thought.When I find a pack to spend forever with, I want it to feel like this.
Occasional quiet laughter spilled under the door and into my bedroom, and the clinking of dishes as the men finally cleared up was my lullaby.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX
Theo
I wentinto the office the next morning only reluctantly. The thought of leaving Ava at home was an unpleasant one, no matter how she protested that she would be fine, that she could keep herself busy looking for apartments for when she moved out.
I certainly didn’t want her staying in the squalid flat she’d been squatting in, but for some reason I didn’t want to acknowledge, the idea of her in any apartment not our own also had a growl building in my throat. I stopped it, forcing myself to smile and nod when she shut the door behind Michael and I as we left, promising to lock it behind us.She’s not yours, I reminded myself, even if she was wearing Michael’s pajamas once again, smelling like him, like Elias’s chill cedar scent and sweet flowers.
I spent an hour answering emails, calling clients, all the things that having an office and a job entailed. For the first time in many years, I could barely focus. My brain was scattered, a familiar itch in my fingertips begging me to fill them with a paintbrush.
I couldn’t, not now, when our big gallery opening was this weekend. I’d nearly forgotten about it until Michael burst into my office mid-morning with two fresh cups of coffee and a scowl on his lips.
“Is one of those for me?” I asked, smiling gratefully as he passed one over. “Thanks. You went to the coffee shop?”
“Couldn’t focus,” he said.
“Moi non plus,” I said, lapsing into French, giving my brain a little break. I’d lived here for five years, my English was perfectly fine, but it was nice to not have to think about it, to know Michael would understand. We needed to work on Elias’s French more, too.Maybe we should reinstate French-only Fridays,I thought,after Ava moves out–
“What’s got you going sour?” Michael asked, also slipping into my native tongue. My scent, betraying my emotions like that… I scrubbed a hand over my face and through my hair.
“Just the opening on Saturday,” I lied. “There’s a lot to do. I want it to go well.”
“It will. Of course. They always do.”
“Yes, they do.” They did–it was what had made Stoll Galleries so successful, our ability to take small, undiscovered artists and launch them into the contemporary art world.
“She would come, don’t you think?” Michael said over his coffee. He’d taken off the to-go lid and was stirring it absently. He didn’t need to explain who he meant, but he did anyway. “Our omega?”
Ourhypotheticalomega, he meant.
Not our particular omega.
Not the omega who was at our house right now.
Not Ava.
“Yes,” I agreed, “Ava should come. It’s a good opportunity for her to be seen. You know who will be there: the Stevenses, the MacKenzies, the Ilverwoodsens…”
His grandfather’s friends and business associates. They may notlikeMichael, even if they didn’t know the exact cause of his and his grandfather’s falling out, but they knew that Stoll Galleries was the best. Not like they cared about the art, of course, but it was a goodinvestment, and that was what those people really cared about.
I shook my head. It was unlike me to get bitter about this job, not after I had done it for as many years as I had.
“I’ll let her know. Prep her on the artists so she knows what she’s talking about, or at least can fake it.”
I nodded along as Michael prattled on, but my own thoughts had wandered. Ava, at the gallery. Would she enjoy the opening? The artist was an interesting one, a Tunisian painter who did incredibly detailed abstracts, none of them larger than the size of my hand. Did Ava like art? I didn’t know. It shouldn’t matter, I reminded myself. Whether she cared or not wasn’t the point of a fake courtship. She was supposed tobethe art, the decorative ornament of our pack.
She was beautiful enough, of course, I thought, enough to be mistaken for a sculpture in the gallery. She’d need something to wear that set her off properly against the art, the white walls that would be her backdrop. And not something like the revealing dresses she’d worn to the club and the restaurant, I thought, my traitorous brain returning to how lovely she’d looked in Michael’s pajamas. That was how I wanted to present her to the people who would be attending the opening with us: wrapped in our clothing, like a gift only we would be allowed to open…