Chapter 10

Riley

I wasn’t the same girl I was, I had to tell myself that over and over as we drove to the pools. They were situated on the alpha residence lands, which made things even more awkward. Cyrus had apparently gotten word, because as we pulled up the front, he and Cheryl peered down the steps at us, waiting for us to get out of the car.

“A dominance display.” Eloise chuckled. “Obviously, you ruffled some feathers yesterday.”

“The visit wasn’t exactly a smooth one,” I admitted.

“So Omega Williams has called for back up already.” She shook her head. “No matter. They know the rules, and if they’ve managed to forget them, I’ll remind them of each and every one.”

She would too. It was weird to see the same perfumed steamroller getting out of her car and marching around to my door with the same kind of determination she’d used to drive me out of town. My door was pulled open and she reached in, giving me a hand to get to my feet. Cheryl and Cyrus watched my every ungainly movement with a cool collective gaze, though Cheryl’s brows drew down when my hand went to my aching back.

“We should’ve put in a ramp when the place was ours,” Eloise muttered, shaking her head as I lumbered up one stair then another. “The steps are ridiculous. The previous Omega Vanguard, the boys’ grandmother, watched me climb them when I was heavily pregnant too.”

“And you made it?” I gasped.

“Just.” Her smile helped me feel better. “Only a couple more to go.”

I gripped her hand with one hand and the railing with the other, finally levering myself up on the top stairs.

“Regan, so nice to see you again.”

Cyrus smiled prettily and I didn’t note the fine lines around his eyes, the unnatural shade of blond he’d dyed his hair at all.

“It’s Riley, as you well know,” I replied, not willing to be caught up in pack politics. “You sneered it enough times in high school to have it memorised.”

“And where’s your… pack?” he asked, looking over my shoulder.

“Where’s yours, Omega Williams?” Eloise snapped. “Gone on another one of those ‘long business trips’ again?”

His flush told me everything I needed to know about that.

“If you’d like to come this way.” Cheryl’s tone was tight, but she directed me towards the house. “You can visit the birthing pools and learn the lore that is your right as an omega born in our town.”

“How the hell does that even work?” Cyrus couldn’t seem to keep a civil tone. He looked me up and down in the way I might a particularly fascinating tissue sample. “You didn’t look like this at school. Val was the other omega destined?—”

“To leave Bordertown and find her mates outside it,” Eloise replied smoothly. “Cheryl, as ruling omega, you?—”

“I know what I’m supposed to do.” Her sharp reply silenced Eloise, but my mother-in-laws cheeks turned cherry red. Cheryl stepped up to the front door and then opened it with a flourish. “Be welcome. In the alpha residence, all petty grievances are set aside for good of the community. When you step inside.” She shot Cyrus a dark look. “You agree to the laws of hospitality.”

“Fine,” Cyrus huffed, walking over to the front door and stepping inside. “Well, come if you’re coming. I’ve got things to do this afternoon.”

What, I never found out, instead walking inside the house I never thought I’d step inside again.

“Oh wow…” Cheryl flushed prettily as I looked around, but it wasn’t her decor choices I was responding to. “Remember when we played Rapunzel?”

“You mean when you terrors tied a rope on the balustrade and each one of my sons climbed up your ‘hair’ to rescue you?” Irritation and fondness made for a strange combination, but that’s what I heard in Eloise’s reply. “You were a bunch of tearaways, each and every one of you.” A small smile formed as she looked down at my stomach. “Something you’ll become well acquainted with when you birth your boys.”

“So you are having all boys?” Cyrus looked down his nose as he peered at my stomach, but Cheryl elbowed him in the ribs. “What, I just asked?”

“All boys.” I sighed that out because it was only now that I realised what that meant. Looking at the house I could see the ghosts of my mates and me, remembering all the crazy shit we got up to. My focus shifted to Eloise and she nodded slowly. “All that testosterone, and alphas too. I’m going to be living in a madhouse, aren’t I?”

“One filled with love,” Eloise assured me. “Sometimes it won’t feel like it, but it will be, and anyway, your sons will have mine to keep them in line, make sure they respect you. If they don’t…” I couldn’t help but smile at the implied threat. “Well, you talk to me. Now, the pools?”

“So you’re intending to birth in Bordertown?” Cheryl asked in careful tones as she led us deeper into the house.

“I don’t?—”

“Of course.” Bloody hell, my mother-in-law and I were just having a moment, but then she had to talk straight over me. She seemed to realise we weren’t saying the same things, looking over her shoulder with a small frown. “For seven generations, all the Vanguard alphas were born in these pools.”

“And these won’t be Vanguard alphas.” My hand went to my stomach, almost to shield my unborn children from their eyes. Cyrus’ lips quirked at the corners and Cheryl was doing a much better job of being Omega Williams, keeping her expression neutral, but Eloise? I hated the pain there but couldn’t think of any other way forward. “We’re the Taylor pack. We have to create our own traditions.”

“Well, perhaps you need to see what you’re rejecting before you make any decisions.”

Cheryl just shook her head as Eloise pushed past her, walking into a part of the garden we as children never entered. She unlocked the gate and then held out an arm, ushering us in, as if it was still her place to do so. Cheryl let out a long breath and then walked forward, Cyrus hot on her heels.

That just left me.

I felt like I was making decisions on the fly, not having done a cost benefit analysis of each one, which made human me uncomfortable, but the wolf? She knew where we needed to go. We heard the sound of running water and began to move, walking through the gate and then down a neatly paved path to here.

“Omegas usually do water births.” Cheryl had recovered and was reciting the relevant words but with no real passion. “It helps with the pain, or so I’m told.”

That last bit was tacked on, but before I could ask what she meant, we reached this place. Somehow, a grotto was tucked away in the centre of the estate. Everyone was talking, about what, I couldn’t have told you. My feet moved of their own accord. The wolf was not allowed out until my babies were born, the brutality of a shift too much for unborn children, so I hadn’t felt her this close to the surface for a long time. Her paws, my feet, carried us down the steps hewn into the living rock, my sandals kicked off because somehow I knew I needed to feel the stone against my skin. Something electric pulsed through me as I dropped lower.

“Yes.”

Eloise appeared at my shoulder, smiling, really smiling for the first time, it felt. Her eyes locked with mine, a moment of connection there but not for long. Into the water, that’s what pushed at me. Now. I could resist pregnancy cravings and exhaustion, even the need for food, but not this. The moment my feet slid into the water, all the pain, the heat of the day slipped away. This was where I was supposed to be. Another step, then another, the water bubbled around my feet, some strange need rode me. My conscious mind was shoved aside for a feeling of perfect connection. Not just to the grotto, the sound of the water bubbling, of birds chirping filling my ears. No, I heard them too.

One woman bent double, her face screwed up in a grimace of pain which then turned into a panting smile as her mates clustered around her. They soothed her through the contraction and then helped her through the next. Another woman, her head thrown back, her throat letting out an animalistic cry similar to a wolf’s howl as every muscle in her body clamped down. Then a much more familiar figure appeared.

Blonde, slight, and looking a whole lot younger than she did now, Eloise lay back in her mates’ arms. Little pants cancelled out every sound other than the men’s encouragement. Together they worked, together they laboured until… I blinked at the sound of a splash and saw that Eloise was standing there in the water with me, her pants pulled up to her knees. She smiled as I saw the remnants of the vision. Fen, that’s who was born, somehow I knew, though I saw none of my mate in the baby’s quivering arms and red face. Another blink and he was gone, just leaving his mother standing there. She smiled at me, a soft, tremulous thing that I never would’ve thought Omega Vanguard was capable of expressing.

“You see it now.” A slow nod and then she waded towards me. “I’m sorry, Riley. I’m not sure if you can ever understand how much. I should’ve brought you here the minute the boys saw you as more than a childhood friend. I should’ve been the one to guide you through this process. I could’ve taught you everything you needed to know about being an omega, and instead…”

Her breath caught in her throat and she swallowed hard, trying to clear it, with little luck, so she was forced to forge on.

“Instead, I let my own stupid pride get in the way of yours and my sons’ happiness.” She shook her head sharply. “Never again, I promise you that. I’m glad you came home, darling, because otherwise I’d never have a chance to say this. I never should’ve pushed for you to leave Bordertown. If I’d listened to my wolf, the town would have a brand new omega leading it.” I glanced at Cheryl and saw how pale she had become. “A beautiful, brilliant doctor who could help heal the community as well as show them the way forward. My sons… You…”

Some people got more emotional in the face of other people’s outbursts, but I went the other way. A cool, clinical calm settled over me, stripping every response from me. I observed Eloise like I might a specimen under a microscope, unable to formulate a response or judgment, instead just forced to watch as her expression changed. Real misery radiated off her, turning her scent sour, but that wasn’t all. Her eyes met mine and I watched the moment hope flared to life there.

“It’s not too late.” She gripped my hand hard, her fingers branding my skin. “You might think it is, but it’s not.” Cyrus, Cheryl, shifted restlessly at the top of the steps, probably because, like me, they’d never seen this side of Eloise. “I can, we can, make things right. This is where you were born, where your sons need to be born, like every other generation before them. Can’t you feel that?”

I didn’t want to answer that question. An uncomfortably large mass of complex emotions rose at the mere suggestion of considering the past. It felt like I couldn’t sort through them, not without pulling the giant hairball apart, one strand at a time, but each was inextricably wound up in the others. I just stared, knowing I was expected to respond but unable to say anything, so Eloise spoke for me.

“Come on. Everyone’s waiting for you.”