Chapter 8

Riley

Why did I emerge from the granny flat some hours later like a naughty teenager? Probably because it felt like I was one as I let my pack ravage me one by one. Any thoughts of being eighteen were quickly dispelled when I climbed into the shower after a lengthy nap. The evidence of my adulthood confronted me as I soaped up my belly. The guys joined me to ‘help’ and while soap was rubbed into a whole lot of places, I’m not sure if they made the process quicker. Then I had to get dressed and face the music.

“There she is!”

It was weird I’d decided, Eloise making me the focus of her attentions for once. Before I was made to feel like the red-headed stepchild of the group, but as we emerged into the beautiful grounds of the house to find Eloise and her pack sitting around a fire pit, it was me she rushed towards, not her sons.

“Did you sleep well? Was the bed too soft or too hard? I spoke to the girl at the furniture store at length?—”

“She really, really did.” Malcolm smiled and got to his feet, moving towards us to kiss my cheek. “Have a seat, love. Need a drink or something?”

“We’ve got this.”

There was a note of tension in Fen’s voice that had me turning, but while he stared his dad down for a second, he moved quickly enough to dig through the coolers for a soft drink I’d grown to love. The tangy sweet lemon fizz helped settle my stomach through the early days of my pregnancy. I thanked him, then went to waddle over to one of the chairs.

“Here, darling.” It was easy to underestimate Eloise’s strength. She was tiny afterall, but her grip was like iron as she helped me into the chair. “I remember how hard it was on my back, bearing five sons.” She settled me down and then produced a cloud soft blanket to set over my knees. “I’m not sure it ever recovered.”

“That’s why you keep us around.” John kissed her cheek. “Strong hands to massage out all of those ‘knots.’”

I blinked, seeing the stern alphas that ruled this town I’d grown up with replaced by adults who were obviously still very much in love.

And into each other.

“Fuck, I need a beer to cope with this,” Haze groaned, grabbing one and popping the bottle cap.

“What?” Bryan was one of the other dads, and by his colouring, probably Haze’s biological father. He reached over and ruffled his son’s hair only to be shoved away. “You’ll be in the same position one day, wanting to show affection to your fated mate, only to have your sons gagging each time you try to kiss their mother.”

“Sons…” Eloise was always able to capture the town’s attention as Omega Vanguard, but it was a different woman that we all turned to stare at now. Her bottom lip wobbled, her eyes suspiciously misty as she moved closer. “You’re having my babies’ sons.”

The scientist in me wondered what the hell she was going on about, but I was as surprised as anyone to feel that rationality pushed aside. That look, the tremulous waver of her hands as they moved towards my stomach, not touching, not until I gave permission. I reached out and placed them on my belly. Her smile, it was a mirror of my own as I experienced a moment of connection with my mother-in-law I never expected to feel.

She knew what I was going through and that was something almost no one else at Crowe Corp could say. Lily would if the fertility drug trial was successful, but she’d bore one alpha child, and as a beta. In my head, I tried to discount what I was feeling, to rationalise that at least half the people we saw in my clinic had some sort of genetic propensity for the super fecundity of being an omega, but that didn’t do this. Make me feel for just a moment that I was another in a long line of women who had borne their alphas’ sons as an expression of a love that would not be denied.

No matter how hard Eloise and her pack had tried to keep us apart.

I pulled back then, the sun finally dropped below the horizon line, and the shiver that went through me wasn’t just due to the growing chill. Not for the first time, I cursed the way me and my pack had found our way back to each other. I hadn’t just been robbed of those years with my mates, but also this.

I wanted to lean into Eloise’s motherly energy, let it fill up all the cracks that felt like they were forming inside me with every month of this pregnancy. Reading about conception and fetal development was a helluva lot different to experiencing it. I wanted to ask what I needed to watch out for, what was normal for the babies’ development, find out how the birth of five children went, but instead, I sat back in my chair and pulled the blanket up higher. Eloise seemed to sense the moment was over and went to add some more firewood to the fire, her mates and her sons intercepting her and taking over to the job.

“Well, you must be starving,” she said. “I was going to prepare one of my famous roasts, but my mates were insistent that a barbeque was the order of the day.”

“Men preparing their women the most tender medium rare steaks known to man…?” John looked meaningfully at the two of us but before I could respond, my stomach answered for me with a noisy grumble. All the men snorted in that dude bro way.

“Seems like Riley is on board with that!” Fen said. “So, dads, where are the steaks? Riley’s not really able to tolerate gristle at the moment. Makes her gag.”

Like so often at an Australian barbeque, the men clustered around the grill. The sons inspected the new set up, the dads explaining the different features as Eloise sighed with a smile.

“They’re always like this,” she explained. “It’s hard to believe they’ve ever been away.” Except they had. I wanted to say that but held my tongue, even though it didn’t make a difference. She turned my way anyway, smile fading. “Oh, I’m sor?—”

“What’s it like?” Counter one awkward topic with another, that was the only way forward I decided. She frowned slightly before I explained. “Giving birth to five children, I mean? We’ve had a few twins and triplets at work, but no…” I shook my head.

“Empowering.” I expected a whole lot of answers, long, bloody, hard ones, but this was not something I anticipated at all. Eloise smiled and then reached over from her chair, patting my hand with hers. “Pregnancy is hard, terrifying even, because right now everything is on you. Rest, nutrition, taking proper care of yourself to ensure the children grow healthy and strong, but childbirth? It’s painful, but nowhere near as painful as it is for beta women. That’s one advantage to being an omega. Our bodies are used to stretching.”

Oh my god, was my MIL talking about sex? By the flush in her cheeks, it was obvious she was.

“But birthing your children.” Her eyes held mine as she squeezed my hand. “I’ve never felt as strong as I did when the boys were born. It will go smoothly for you, Riley, I just know it. You’ve done far harder things and come out the other side.” A shadow seemed to flicker in her eyes, there and gone again. “You’ll be fine.”

The trip down here was long and hard on my body, but suddenly, it seemed worth it all. I wasn’t expecting that. Apparently, all I needed was some vague assurance that everything would be OK. Surely Candy or someone could’ve said the same at home, but as soon as I thought that, I realised why it wouldn’t work. Neither she nor anyone else I knew had been through this before.

“Thanks,” I said weakly, raising my can to take a sip. “I needed to hear that.”

“Of course you did.” Her voice contained all the authority she used to wield so casually when I lived in Bordertown, which should’ve been enough to warn me. “Those city people, they don’t understand. They can put us under a microscope all they like, but they’ll never truly be able to wrap their minds around what we experience. You’ll see tomorrow.”

“I’ll see what?”

I hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but my lips moved before I could think.

“As soon as I heard you were coming back home, I got everyone organised.” Eloise looked smug as she smiled at her family squabbling over the cooking of the meat. “Made sure to put something together that acknowledges another Vanguard pack will be born.”

“Taylor.” Why the hell did I squeak that out? I cleared my throat and then reiterated what was said. “The guys, they decided to call us the Taylor pack.”

“A lot of things make sense in the city that don’t here.” She patted my hand before pulling away. “The beta world, it's different to ours, something you’re going to discover, but let’s not worry about that now. I know you’ve got questions, and I’ll make sure to answer every single one, tomorrow.”

Why did that feel like a threat rather than a promise? I reminded myself on the drive down and the days before that I had kicked Eloise’s butt literally, that I was the dominant female here, so why didn’t I feel like it? Why did my arms wrap around my belly, as if to protect my babies from whatever was to come? I’d find out in the morning.