Perrie blinked. “Those two things aren’t nearly on the same level.”
“I think one meal to yourself every day until your heat adds up to a commensurate value,” I shot back.
“But I thought you said you wouldn’t touch me unless I wanted you to?” Her frown deepened as confusion filled her face.
Failing to hide my smirk, I shrugged one shoulder. “Who says you’re not going to want me to touch you by the time your heat gets here?”
Gray eyes widened and that damned strawberry scent filled the room with even more fervor than before.
“Christ,” Rhodes muttered from behind me as I heard him take in a sharp inhale of it.
The potency of it made my head spin and the urge to launch myself across the couch and chase the scent to its source very nearly took me over.
“Pet, you’re going to have to learn how to tamp down on that scent of yours or else there isn’t a contract in the world that can protect you,” I said through gritted teeth, turning and snatching the can of coffee grounds that I kept on the side table and shoved it under my nose, letting the scent cleanse my palette and save me from making a fool of myself.
I always kept it here for when emotions ran high and designation pheromones tried to get in the way of my dealings. Even if we did occasionally shoot at each other, no one wanted an all-out alpha brawl.
I wanted to pass the can back to Rhodes too, but I knew the alpha would be too stubborn to accept it. No, my second preferred to keep a white-knuckled grip on his control and refused to let himself appear weak.
That was going to have to change if he was going to become a pack with me and the omega in front of us.
He hadn’t agreed to it yet and the incredulous look he’d shot me last night told me that I had my work cut out for me. But if my selfish father had taught me one thing it was this: Keanes got what they wanted. Always.
And I wanted Perrie and I wanted Rhodes.
“S-sorry,” Perrie stuttered, all of her earlier bravado gone as she seemed to be trying to collect herself. “It’s still new and I don’t even realize I’m doing it half of the time.”
I frowned at that. Everything I read in her file about her sickness told me that she’d been given a clean bill of health, so why was she struggling with her designation so much now?
“Didn’t you go through the state mandated training at the omega center when your designation revealed itself?”
The government required all alphas and omegas to go through a six week training so as not to cause chaos when we were out in society. Omegas were taught how to control their often volatile emotions and make sure their scents didn’t drive any random passing alpha wild, and alphas were taught the same—though alphas got more of a ‘if you fuck up there is a life prison sentence waiting for you’ discussion rather than the slap on the wrist most omegas got.
Even Rhodes and I had to do a version of it, albeit a private one taught by a crotchety old alpha that read the textbook in the most monotone voice imaginable, but we’d completed it when we were sixteen.
Perrie’s cheeks filled with color, and much to my surprise, she shook her head. “My designation revealed itself a year before I was diagnosed and my parents never enrolled me once I was finished with treatment…”
I cursed inwardly as the mental task-list that I’d been keeping grew a little bit bigger as I realized she would need a teacher and a tight-lipped one at that.
“That’s illegal. All omegas are supposed to get the training within a year of their designation,” Rhodes cut in and I turned to find his jaw tense with anger.
“Is it really that surprising?” Perrie asked, some of her earlier fire returning again. “Also, isn’t illegal sort of your bread and butter? An omega not going through the system isn’t really that surprising when you buy and sell us for profit.”
“We don’t deal in the skin trade,” Rhodes bit out. “I think you’ve got us mistaken for the Russians.”
One slender red brow lifted as Perrie delivered a line that was so devastating that it even took my breath away. “Well, you bought me didn’t you? Don’t you think that high horse you’re sitting on is looking a little bit like a miniature pony at this point?”
Despite the jab, I very nearly laughed at the absolutely flummoxed expression on Rhodes’ face as he opened and closed his mouth like a fish, trying to come up with any response to shoot back at the omega.
I needed to get this negotiation back on track or else it was about to turn into verbal fisticuffs between my future wife and my second-in-command. These two would need a lot of careful cajoling to come together and my head ached as I tried to figure out how to get them to get along.
“Okay, let’s reel it back in you two. We can refine the details of the contract later on, but I think this will do for now. Do you have any other questions for me?”
Perrie continued to glare at Rhodes for another beat before those gray eyes slid over to me and her expression slackened from anger into one of anxious curiosity.
“Yeah, um, how old are you exactly?”
“Your expression was priceless,” Rhodes teased as we sat in the car heading to the meeting with Amante that he’d been hounding me for since we left the church yesterday.
I wanted to put it off longer until Perrie really settled into the idea of becoming my wife and omega, but now the man was getting the other families involved and I was worried that he was going to sow enough discord that the other three families would start a war over a perceived territory dispute.
The only problem was said territory was a twenty-two-year old woman who had made an audible gasp when I told her I was thirty-seven-years old.
“Last time I checked, you’re also nearing forty,” I reminded him tartly, glancing down at my phone and reading the text from Oona. Apparently, she’d finally managed to get Perrie to eat something for the first time in nearly forty-eight hours. That was a win at the very least.
Even as we argued the details of her contract, the omega’s stomach had been growling like she was keeping one very pissed off alpha in it.
Perrie hadn’t seemed too put off by the fifteen year age difference between us, even if her brows had shot straight up when I told her. I’d had almost six months to get over my reticence, but I was worried she would outright refuse and decide Pack Ricci was a better option being that the four of them were between twenty-eight and thirty.
But after digesting the information, the woman gave me a little shrug and moved on to continuing her earlier argument about meal times. We’d finally settled on two meals a day of my choice amongst other things. In another life, Peregrine Chandler would have probably made a hard-ass defense attorney with her ability to bull-headedly argue her case until she was victorious.
Rhodes shrugged. “And I’m not the one marrying her.”
Not yet at least, I said to myself silently as I responded to Oona’s text, asking her to keep a basket of snacks in Perrie’s room. I’d noticed it yesterday, but seeing her in a pair of form-fitting jeans and t-shirt confirmed that the omega was far too skinny.
It had been six months since she was last in the hospital, so it stood to reason that she should have rounded out a bit, but her collar bones still stuck out just a bit and her cheeks were hollowed when some of her earlier pictures showed them to be softly rounded, like the women in renaissance paintings.
