Sugar Coated

50

Delaney Linwood

Was it stupid to think that my heart was as warm as my bed?

This whole situation was stupid the more I thought about it.

Not the pack in my bed. They weren't stupid.

Which was what had me up most of the night, slipping in and out of dozing from my place tucked between at least one or another of each of their limbs.

They said I was an omega, though I'd never had the scent or the heat to prove it. The Sinclair pack wasn't stupid...which logically had to mean the idea wasn't either. And that thought was what got stuck in the grey matter in my head, burrowing deeper and deeper until it could lodge itself somewhere fundamental and never let me go.

And I let it dig.

While I worried the scabs of my own wounds I'd thought time had healed.

During the bits where I was conscious, I couldn't escape my memories, but this time I haunted them instead of the other way around. I watched my childhood like a third-party onlooker, unknown to the me I thought I remembered looking back from the mirror and the face of my mother I wished I could forget.

And each memory came through in a different light, sometimes it was something softer that I could see in my interactions that I finally had a name for. But, sometimes the light was the kind that made you squint and your eyes water.

She knew.

Nora Linwood knew.

All that time my mother knew I was an omega.

I couldn't escape the thought and the phantom ache in my chest that would kick on as I remembered how vicious the idea of normal was and how desperately I tried to cling to it each time that my mother caught something else of my nature on the wind.

Mom hated what I was. And with that realization came the stinging knowledge that despite everything that I had done, I was never going to be the daughter she wanted me to be.

And she knew that too.

Yet, she'd never considered the more gentle unkindness of leaving me behind like I'd wished she'd done from the beginning.

Someone's hand stroked along the hollow under my ear, teasing the curls that I'm sure had already turned into a mess of snarls even though morning was still a ways off. I wasn't certain if Jax was awake or if his hands were omniscient, but I tried to still those anxious fidgets that came with just being alive. I evened my breathing out, deepening it in the way I'd learned to whenever time was better spent pretending to be asleep.

Jax's breath puffed out warm against the back of my neck.

I held my breath.

"Nice try," His words were quiet enough that the other two didn't stir, but it was the tap of his finger, emphasizing each word that woke me anyway, not the scratchy sound of his voice roughened with sleep.

There wasn't any use in pretending then, though as far as being caught, this would be a happier memory than any of the others. I turned my head to face him, though I'd obviously taken too long because at the same time his warm arms wrapped around me, pulling me back against the heat that poured off of him.

The action warranted a sleepy grumble and pulled Em along with me, which in turn also pulled Andres since the two were nearly wrapped together. They stirred but didn't end up waking.

I felt Jax's chuckle between my shoulder blades more than I heard it and every hair stood on end remembering the vibration of his purr when we'd finally dropped onto my bed in the dark, after he'd deemed the amount that Em and I had eaten satisfactory.