Her Broken Alpha - Isoellen Page 0,5

you have caught."

Naya chose not to argue. Her sister had a binding legal agreement. She'd never said, but Naya and her mother thought it likely that Phee had chosen not to share her bite and blessing with her husband, even though she had chosen him herself.

Instead she cleared her throat. “Do you think I smell different? How can they tell I'm close? I don't feel any different.”

"You have always smelled of flowers to me. Maybe sweeter now? I don't know. I could never tell either," Phee replied thoughtfully. "Swift says when I'm near my heat I smell like a dessert he doesn't want to share."

Naya thought that was a nice thing to say. Though they’d been married for three years, it sounded like a sweet type of newlywed sentiment.

Phee had gotten pregnant during her first heat with Swift, but lost the baby early. There had been no child since. The doctor had told them she was healthy and that these things happened often.

It was a classified secret that one in three omega pregnancies didn’t make it to term. And that the devastating loss could have affected her cycle.

Horrified when Phee had explained the odds, knowing that their mother had also suffered several miscarriages, Naya’d had a hundred questions. Unfortunately, Phee wouldn't talk more about it.

Phee went to Naya's closet. "So, where is your dress? You said you wanted something in blue and green with bursts of red flowers. Did mother let you get so much color?"

Naya followed her to the closet and pulled out the pale cream dress. It had a blousy bodice which tied at the waist with a wide ribbon, and three layers of skirts covered with beading and embroidery she and her mother had both added.

Embroidered green grapes draped across the fine fabric at the chest. Mother had insisted upon adding them, just as she had insisted upon the off-white color of the dress; grapes were, after all, a symbol of fertility. It was only proper.

Naya had spent weeks working on it with her, and while she couldn't say the dress was what she had dreamed of, it was beautiful.

Phee laughed a little when she saw it. Naya smiled despite herself, knowing what Phee must be thinking.

There was a quiet knock. A drone entered with a tray containing two glass bottles, a plate of flat biscuits, and two daintily painted clay cups. She set it on a table near Naya's favorite chair and left the room without looking at or speaking to either of the sisters.

"Mother says our other brothers will be home tomorrow or the next day. Do you think they have become rude while away?"

"They have always been rude," Phee said. "I'm sure it has only gotten worse."

"I'm thankful the other brats had to stay in their rooms tonight. All the dinner party needed was those two troublemakers to turn it into a riot. Bad enough that Runt was there. What he said to you! The king's service can't come fast enough for all of them."

Naya liked her younger brothers, though they irritated everyone else in the family. She enjoyed having them around, the three of them running wild.

Ladies did not run or raise their voices like the boys did—unless said lady was at the park with her younger brothers and no one reported the misdeed back to her mother.

Had the youngest pair sat at the table tonight, they would have challenged every male there for daring to look at her. They were much more protective than the eldest three boys. It was the reason Mother kept them out of the dining room during these dinners.

All the family’s sleeping chambers were on this floor, and the boys had the run of it. They came and went as they pleased. It was a surprise not to see them here in her room, messing up her bed, getting their pre-teen pheromones all over everything, and eating up the biscuits on her tray.

Naya watched Phee spin in a slow circle, surveying the room. Then she turned to Naya's bed. It was small, and Naya had been filling it with extra pillows and rolled blankets to practice making a place she could hide and nest.

There, at least, her mother had no say. A nesting bed was deeply personal—instinctual—the safe territory an omega breeder created for herself in a ritual as old as time. Humans and betas had no inherent drive to build a soft, inviting nest like an omega breeder did.

"Well, sister, I'm going to go back to my