She laughed, even though I knew she didn’t want to. She never did. In her mind, anything that she considered feminine or girly was bad. Wolves, on the whole, were a sexist, misogynistic lot. Had she been born into any number of other families, she would never have been allowed to work in whatever business made them their fortune, even having been born an alpha. But Andrea was my father’s daughter, and he saw no difference between her and my brother, even with my brother being his heir. For my father, whoever was the smartest and most capable would take over from him when he retired, sex be damned. At the moment, my brother was CEO and my sister was CFO, so it was a crapshoot, unless you knew them. For me, my money was on Drea, because she could think outside the box, and Ambrose only saw four corners. I also secretly hoped Ambrose would throw caution to the wind and return to his real love, which was painting, but thus far that had not happened.
“Don’t shake her too much,” my brother-in-law, Crawford Donahue, ordered me when he reached us. “Your sister’s pregnant.”
“What?” I put her down gently to take her chin in my hand. “Poppet, you’re gonna be a mommy?”
She snorted out a laugh, and then, seconds later, uncharacteristic tears filled her eyes as she nodded.
I grabbed her again, and she melted against me, shivering, unable, it seemed, with the new hormones coursing through her body, to resist the pull of my warmth. Omegas were like candy to alphas, betas, and gammas, all ranks falling under their spell pretty quickly. It was why we were both loved and hated so fiercely. History was filled with stories of evil omegas twisting poor unsuspecting wolves, especially alphas, around their fingers and forcing them to commit abominations. To me, the omegas in the stories had always seemed like easy scapegoats.
“Let her go,” Ambrose ordered me, and once I did, after giving her a kiss on the forehead, he stepped in front of me. “Did you hear me yelling?”
“You yelled?” My mother gasped dramatically.
“For the love of God, Mother,” he grumbled, letting his head fall back on his shoulders in total defeat. I chuckled as he slowly lifted it to look at me in utter dejection as Crawford leaned in to give me a hug and kiss, the only one, apart from his wife, that he was ever so touchy-feely with. Again, him being a beta, he couldn’t resist me.
“You’re supposed to come when I call you,” my brother muttered belligerently.
“I think you have me confused with Cosmo,” I countered. “I’m not your beagle, I’m your brother, in case you got us mixed up again.”
“Avery––”
“Don’t be a dick, all right? Just gimme a hug,” I placated him, holding my arms open.
His sigh was as deep and resigned as my father’s had been, because I exhausted them both equally, but he took a step forward and leaned into me anyway. He didn’t even protest when I squeezed a grunt out of him. His wife made the awww noise when he pushed his face down into my shoulder, needing me just for a moment.
“I’ll try and listen to you next time,” I soothed him.
“See that you do,” he mumbled.
I was making the rounds of the room, greeting people I only saw at these frou-frou gatherings, when I was yanked sideways into an alcove. Rounding on my attacker, I found Linden Van Doren, who was both one of my oldest friends and enemies. He was loyal to a fault, while still prone to throwing me under a bus at any given opportunity. It had been particularly bad when we were younger, doing everything from smoking weed to sleeping with boys. I was always the one grounded, and he was the one sneaking pizza to me.
“What are you doing?” I groused at him, noting that he’d curled his strawberry-blond mane rather than pulling it back into the normal queue.
“It should be perfectly obvious that I’m hiding,” he snapped back.
I crossed my arms, going for bored.
“I have some admirers—don’t bat my hands away,” he chastised me. “You’re a mess.”
I made sure to sigh like I was dying, but he wasn’t fazed in the least. Instead, he fussed with my bow tie, my shirt, my cuffs, smoothed a hand down the lapels of my jacket, and tugged and patted until he looked me up and down, shrugged like that was as good as it