Page 270 of Claim Me
Slowly, I sit up and look around.
Wow. I’m sitting in the middle of something that loosely resembles a nest.
And suddenly something inside me stirs.
For a moment I try to process it, but it’s hard to describe all the emotions reaching me right now.
Did Gabriel make some kind of joke out of me, or is this his idea of a gift? Or maybe it’s supposed to be a suggestion?
I know alphas naturally want their omegas to nest in a healthy way. Nesting may be deeply tied to omegas, but somehow the instinct spills over onto alphas too.
An alpha whose omega doesn’t nest carries this constant unease because of that absence. It’s an obvious sign that something in the relationship still hasn’t fully healed…
Does Gabriel carry that same longing and the same uneasiness?
I spend a moment thinking it over.
Maybe I should get irritated and say, "Why are you doing this when I’m not ready, and maybe I never will be," but at the same time, I know Gabriel means well, he would never want to hurt me like this.
So how am I supposed to approach this?
Another moment passes while I sort through my thoughts.
That secret part of me, my inner teenager, is curious about it, so I give in to his whispers and reach out to lightly touch one of the pillows.
It feels nice beneath my fingers, slightly cool, really pleasant. My hand drifts over the surface almost absentmindedly while I toy with the delicate embroidery along the edge.
I reach inward, realizing that my teenager alter ego finds a strange sort of solace in these rounded shapes formed by the pillows surrounding me. A feeling of unexpected safety.
I never used to draw comfort from physical forms around me. Mine always came from knowledge, from competence, from control over what I understood.
But whatever he wants is still too subtle to push to the surface, and I remain hesitant.
So eventually I get up and slip out of the makeshift nest my alpha built for me.
I take a shower, then leave the bedroom only to find Gabriel lying on the couch in the living room.
Maybe he had been napping, but his eyes are open now, and they immediately meet mine.
Right away I notice the worry in them, fear over what I’m about to say, how I’m going to react.
So he’s been tormenting himself over this too?
We never really talked about nesting before.
But maybe now is the moment.
I walk over and sit beside him. Our eyes meet.
Calmly, I say,
"I know your alpha nature wants everything inside me to heal, but you know nesting is a process that can take years. It’s a slow maturation of neural pathways in the brain that shape a very specific structure… Even if we’re True Mates, it still might never happen."
Gabriel blinks at me with the expression of someone caught stealing.
"I know… Sorry, this is lame, trying to explain myself like this, but I wasn’t even the one who brought those pillows here. Veyron did. They caught his eye during some sale, he liked the sapphire color and figured he could give us the set as a gift."
I tilt my head slightly, studying him.
