“The system is safe. You know that I wouldn’t put our people needlessly in danger.” Timothy meets my gaze head-on, not flinching one moment.
“Good.” I try to go over everything that Timothy and Erika told me before she got off the call. She’s coming here to help us get the kids into safe situations, to help Luca’s family make a new start and she offered part of her security team to help us out for a while...
Which is how Timothy and I got into the whole conversation about our current security system ‘situation’.
I let out a deep sigh, exhausted.
“What are you thinking?” Derrick moves, leaning against the table, making sure to stay out of my reach, his eyes guarded.
“That you two have the right idea.” I motion in Timothy and Derrick’s direction. “I need to learn to delegate more, even when it comes to stuff about the organisation. You two run my technical and my physical sides of the security at home and are in charge of the missions. But when it comes to running the organisation itself, it still falls all on me. We’re dealing with multiple situations here, most of them are connected but not always overlapping, I really shouldn’t be doing all of that on my own.”
Timothy lets out a quiet laugh as he shakes his head.
“What?!”
He pulls a face. “I agree with you that you shouldn’t be doing everything on your own. And you’ve now got a pack to help you out, even though you’ve barely made use of them until now. But as your pregnancy progresses, things will become a lot more tricky. Right now, we’re mainly dealing with the Hearts throwing a tantrum and putting bounties on everyone. We’ve dealt with that before.”
“Plenty of times.” The bounties actually worry me the least, of everything that’s happened in the last day. Bounties I know how to deal with. It requires tighter security, but we also know what to expect.
“Right. But what happens if your clients, or the wider world, find out that you’re pregnant? What will happen if you’re at the end of your pregnancy and can’t go waltzing all over the place, meet with people, because that has physically become much too hard on you?”
I snort. “That presumes that I’ll still have clients once people find out I’m an Omega. That presumes that people will still want to work with me. Who says that they’ll still want to do business with our organisation, even if someone else takes on the leading role? Even if I, a ‘weak’ Omega, would step back and someone else would be the face of the organisation. There’s no guarantee anyone will still want to work with us.”
Timothy gives me a look that tells me I’m being way too defeatist. “At some point in the not-too-far future, you won’t be able to go on missions, that will become physically not a good idea. Going out for client dinners will also become a bad idea. Not just for security reasons, but plain-old ‘physically being up to it’ reasons. Derrick and I can try to help you however much we can, but you’re not the same guy you were before, your life has changed and that means making changes to how you run things too.”
“I know. It’s not like I haven’t thought about that before. It’s just hard to...” I move my hands jerkily. “Hard to figure out.”
Timothy shrugs, looking back at the guys from the tech team. “You’ve got some time to figure it out, but not a lot. You don’t want to be forced to make choices with options you don’t like. Just make sure you stay ahead of things.”
He sighs deep. “Talking about staying ahead of things, I’ll tell Eli that we’ll have a lot more mouths to feed soon and that we need to get the spare houses ready for Erika’s people. Unless you need me here for something else?” He gives me a look, clearly wanting to get out of here, away from my grumpy mood.
I shake my head, letting out a long breath. “Thanks. I should have been the one to tell Eli earlier… So, thanks.”
“No problem.” Timothy jerks his head so his guys follow him out of the library.
When the door closes behind them, I look to Derrick. “We good?”
“We good.” He rubs between his legs, like the memory of the knife being there makes him feel it physically. Then he eyes the door Timothy just left through.
“Let Caleb take care of things on the pack side, together with Jorge, they balance well and Jorge’s not good with the darker sides of the organisation. Spread organisation things between yourself, Vera and Riley. Vera has picked up a lot of admin and communication tasks already, and she’s good at them. Riley knows the more practical side of your job. She might have to get used to working in a team, but I don’t see a reason why that won’t work.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Are you now telling me what to do?”
“No. I’m confirming what you already know. I believe we’ve known each other long enough for that.” He grins. “And, if not, you can always just get rid of me.”
When I don’t say anything, Derrick lets out an impatient sound. “You’re not protecting them, or yourself, by not relying on them more. Hell, it took me way too long to appoint Miles to a higher position. But now that he’s taken over a lot of your and your pack’s personal security, I suddenly have time for other things again. Things like my family, my pack, my mates. Things that are important in life.”
My mates…
I suddenly have a family to worry about.
And I can’t do that alone.
And I definitely can’t protect them on my own.
Why are these things so complicated?
And why do I dread even thinking about sharing some of my responsibilities with the rest of the pack?
