Nick took another sip of coffee from his Beta-scale mug, his forearm quivering. He hadn't been able to stop grinning like an idiot the entire morning. Really, it had probably begun last night, at the graceful conclusion of his nocturnal games with his elegant goddess of an Omega. Even after the hormone rush of the evening had settled down, though, he still burned hotly with the afterglow of the strides made the day before. There were revelations far more crucial than the pleasures of infinite flesh he experienced on Christine's body.

            He loved her. She loved him. Love. Loving. In love. Was this what it felt like to be a little schoolgirl plucking petals and reaching the last one on a positive note? Nick didn't even care. He'd happily wear that label, because he intended to live inside this feeling for as long as he was allowed.

            "How is it?" The beautiful violet-eyed Omega's voice boomed across the gingham expanse of the breakfast nook from where she sat and over to the walled-in tower table in which Nick was perched.

            "Amazing," the Beta blurted dreamily.

            Christine suppressed a giggle behind her fingers, and shook her head. "I meant the coffee, you jokester. And I can guarantee you there's nothing amazing about that brew. But thank you for saying so, anyway."

            Nick blushed, but took another slurp of the beverage to cover it up; momentarily, he forgot that Christine likely couldn't distinguish the rosy glow of his skin from that distance across the kitchen table. She wasn't wrong about the coffee, but everything tasted gorgeous this morning regardless. That smile still couldn't be slapped off his lips.

            "You're amazing, too," she added warmly, winked, and popped a grape over her teeth.

            Wallowing in the wonder of Christine's gaze for just a minute, the Beta let his sight wander over to the nearby hallway of the Omega complex. He didn't want to sour the mood, but couldn't help but feel concern creeping in at the corners of his joy. As perfectly as everything had gone after he and Christine admitted their feelings to one another, there was still a certain amount of emotional collateral from dinner.

            "Did... did Bennett..." Nick coughed.

            Christine bowed her head knowingly, and rested her cheek on steepled fingers. "He came in late, after you'd fallen asleep. I heard him in the hall. It's all right."

            "Okay. Good."

            The Omega extended her arm across the wide field of the kitchen table. Her broad fingertips alit at the edge of the cupped translucent tower, gripping the edge just slightly enough for Nick to feel the tower go completely still in her grasp. With a gymnastic balance, Christine drew the Beta station across the tablecloth. Nick watched the checkered blue and white patterns pass in a blurred rush below, then give way to the fluffy terrain of the Omega's house robe descending well below the table's edge. He gulped, and looked up at her gravely serious face again.

            "We just have to give him time," Christine reassured. There was still worry cracked in her tone, but she was sincere, and Nick knew she truly believed this. "You already won one of them over. I'm not sure if it was clear to you, but... last night went as well as it could have. I know that."

            "Thanks," Nick sighed, and nodded. He pressed a hand against the nearest porcelain wall of Christine's fingernail which extended all the way into his tower circle. "Time heals most wounds. Even this one. Or something like that."

            "Now there's the Conflict Studies graduate I know," Christine teased. Her eyes darted to the hallway too. "I'm going to go check on Sylvie, and let her know breakfast is ready. You all right to wait here a minute?"

            Nick opened his mouth to make the Beta-patented now where could I possibly go joke, but decided to let it stand. Instead he just smiled again and kissed the glassy wall of Christine's fingernail, which withdrew gently from his cupped domain. The Omega ascended from the table and tiptoed across the floor toward the bedrooms, but even marching on the cautiously poised balls of her titanic feet, Nick felt gentle tremors rising all the way up from the ground to his table. Not that he minded in the slightest; if anything, he was so used to it, he might have been troubled by the lack of a minor earthquake when his love was doing her best not to jostle him.

            For a few minutes, the Beta downed the rest of his semi-mediocre coffee and let the grin return fully to his face. He sampled the breakfast treats Christine had put great care into shaving down for him from a whole waffle, which she'd specially pressed in the iron just for him even after he insisted he'd be perfectly content receiving a crumb from her own plate. But that was just her.

            From somewhere in the void behind, giant footsteps managed to rattle the Beta's puny flatware again. These landings were still gentle and measured, yet undeniably more seismic than Christine's balletic strides. Expecting to see his dark-haired angel returning again from around the corner, the air in Nick's windpipe instead snagged like a fish hook at the sight of none other than Bennett lumbering up to the table. The sky-high Omega took a seat right beside the place setting which Nick's tower occupied.

            "So you stayed the night," Bennett grunted. He didn't acknowledge the Beta with eye contact, but instead snatched an apple from the fruit bowl on the table and crunched a loud bite.

            "I..." Nick stammered, briefly weighing the idea of insisting he'd just returned for breakfast after an evening in his own bed, then thought better of it. The cheesy time mantra flashed in his mind. "Yes. I did."

            At least ninety seconds of staid silence passed between them, punctuated occasionally by the Omega munching the fruit. Nick was reminded of the tension in old cowboy movies right before the bandit got blown away by the sheriff. In this case, it wouldn't be difficult for him to be literally blown away by a flared nostril on a body that large. To his credit, Bennett at least had the courtesy not to glare daggers through the walls of the Beta's cup. After a while, though, this ignorance troubled the Beta just as much as a sustained staring contest might have. In that situation, he'd at least know precisely where he stood with the guy.

            This was a man who was hardly two years past being a boy and who also happened to exist at such indescribable scale that just about any part of his entire body could've rendered Nick a crimson dot on the domestic landscape with hardly a feather's weight of pressure. During dinner the night before, the Beta had recognized in those luminously pooled irises a kind of aggressive fire he'd only recognized before in the eyes of Alphas: drunken jerks without filters, upper-crust elders sneering at the taxpayer-sponsored Beta walkways, and kids indoctrinated by their prejudiced parents mime-smashing things in their fists right before his eyes.

            "My mom looks different," Bennett mumbled.

            "What?" Nick said, feeling dumb for having to ask an Omega to repeat their voluminous words, but he was expecting an entirely different spiel to arrive.

            "She looks better. Happier. Since... you," Bennett continued gradually. He tore away another hunk of apple, then set it down on the table and turned his head at last to look at Nick. "Since you got together with her."

            Well, that was something, at least, to hear the Omega even vocally acknowledge the relationship existed at all. Nick considered that a monumental step in itself. Anything else in the way of progress after last night was just icing.

            "I'm glad," Nick said, not knowing how else to respond.

            "You don't have to say the rest. How you just want her to be happy, that's your only concern, you don't want to make anyone feel weird. Yada yada yada."

            Gulping, the Beta nodded and kept his lips shut. Was Christine coming back soon?

            "I don't hate you, you know," Bennett murmured: his quietest admittance yet.

            That much was a surprise. Nick would've been willing to bet his life savings the opposite way.

            "Oh?"

            "No. And I don't hate... you know, Betas... either. I wouldn't be able to, even if I tried, and even if I tried and I did, I couldn't do anything about it. The way we're brought up, I'm... never mind," the Omega continued. "I did try, though."

            "I believe you," Nick said carefully. "Not that I blame you, either."

            "It's just that I had to watch my mom left alone once already," Bennett said. He lurched his back in over the table, his face just a few inches away from the edge of the tower. His words were low enough that Nick was certain only he could hear them, despite the echoing capacity of an Omega's boom. "Do you... can you even..."

            The words were lost in the narrow jump between where Nick stood at the edge of the slanted window wall, but in the fumbling interim, he clocked the rest of Bennett's answer in his eyes, because those eyes were the only thing Nick could see, and they completed the Omega's embarrassed reach out of grief. In the space surrounding those very same pupils, Nick still saw Bennett's fire, but lacking the same hate and heat of before: he didn't see the hundred-fifty-foot man, but only the boy who'd had to bid goodbye to his father far too early.

            "Yes, I can," Nick said. The phrasing of whatever Bennett tried and failed to say was irrelevant; he was understood all the same.

            "Thank you," the Omega said. The clear-cut gratitude sounded a touch strange coming through his graveled timbre. He raised a hand in front of the tiny tower, clearly unsure how to react next. "How, uh, do you do handshakes? Not that I haven't shaken hands with Betas. But, uh, how do you, exactly..."

            Nick couldn't help but laugh, which luckily was read correctly in the spirit of mirth rather than mocking, because against all odds, Bennett cracked a smile. The Beta stepped back from the wall, giving the Omega plenty of room. "I just make it work. Bring it in, man."

            The giant smirked, and extended his pinky index finger down into the fenced-in Beta-friendly kitchen zone. The end of his thick digit curled against the ground, standing significantly taller than Nick all on its own, but it was enough. Feeling as though his good mood might never be cut short again, the Beta reached forward and gripped one of the raised spiral rings of Bennett's fingerprint to awkwardly shake it.

            "Is this really how all Betas do it? You just have to squeeze a piece of skin?" Nick wondered aloud, as he did his best to keep his finger still for the gesture. "That must get fucking old."

            "It really does," Nick agreed, and to his tremendous surprise, he joined in reverberating laughter with the Omega. At least, he was pretty sure he was laughing along with him; Bennett's chuckle was so loud and infectious that it sealed off all other sound within the cup. In the midst of their shared moment, Nick let go of the young man's finger, and only then did the Omega withdraw his appendage.

            "What's... going on out here? Is everyone doing well?" Christine said, suddenly standing in the doorway at the sound of the thunderous snickering. Her brow was furrowed with concern, but upon seeing Nick still standing in the cup and laughing along with Bennett, she quickly softened. In her left palm, her three-inch daughter perched in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes, but perked up at the sight of her brother and Christine's new friend seemingly goofing around.

            "Yes," Nick sighed with relief.

            At her usual respectful pace, Christine rejoined the pair at the table and set her smaller child down on the surface beside the tower. The Beta shared a nod with Bennett, warmed to his core, then locked again with Christine's purple gaze above; she was happily struggling to grasp the magnitude of the bizarre little miracle still hovering around the family. So he did his utmost to put her fears to permanent rest.

            "Everything is... good."