Table of Contents
Prologue
Note: Genders
Miles
Parker
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Harper B. Cole
Reclaiming His Omega
M/M Alpha Omega MPREG
Harper B. Cole
Frost & Hazel
Contents
Note: Genders
1. Prologue
2. Miles
3. Parker
4. Miles
5. Parker
6. Miles
7. Parker
8. Miles
9. Parker
10. Miles
11. Parker
12. Miles
13. Parker
14. Miles
15. Parker
16. Miles
17. Parker
18. Miles
19. Parker
20. Miles
21. Parker
22. Miles
23. Parker
24. Miles
25. Parker
26. Miles
27. Parker
28. Miles
29. Parker
30. Miles
31. Parker
32. Miles
33. Parker
34. Miles
35. Parker
36. Miles
37. Parker
38. Miles
39. Parker
40. Miles
41. Parker
42. Miles
43. Parker
44. Miles
45. Parker
46. Miles
47. Parker
48. Miles
49. Parker
50. Miles
51. Parker
52. Miles
53. Parker
54. Miles
55. Parker
56. Miles
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Harper B. Cole
Note: Genders
We have chosen to occasionally utilize they/them as a singular pronoun (as currently accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary). A dear friend reminded us we could go back to the 19th century standards of calling all children “it” until they have neared adulthood, but we are content with our choice.
1
Prologue
Parker: ten years ago
A baby. I’m gonna be a dad. Dad to a baby who was going to be far away, and I needed to figure out how to man up without losing everything.
It had been almost a day since Miles stormed out of here and all I could think about was my future role as a father. Which made me a selfish jerk, given the huge fight we had over the baby. Although it wasn’t really the baby we were fighting over, was it? Miles wanted to be an attorney. He was made for it, fighting for the little man, making a difference. But now… now what?
He was pregnant. Pregnant with my child. A baby. We did that. We made a baby. When he first told me, I hadn't been able to keep the shock from my face. He mistook it as anger or frustration or I don’t even know what, but the next thing I knew, there was a wall between us, one I hadn't yet figured out how to break down, so when he told me tonight that he wanted to transfer to a better law school, I freaked out.
I knew it was coming, unlike the pregnancy. They told us in sex ed all about being able to get pregnant the first time and all that crap, but not once had I ever heard of someone becoming pregnant before their first heat.
We'd talked about transfer I before. It made sense. He needed a better school and we could… would make it work. Now that the tension of the fight was easing off of me, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to apologize and find a school near him. And a job. I needed a good job to support our child.
My brain was buzzing with too much, none of which could I make head nor tails of. I needed Miles. I needed him in my arms as we rationally discussed what came next. No matter what obstacles we faced, we were going to make it. We had to. He was mine. The baby was mine. All the rest was details.
Whipping out my phone, I dialed his number and was taken aback when a woman answered. “Hello.”
Shit, was she crying?
“Sorry, I must have misdialed. I was looking for Miles.” Glancing down at my phone, I made sure I'd dialed the right number. the nickname I'd given him, Atticus, was on the screen. It was his phone.
“Are you him?” the woman snapped, the venom spitting, even across the phone line. Miles and I had had fights before. Many of them. But never had he gone to someone else like this. Never had he put someone between us.
“Him?” I needed to get my grip before I angered her more. At least until I got to speak with him. To make it right.
“The father.”
I couldn't imagine who this woman could be, that Miles had told her about the baby without talking to me about it first. It was clear I'd messed up worse than I had thought. But I could fix this. “Yes. May I speak to him?” The phone echoed in my ear, the reception bad. No, not the reception, the loudspeaker. He was someplace with a loudspeaker. My brain raked through all the places that would have a loudspeaker on a Sunday morning. It was too early for any sports.
“No,” was all she said. Damn, she was mad. What right did she have to be so mad? This was between Miles and I.
And then the words on the loudspeaker called a code something or other just before she hung up.
Double shit. Was that the hospital? Before I knew what was happening, I was exiting a cab at the city hospital.
I raced in, asking anyone and everyone where he was, where my pregnant omega was, not one nurse, doctor, or even custodian able to or willing to help me. I was being threatened with security, tears running down my face when a nurse came out and without meeting my eyes, said the words that changed the course of my life, “Mr. Schofield has forbidden your entry. You are to leave now or else the security team,” she pointed to three guards behind me who had come up without my notice, “will be asked to remove you and press charges.”
My jaw fell. No. No. No. He wouldn’t shut me out of my child’s life, his life, like that. At least I knew he was okay. You can’t give orders while you’re dead. That was when it hit me like a punch in the gut. Only one thing would make him hate me this much. The baby.
“The baby?”
“There is no baby. I’m sorry.”
From the moment her words hit my ear, rationality fled, and true to their words, security did escort me and charges were pressed, and then dropped. Not that I cared about any of that. I found out the next day, from the news, that he'd been in a car accident. I tried calling, but the answer remained the same: Miles wanted nothing to do with me. I threw myself into school, trying to wear myself out so that at the end of the day, thoughts of Miles wouldn't torment me. In a moment, I had lost everything. Nothing else mattered.
2
Miles
Hiding.
I was hiding in Café Om pretending to be all about my coffee, like a freak.
Again.
When I had first set out to take on the world after college, I hadn’t expected to end up back home with my tail between my legs, begging daddy for a job. I had planned to work hard from the ground up, eventually making partner, a decent salary, and showing everyone that I was more than just an omega mooching off his family until he found a suitable alpha.
I took a sip of my pour over before pulling out my laptop in an attempt to look less pathetic. The work I did for my father’s company didn’t require much more than showing up and playing the part of dutiful son. Sure, I had an office with actual walls and it all looked legit, but my responsibilities were so minimal, I spent most of the day trying to appear busy.
Technically, I was qual
ified to take on cases, at least as a paralegal until I figured out bar reciprocity… I needed to actually into bar reciprocity. But my father was sure I would find an alpha and leave him in the lurch, so instead, I was the press liaison, which could have been pretty interesting if his office handled criminal law, but they mostly handled wills, trusts, and other estate management business, so no news people ever came around, and my responsibilities were more about placing legally required ads in papers than anything else.
There was nothing I needed to do on my laptop, but sitting there alone without the pretense of something to do would only signal to the staff that they could talk to me. I learned that lesson at the last Café Om I used to hide in, which was how I ended up here. I didn’t want to chit chat. I wanted to kill enough time that I could avoid awkward family dinners without looking like I was avoiding my parents. They meant well, after all.
I opened to the latest trending news articles to see what I had missed while I twiddled my thumbs all day. From there, I moved to local news and found myself smiling at an article about a little girl’s crusade to save homeless animals that had led to the founding of a no-kill shelter. She was only seven years old. Kids were amazing.
If my son had been born, he would’ve been not much older than her. Like a masochist, I thought about what he might be like today. Would he have looked like his father? Would he love music the way I did? Heck, would he be saving the animals too?
I finished the last of my coffee and glanced at the clock. If I hung out another half hour, I’d be guaranteed to miss dinner. More coffee it was. I shut my computer, leaving it on the table. It was practically empty, this being the time of day people spent with their families, so I knew it would be fine where it was.
I stepped up to the counter, the barista at the window giving me the one minute sign as she pressed a bell, I assumed to call for help. I didn’t need the coffee, but since someone was already on their way, I stayed put. When the door to the back room swung open, my jaw dropped. It was him.
Here.
In Café Om.
My feet froze in place even though every part of me was begging for my flight instinct to kick in. How was he here, of all places? Parker Spears, the asshole. He was styling his hair differently, a completely douchey, gelled upsweep with frosted tips.
“Fuck you,” I mumbled as he got to the counter.
“Hey, sugar. Something wrong with your coffee?” His voice—it was wrong. Too high, too… shit, it wasn’t Parker. I was delusional. This man before me was a fucking omega. I’d let my mind take me back too far, for too long, and now I was seeing things. I slammed my eyes shut, counting to ten before opening them slowly. He was still there.
I inhaled deeply, scenting him.
Yep, still an omega.
“Umm, no. Sorry, I was practicing an argument in my head and…” My excuse was beyond lame, but he didn’t seem to mind. Instead he cracked up. Better than being offended I called him an asshole. Which in all fairness I kind of did.
“Someone call the cops! We got a crazy on our hands.” He soften the words with a smile. “Refill?” He pointed to my cup.
“Yeah, that.” I still hadn’t gotten over the shock of how much he looked like Parker. I’d say it was his brother, but even though I never met him, Parker had spoken of him often enough that I remembered his name, Zeke, and not Marcus, as his name tag announced him to be. I heard a slight accent in the few words he’d said, enough to tell me he wasn’t local. Not that Parker was, but he was from a couple hours away, so local enough. Besides, the Spears were loaded. No way his younger brother would be slinging coffee here.
“No problem.” He flitted off to make my pour over. One nice thing about Om is they didn’t nickel and dime you to death by charging for second pour overs like most chains, leaving the refills to nasty carafes of drip coffee that had been on the counter for who knew how long. “Killing time until Omega Night down the road, or hoping to score a more sophisticated alpha, the kind who sits in coffee shops, reading the latest book everyone is talking about and everyone secretly hates?”
Ah, he was one of those omegas. Clubbing in the hopes of finding the one. While I was sure it happened sometimes, it often meant you kissed a whole lot of frogs first. That was not my idea of a good time. Not that I was looking for an alpha. Been there. Done that. Never again.
“Um, neither?” I didn’t want to offend him, nor did I want to get into anything personal. Mostly I just wanted to stare at him, taking in his likeness. Things may have crumbled beneath me with Parker, but watching this Marcus, even in his ridiculousness, felt enough like he was here to bring back the good memories. Goodness knew I had dwelled in the bad for far too long.
“Hey, it’s all good.” He smiled, but I saw a twinge of uncertainty cross his face. Was he insecure, or was he judging me? I had no idea. It didn’t really matter. “Us omegas need to stick together. At least until our alpha comes along and sweeps us off our feet.” Yeah, he was an alpha hunter alright. I hoped that worked out well for him, because from what little I knew of the scene, he was getting on the older side of things.
“You’ve read too many books,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood as he poured the last bit of water over the grounds.
“And I wager you don’t read enough.” He slid my coffee across the counter before extending his hand. “I’m Marcus.” So the name tag was right. That took away any lingering doubt I had.
“I’m Miles. Nice to meet you.” There was something about him I just liked. Maybe it was he reminded me of a happy time, but not enough to remind me of the hurt. Maybe it was his over-the-top larger-than-life personality. Maybe it was the good coffee I was about to drink. It didn’t matter why.
“New in town?” He leaned against the counter, his coworker busting tail to get all the drive-thru orders done.
“Returning.” I grabbed a lid, popping it on my cup.
“It’s not bad. Better than where I grew up, but not awful. They have a good scene here.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking more to me or if he was trying to convince himself. “Not really my thing.”
“Ah, you’re one of those.” He reached out and popped my nose, completely ignoring his coworker who was calling out coffees in a very ineffective attempt to get Marcus to work.
“One of those?”
“It’s fine. To each their own. I just never wasted my time on that whole career, self-sufficient, omega rights stuff.”
He meant being responsible. I held in a chuckle. “Yeah, I’m one of those.” Or at least I was trying to be. That wasn’t working out as well as I’d hoped.
3
Parker
I felt my throat constricting as Dash Arnold unveiled the custom portrait I’d won a commission of at a fundraiser a few months before. It was the perfect likeness of my old mentor, Harold, down to the kindness that had just seeped out of his pores. He’d been a tough businessman, no doubt about it, but he’d taught me that good business meant putting people first; customers, employees, partners, family. In so many ways, he was the completely opposite of my old man. Harold had passed away six months ago, and it still threw me for a loop that I couldn’t just call him up to get his input on new opportunities, or how to deal with employee situations. I’d always had him to turn to. But no more.
“Top notch work as always, Dash.”
Dash tried to hide it, but I noticed the look of relief that washed over his face. Someone else might not have noticed it, but Harold had taught me to read people. “Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “I had it almost finished a couple months ago, but with the baby I hadn’t been able to put the last touches on it until last week.”
“That’s absolutely not a problem. How’s your baby?”
Dash broke into that ridiculously infections smile all new parents seemed to get when talking about their children. “He’s growing ridiculously fast. I can’t believe it’s already been a month!”
“Before you know it, he’ll be dr
iving a car.”
Dash shuddered. “Don’t remind me. I’m enjoying this stage so much. Sure, I’d like more sleep, but I don’t want to miss out on a single moment, you know?”
I didn’t, but nodded politely. I tried not to think about what might have been. It was in the past, and I shoved those thoughts back in their box and slammed the lid. “Have you been over to the new shelter?” I asked to change the subject. “I was in Japan during the dedication, so I wasn’t able to make it.”
Dash nodded. “It’s going really well. I keep telling Wyatt he’s going to have to hire Chloe on as a full-time rehoming specialist.”
“That’s his little girl, right? How old is she? Seven?”
“Almost eight if you ask her.”
“That’s incredible. I don’t know if I had half her drive or passion at that age. I’m not sure I do now.”
“She’s going to be a force to be reckoned with when she’s all grown, no doubt.”
Reclaiming His Omega Page 1