The Omega's Secret Baby (Oceanport Omegas Book 1)

by Ann-Katrin Byrde

  Once I knew who I was intruding on, I took a step back, but it was too late. Matthew had already turned his eyes on me. Warm brown eyes.

  I'd never dated before, never even been tempted, so I wasn't sure what to make of that tingling sensation I felt in my gut when this handsome stranger smiled at me.

  I should have run.

  I knew that now, but I didn't know it back then.

  And I was ripped out of my reverie when my son hit me in the face with a snowball.

  “You little...!” I growled, wiping the snow off.

  Jake held his belly laughing. “Your face! I got you!”

  “Wait, you!” I bent down to scoop some snow up in my hands and throw it at him.

  He ran, still laughing.

  “You can't escape!” I gave chase, dog barking at my side as we plowed through the snow.

  “Catch me, Daddy!” Jake yelled back at me, not looking where he was going until he ran head-first into a man coming down the road from the other direction. I could do nothing but watch him knock the stranger over until the both of them landed in a heap on the cold ground.

  I ran up to them. “Are you alright?” I peeled my kid off the other man. “I'm so sorry. We were playing and he wasn't looking,” I apologized, patting the snow off Jake.

  “I'm sorry,” Jake apologized as well.

  I looked back at the stranger only to feel even more embarrassment as I saw my dog lick his face. At least he seemed to take it in stride. Actually, he was taking it far too well, hugging my excited dog like an old friend and whispering her name with a sense of wonder.

  “Fiona...” he said, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

  And I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

  Who was this guy?

  I squinted, heart racing.

  Could it be?

  One drawback of this park was how poorly illuminated it was during the evening hours, but...

  I crouched down to take my dog from the stranger, and one whiff of the other man's intoxicating scent told me all I needed to know; he was an alpha. One that I knew intimately.

  Matthew.

  4

  Matthew

  All I'd wanted when I'd left the mansion was to get some fresh air. I'd never thought I'd run into Fiona again--and in this park too! There was no mistaking her, though. This was the same crazy black dog who'd caught my attention years ago, on another day that I'd desperately needed to escape from my parents.

  The day I'd met Elias.

  Who had eventually gone on to adopt Fiona. I remembered that much.

  Which meant...

  If Fiona was here...

  I looked at the kid who'd run me over, then at the man crouching next to me. What were the odds I would run into Elias my first day back home out here in the park?

  “This really is a small town,” I found myself mumbling, staring at him.

  He blinked, and then he laughed. There wasn't a lot of light, but I could just make out that he still had those adorable dimples that had attracted me to him all those years ago. Aside from his scent, anyway. All omegas had a certain scent to them that could drive an alpha crazy in the right situation, but Eli's seemed even stronger than usual, at least to me. Eli was special. I'd known that from the moment I'd seen him in the park, with a book in his hands and a curious light in his eyes that seemed to shine even brighter when he looked at the dog.

  And now he stood in front of me again, unexpected.

  “I didn't know you were in town,” he muttered. He straightened, and for a moment it appeared as if he wanted to offer me a hand, but then he didn't.

  Shying away from touch?

  I got up on my own and brushed the snow off myself. “You couldn't know. I only just arrived. I know rumors fly fast in this town, but I guess not as fast as your little guy here.” I glanced at the kid who'd barreled into me, wondering if he was Eli's. It occurred to me that I'd know if I'd kept up with the town's gossip, but that had never appealed to me. Not when I was so often in the center of it.

  And it didn't surprise me to see Eli with a child--he was an omega after all, but the sight still made my chest constrict. I just hoped whoever had fathered the boy was treating him right.

  “I'm sorry,” Eli said, taking another step away from me and pulling the child toward himself. “He can be a bit wild.”

  “He's an alpha,” I said, because the scent lay in the air, even though it was weak.

  “I know,” Eli said quietly, an apprehensive look on his face. Something was wrong. I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

  “Daddy, who is that man?” the boy finally spoke up, voice full of curiosity at the same time as he glared at me, as if he’d decided that, whoever I was, he needed to protect his Daddy from this strange man in front of him.

  He was a little alpha all right. One who showed early, too. Most children took until their teenage years to display any alpha or omega tendencies.

  “This is Matthew Lowell,” Eli introduced me, matter-of-factly. “You know that big house at the top of the hill that we see when we go sledding? That’s where his family lives.”

  “Ooooh. Can he sled on the big hill?”

  I laughed. “I haven’t gone sledding in a long time. But my sister and I have taken our sleds up there when we were children.”

  This earned me another, “Ooooh,” while I could see his Daddy grow visibly more uncomfortable with every passing second. Had he mated one of those ridiculously possessive alphas who didn’t want their mates to talk to other alphas or what was going on here?

  I’d thought we’d parted on amicable terms, all things considered. I could still remember that last night. We’d certainly made it count. Part of me still wished it hadn’t been our last night, but all good things had to come to an end, and we’d been good. Really good. I could still remember the way Eli felt underneath me, around me, all warm and tight and…

  And I had to shove those thoughts aside if I didn’t want my hormones to spin out of control. There was no point in getting worked up over a mated omega. Thing was, though, he still smelled as if he was unmated. Available. And that smell tugged on all my alpha instincts that wanted to have him.

  I took a deep breath, and that didn’t make it better.

  I had to distract myself, so I focused my attention on the child. “Do you like to go sledding?” I asked.

  “I love it!” he exclaimed, and his honest enthusiasm made me chuckle.

  “Cute kid,” I told Eli. “How old is he?”

  Eli bit his lower lip. For some reason, the question seemed to make him even more uncomfortable than he already was.

  “I'm seven!” the child announced proudly. “I'm in second grade already.”

  “Really?” I'd expected him to be a little younger. If this kid was seven already, Eli must have gotten himself pregnant very quickly after I'd left, and I wasn't sure what to think of that. Not that I had any right to think anything of that. I'd gotten married, after all.

  It didn't matter that I'd still secretly thought of Eli on my wedding night.

  “It was very nice seeing you, Matt,” Eli said. “But we have to go home now. It's nearly Jake's bed time.”

  So his name was Jake, huh?

  “I don't want to go to bed yet,” Jake protested. “What about our snowball fight?”

  “Only boys who behave in school get to stay up longer.”

  “I'll be good!”

  “Good,” Eli said, taking his son's small hand in his own. “Then we can have a snowball fight tomorrow.”

  Jake eyed him suspiciously. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Jake huffed, but didn't say anymore after that.

  “We'll be on our way.” Eli looked at me. “You probably shouldn't stay out too long either,” he advised me in a soft tone and I couldn't help but feel reminded of the time we'd hidden away in one of my parents' cabins in the woods and he'd used this same tone of voice to remind me that 'we probably shouldn't be her
e.' But he’d surrendered just as soon as I’d run my hand into his soft hair and touched my lips to his.

  The memory sent a shiver down my spine. I’d never felt as strongly about anyone as I felt about this omega. But I couldn’t hang on to that. I’d left him, and he was a mated man now, even if my senses didn't want to believe it.

  “Goodbye, Eli. Jake.”

  “Goodbye, Matt.”

  “Bye, Matt!” Jake echoed.

  Fiona sniffed on my leg. I crouched to pet her head. “Goodbye, old girl.”

  Eli had to tug on her leash to get her away from me, and it was like he tugged on my heartstrings at the same time. A part of me wanted to jump up and stop Eli from leaving, but that was ridiculous. What more could I say to him?

  Nothing.

  5

  Elias

  I went down into the living room after I'd tucked Jake in bed and found my brother sitting on the couch with his laptop. He was probably busy with some sort of work, but I couldn't worry about that now. I needed to talk to someone. And since Griff was the only one I'd ever told about Matt, he was the only one I could talk to.

  “Matthew Lowell is back in town,” I announced, grabbing his attention. He turned away from the laptop’s screen and looked at me.

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  “Me neither.” I chewed my bottom lip. A nervous habit I’d thought I’d quit. Apparently not. “I ran into him in the park. Well, actually, Jake ran into him. Literally.”

  Griff raised an eyebrow at me. I couldn’t blame him. My life was officially weird. “You mean you met him while you were out on your walk?”

  “Yes!”

  Griff put the laptop aside now. “Tell me more.”

  “We went to the park. Jake was running ahead and not looking, and literally ran into him. I didn't know who he was at first, so I scrambled to apologize and all and then... Well, I got a whiff of him.” I sighed. “Can you believe he still smells the same?”

  Griff laughed. Of course he did. I sounded like a teen omega in heat.

  Calm down, Eli. No point in getting worked up over this.

  I'd abandoned the idea of getting back together with Matt years ago, before Jake had even been born, and Jake was who I needed to think of now. Obviously.

  So far, staying away from Matt had been easy because he'd only visited this town a few times after moving away and never for long. He'd never met Jake before.

  “So he's met Jake?” Griff asked, as if reading my thoughts.

  “Yeah.” I looked toward the hallway, a little paranoid that my son might climb out of bed again and listen in to our conversation, but he was usually a good sleeper.

  “Do you think he’s caught on? Jake does resemble him.”

  “Just his nose and his hair.” And I kept his hair short for a reason, although it pained me to see his beautiful curls cut down. But there were already enough rumors flying around, and I didn’t want any of our neighbors to draw a connection between Jake and Matt.

  “And his alpha genes,” Griff added.

  I nodded. “And that. But there’s a lot of alphas.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Jake told him how old he was, though.”

  Griff made a face. “Think Matt’s going to put two and two together?”

  I sighed. “He might. Either that or he’s going to think I moved on very quickly.” Even the idea felt jarring when the truth was that I’d never really moved on. I had become busy though, which had helped me not think of him and all the what-ifs.

  “It could have happened, though,” Griff pointed out. “A lot of omegas get mated quickly. You know not all of us get a say in it…”

  “I know…” Griff and I were lucky our family was somewhat progressive. Not progressive enough not to throw me out, but still. A lot of people still believed it was best to have omegas mate as quickly as possible, to save us from ourselves and our ‘uncontrollable urges’, when it was really the alphas who claimed they couldn’t control themselves around unmated omegas.

  It was ridiculous, but it was difficult to change people’s views.

  I was glad my kid was not an omega. He was going to have an easier life as an alpha.

  Griff nudged my shoulder. “I know I’ve asked this before, but… Honestly, do you ever regret not telling Matt?”

  I let myself sink into the cheap leather of the couch. “You know he was already married when I found out.”

  “Yeah, but still…”

  I closed my eyes and inhaled, because we’d already talked about this a million times and Griff would never get it. Still, my brother deserved my patience because he’d never said a word to our parents or anyone else, never let anything slip. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

  “His family would disown him,” I explained for what felt like the hundredth time. The Lowell family definitely counted among the people with the most old-fashioned beliefs. To this day it still surprised me that their son had turned out be a decent human being.

  “You had to make sacrifices too. It’s not fair that he got to go on with his life while you had to drop everything. You shouldn’t have had to do everything on your own.”

  “I didn’t, though, did I?” I cocked my head at my brother. “I had you. And now I have an amazing son on top of it all. He’s the one missing out, really.”

  Griff was quiet for a moment. Then he asked, “And do you think he’s going to be pissed at you when he finds out?”

  I grimaced. “Possibly.”

  “Maybe he’ll just leave town again tomorrow,” my brother mused. “Best case scenario, right?”

  Was it, though? The more I thought about it, the less sure I became about what I wanted. Did I want Matt to find out about Jake? The possibility that he would be mad at me really was high, but the thought had occurred to me that Jake needed an alpha role model in his life. Someone who could stop him acting out the way he did.

  But I had no guarantee that Matt would want to be that someone even if I told him that he was Jake’s father. With that family of his, he’d probably assume all I wanted was money, and I couldn’t stand that thought.

  “Yeah,” I said to Griff. “Let’s just hope he leaves again. He’s good at that, after all.” And my life didn’t need another complication. Jake’s life didn’t need another complication. We were happy with the way things were.

  Weren’t we?

  6

  Matthew

  “Matthew, are you listening?”

  I looked up at Frederica with what was no doubt a guilty expression on my face. I hadn’t been listening. I’d asked Frederica to have tea with me so I could hear her out about my father, but ever since the events of the night before, my attention had been drifting.

  “You haven’t heard a word, have you?” Frederica wagged her finger at me, something she’d been doing since I was a young boy. I had no idea how she’d survived in my family’s service for so long when most of our other staff changed every year, but somehow, nobody dared to kick Frederica out, no matter what she did.

  Which made her an invaluable source of information.

  Frederica had her ears everywhere and knew everything.

  About the town, my family, the rest of the staff…

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if the only reason my mother didn’t kick her out was because she was afraid what this maid might tell the townsfolk if she ever let her go. This lady was sure to have some blackmail material.

  I didn’t mind, though. Frederica had always been good to me. Even when she was scolding me—which actually used to happen quite a lot. “I'm sorry,” I said, giving her all my attention. “What were you saying?”

  “About your father.” She took a sip of her tea. Green tea with milk. She was the only person I knew who drank it like that. “He hasn't been doing so well lately.”

  “That's in line with what my sister told me. But do you think it's something serious or that he's just getting on in age?”

  She shook her head. “There have been doct
or visits. Your parents say it's nothing, but the secrecy around it all makes me suspect there's more going on. Your sister might have heard something. The young lady is over every Sunday. And she's still every bit as pleasant as she used to be,” she added in a low voice.

  I couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up in me. My sister had never been pleasant. But perhaps this one time she hadn't lied. And I wasn't sure how to feel about this news. My father and I had never been close. I'd spent too much time away from home growing up, while he'd spent too much time working. But he was still my father.

  “I'm sorry my sister is giving you trouble,” I said to Frederica before I drank some of my own tea--with no milk in it.

  She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “She's no trouble. I know how to deal with her. I only wish I didn't have to clean up after her son. Now that kid is a brat.“ She said it with a level of emphasis that made me chuckle again. My nephew was certainly not a well-behaved child. Every time I met the boy, I left feeling glad that I didn't have any children of my own.

  Not that Danielle and I hadn't tried. It simply hadn't happened. One more thing that had put a strain on our marriage--and on my relationship with my mother. Still, the way things had ended, it was for the best.

  “Promise me that you will not let your children torture me when you have some,” Frederica said.

  “I promise,” I said easily, although I didn't want to think too much about children now. When I did, I couldn't help but think of Eli and his son. His seven-year old son. “Say, Frederica, how much do you know about what goes on in town these days?” It was a long shot, but maybe...

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “You want to hear gossip?”

  “Not gossip, no, but--“

  “Oh, I didn't think I'd get to see the day you admit an interest in gossip.” She seemed delighted now. “The stories I could tell you!”