Second Chance: M/M Mpreg Alpha Male Romance

by Aiden Bates

  He stayed to help the residential kids for a little while longer. He wasn't an overnight counselor, he'd done that for a while and wasn't doing that anymore, but he didn't mind hanging around and lending a hand. He especially wanted to thank Stuart. "You're the one who convinced me that I should take the test," he told the skinny teen. "I know you didn't say anything, but you didn't have to. You convinced me, so I did. And, uh, yeah. I told my boyfriend, and once the baby's born he's going to claim me. This is a happy occasion. I want to say thank you for helping me out, taking care of me with all of those saltines. I don't even know where you got them."

  Stuart blushed and looked away. "You don't want to," he said, and then threw his arms around Ty. "I'm so glad that it's working out for you." He sniffed, and Ty realized that the front of his shirt was damp. "Mine died."

  "Oh, Stuart." Ty held on to the boy. "I'm so sorry."

  "I was too young to do it right." Stuart buried his face into Ty's chest. "I mean I couldn't take care of myself, there wasn't anyone to help me, I didn't know what I was doing…"

  "You were too young. I'll give you that. It's not your fault, Stuart." Ty petted the young omega's hair. "Whatever happened, it's not your fault, okay? Did I tell you how I wound up in San Diego?"

  "No."

  So Ty told him the story about getting kicked out, about getting onto a bus. He told him about the pimps and the pushers, about trying to stay on his feet and away from the people who only wanted to do him harm and about how damn hard it had been. He told him about getting caught up in a police raid and about the humiliation of that time, the misery of it all, and the unbearable loneliness.

  He let Stuart hold onto him, and he held onto Stuart too because he knew that Stuart needed that. Stuart needed to understand that there was still a life waiting for him, yes, but he needed to know that someone still valued him right now. He needed to know that he was still loved and treasured by someone, and that there was someone who wasn't judging him for what had happened. Maybe there were things that he could have done to not lose the baby, and maybe there weren't, but that didn't matter right now. What did matter was that Stuart had support now.

  Ty didn't want to let go when he did, but the smell of something made him pull back. He knew that pregnant people sometimes had an increased sensitivity to smell so he tried to ignore it, but the scent wouldn't go away. "Do you smell something weird, Stuart?"

  Stuart picked his face up. "Just your laundry detergent, and maybe the campfire you were at the last time you wore this shirt."

  Ty stood up, bracing Stuart so he didn't fall. "Stuart? I don't do the campfire thing."

  Stuart leaped to his feet. "That's bad."

  "Yeah it is." Ty led Stuart into the office area and shut down his laptop. He took the files in his locked drawer and stuffed them into his laptop bag and pushed them all into Stuart's arms. "Stuart, I'm trusting you with this. I need to go and make sure everyone else gets out safely, okay? You go pull the alarm, call 911, and wait outside for help."

  "We'll find more people if we work together," Stuart argued, eyes as wide as saucers.

  Ty grinned. "Maybe. But I couldn't live with myself if you got hurt, and I know every inch of this building. I've been here for ten years, after all." He winked. "Go. Pull the alarm and call for help."

  Stuart must have listened, because ten seconds after Ty took off toward the dormitory area he heard the alarm go off. Help would come soon, he was sure of it.

  One thing that occurred to Ty, as he ran into the boys' rooms to urge them to get their shoes on and flee, was that the smoke detectors should have picked up on the fact that something was wrong by now. He could hear the ancient alarm bell, but not the siren that was the new, fancy smoke alarm that they'd had a special fundraiser to put in two years ago. That smoke alarm system was tied into the sprinkler system, as they'd discovered to their chagrin when someone had burned their microwave popcorn not long after it was put in.

  This was bad.

  He rushed the boys over to the nearest exit, the one on the side of the building. He could see the smoke by now, and he couldn't help but wonder how the fire had moved so quickly. Darron, one of the program residents, was already showing himself to be affected by it. The poor kid was asthmatic, and he looked up at the smoke above him with wide, terrified eyes. "I don't think I like this, Mr. Ty," he murmured.

  Ty fought to stay calm. "We'll just get out, then."

  Mateo, another resident, kicked at the door. "Can't," he said, turning pale. "Door won't open."

  "What?" Ty elbowed his way to the front of the knot of residents and threw himself against the door. It moved, but not enough. He could see, through the little crack in the door, that someone had put some kind of metal bar between the door handles on the other side. They'd been blocked in, trapped.

  This was deliberate.

  Everything in him wanted to scream and cry. He saw the faces on his boys, though, and knew that he couldn't do that. "Come on," he said, and coughed. "Everybody down on the ground. I think we're going to have to go up and out that way."

  He grabbed Musa, one of the alpha boys and someone he knew to have a good head on his shoulders. Musa agreed to watch the back of the group while Ty led the front. The attack had come to the teen division wing of the building, and it was spreading quickly, but he thought that if he could get the boys to the women's shelter side they might be able to get out before the whole building was engulfed.

  The first corridor they tried was full of flame already. Ty could smell gasoline.

  There was another hallway, though. Not everyone knew where to find it, but Ty had been around for a good long time. If they could, by some miracle, sneak through the kitchen, they would be able to make it. The smoke was thick and the air hot, but he showed the boys how to cover their mouths and noses with their shirts and led them back there on their bellies.

  Just as he'd hoped, the women's shelter wasn't engulfed. Not yet, anyway. They had smoke too, though, and the residents were almost as panicked as his boys. "The exits are blocked!" screamed one mother with an infant in her arms.

  "I know," Ty told her, putting a hand on her arm. "We're going to have to go to desperate measures. You're going to have to trust me here." He held out a hand, and she took it.

  They made their way up to the third floor. Ty would have preferred the second, but the stairwell door was locked. Everything in him wanted to scream about that, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to waste the air. Escape was a distant possibility, but he couldn't let these people, these women and children, know that. Not yet.

  The third floor stairwell door was open, by some miracle, and Ty ushered all of the residents into the administrative offices. He could see flames in the distance, over near the HR area, but he ignored them. If he could just do this one thing right, those flames wouldn't be able to be a problem. There was a fire escape out Derek Wing's office window. It was old and broken, but it was their best option.

  He used a chair to break the lock on Wing's door. They needed it to break the window leading out to the fire escape too, and by now Ty was coughing so badly that he needed Musa's help to smash through it, but he wouldn't let himself be stopped by petty things like smoke inhalation or the inability to breathe.

  He stuck his head out the window. "Okay," he gasped at the residents. "When you get out onto the fire escape, you'll have to lower yourself down to the second floor fire escape by your arms. Musa, you're the strongest. You go first, so you can help the others get down. Can you do that?" God, the smoke was choking, suffocating. He shouldn't have spoken, and taken more of the thick black smoke into his lungs, but he couldn't think of any other way to get the information out.

  Musa met his eyes and nodded once. Then he stepped out onto the balcony, took a loud, gasping breath of fresh air, and lowered himself to the second floor.

  One by one, Ty helped residents out the window. The little kids, the ones in the battered women's shelter with their mothers, were the harde
st. Many of them were hysterical and had to be handed directly to Musa while screaming and fighting the whole way. They couldn't understand that this was the only way to save them.

  Ty ignored his headache. He had some anxiety about the smoke he was breathing, of course. He knew he was taking a risk, but he couldn't justify leaving these people behind just because he was pregnant. All he could do was help them out onto the balcony as quickly as he could and hope for the best, even as his headache and dizziness increased.

  Finally, the last resident got out onto the balcony. Ty watched him lower himself down toward Musa. He went to climb out after him, but his knees buckled.

  He groaned, but no one was close enough to hear him. This was it. As the edges of his vision got darker, Ty struggled against disappointment. Maybe he wouldn't get to see Bean grow up, but at last he'd known love and joy toward the end of his life. All of those residents would live longer lives thanks to his work, too. It would have to be enough.

  The darkness embraced him.

  ***

  Ben got home late from the shop. He hadn't planned to stay late, but they'd had one of the compact excavators go down at the last minute and all of the others were out on jobs. They couldn't afford to shut down the Poway project just to wait on a new one, and Ty had texted him to let him know that he'd be staying a little late at Gray House to help some kids with their homework anyway, so he figured that he might as well pick up some overtime. They could certainly use the cash, what with the baby on the way and all that.

  God, he still wasn't used to that. They were going to have a baby, a baby that came from them, just from them. Ben got a little hard just thinking about it, even though the thought of everything they were going to need to do to get ready was overwhelming sometimes. What kind of person would their baby be? Would they be a boy or a girl? Would they get Ty's wide eyes and full lips, or would they get Ben's more narrow eyes and jet black hair? Would they be sweet or mischievous? Would they have Ty's brains or Ben's skill?

  Ben knew that something was wrong when Ty wasn't at the apartment when he got home. It was after ten. Ty wasn't obligated to come straight home after work, of course he wasn't, but given the behavior shown by the always-charming Dick Hartmann Ben thought he was justified in worrying. Plus, Ty could barely stand up by six. There was no way that he was out tearing up the streets, not this late on Monday night.

  He pulled out his phone and texted Ty. Hey, are you still at work?

  Ten minutes went by. No one answered.

  He didn't exactly sit around staring at his phone, willing it to chime with a notification. He changed into his pajamas. He made himself a sandwich. He put the game on and opened himself a beer. Something bothered him about the terrible silence in the apartment, though. Ty's absence felt like a void inside of Ben, and not just a cool spot in the apartment.

  Another ten minutes went by. Ben sent another text. Really getting worried. Please let me know you're okay.

  Five minutes later, Ben's phone rang. The caller's number wasn't in Ben's contacts, so he thought about ignoring it. At this time of night it was probably a wrong number anyway. Then again, maybe Ty's phone had run out of batteries. That wasn't like him, but these things happened sometimes. "Hello?"

  "Is this Ben?" The voice on the other end was as alien to Ben as the number.

  "Who's asking?"

  "My name is Detective Bement. I'm calling from the San Diego Police Department. Your number is the most frequently called in Tyler Ostry's phone. What is your connection to Mr. Ostry?"

  The cold formality in Bement's voice made Ben's heart seize. "We live together. I'm the father of his child. I'm going to formally claim him, once the baby's born. Why?"

  "Ah." The detective's voice softened for a moment. "I'm going to send a squad car to your residence to pick you up. We need you to come to the station. There's been an incident, and I need to speak with you."

  Ben's hands were numb. He knew that he was still holding on to the phone because he didn't hear it drop. "Is he — is Ty okay?"

  "We need to talk to you down at the station." Bement cleared his throat. "I'll speak to you there."

  A beep in Ben's ear signaled the end of the call, and he found his hands putting the phone down without his brain's conscious intervention. He staggered into the bedroom and fumbled for his jeans. Ty couldn't be dead. He would know if something had happened to Ty, right? This was all some kind of huge, tragic misunderstanding, and when he got to the station he'd find that Ty was fine. Ty was fine and had just been locked up for the night because he'd gone and decked Hartmann or something.

  Except they wouldn't send a squad car for that. They'd just ask him to drive himself down with bail money, which he would totally do in a heartbeat. They wouldn't assume that Ben wouldn't be able to drive himself.

  He ran into the bathroom and was noisy sick.

  He managed to finish heaving, rinse out his mouth and finish getting dressed before he saw the flashing blue and red lights from the squad car out in the street. For a few seconds, his feet refused to move. This couldn't be happening. He refused to allow it to happen. At the same time, here he was. Those lights were definitely reflecting on his walls, and probably on the neighbors' walls too.

  This was real.

  He dragged himself down the stairs and out to the car. "Detective Bement sent you out to see me?"

  One of the cops in the squad car cleared his throat. "Yeah, buddy. Ben, right?"

  "Ben Maxwell." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, what's going on here?"

  "I got no clue. All I know is that HQ is full of people, women and kids and everything, and there are a lot of questions. I know Detective Bement's got answers." The other cop was a woman, maybe in her forties, and she gave him a sympathetic look. "Bement's a good egg, Mr. Maxwell. He won't string you along. If you could just hop in the back and buckle up, that would be great."

  Ben slid into the backseat and let the cops drive him to police headquarters. It wasn't much of a drive, all of three minutes, and that only solidified Ben's fears. He could have walked here in ten minutes; they would only have sent a squad car if the news were truly awful.

  Or, his traitorous mind supplied, if someone had framed him for something.

  The cops led him in, through the throng of confused women, children and teenagers in the lobby and up to a conference room. Ben had seen this type of room before. He knew that the mirror was one-way and that everything was being recorded, but he didn't care right now. He sat down and bit his nails.

  Detective Bement walked in with a cup of coffee in one hand, a fist full of cream and sugar in the other, and a notebook under one arm. "Sorry I'm a little late," he said, kicking the door shut behind him. Bement turned out to be a middle-aged man with balding dark hair and gray eyes. "It's a full house right now, and everyone's got questions I can't answer yet. I'm Carl Bement. I want to make it clear, before you even open your mouth, that you're not under arrest and that at this point you're not a suspect. Okay? You're just here to talk and answer a few questions. Yes, this is being recorded, but that's more so that I don't forget anything later on. If at any time you feel that you'd rather have an attorney present all you have to do is say the word."

  "Okay." Ben stared at the file for a moment and then met Bement's eyes. "I haven't done anything that I'd need a lawyer for. Where's my omega?"

  "Your omega?" Bement leaned back in his chair. "Are we talking about Mr. Ostry here? Because the last time anyone noticed, he was unclaimed."

  "He is." Ben cleared his throat and reached out for the coffee. He knew why it had been brought, of course. They wanted a sample of his fingerprints. He still wanted the comfort of something in his hands. "I didn't get a chance to offer a claim before the condom failed. We've spoken, and I'm going to claim him after the baby's born." He looked at the detective. "It's too risky right now, with the baby."

  "You mentioned the baby." Bement grimaced. "I spoke with his supervisor, Penelope Bright. She said that you
and Mr. Ostry had agreed not to tell anyone yet, but that you told some people last Friday."

  Ben felt his eyebrows pull together. What the hell did any of that have to do with whatever was going on now? "Yeah. Um. It should all be in a file somewhere around here. I've been having some problems with a person, an omega, who was interested in a relationship with me. I was less interested in one with him." He took a calming breath and continued. "By less interested I mean didn't want. He was having some trouble taking no for an answer. He started lashing out at Ty, too. When he came to the office on Friday and informed me he'd be picking me up at seven for some charity ball, I told him no. I wasn't going to date him or claim him, because I was going to be a father."

  "I see. Had you made any promises to this man before?" Bement held his hand over the notebook.

  "No. He just showed up at the job site one day and started calling me Alpha." Ben sighed. "He's always had a grudge against the place where Ty works. I guess the alpha his parents wanted him to be with ran away and Gray House gave him shelter or something. So whatever. But then he found out that I was already seeing someone, and that someone worked for Gray House, he got mad and started acting crazy." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, anything that isn't already in the complaints that both Ty and I have filed with the police department already is in my harassment complaint both with my HR department and with my union. You can look all of this up. I mean the guy did a fake bomb threat to Gray House last week; talk to the bomb squad about that one." He shook his head and looked back up at Bement. "Look, where's my omega? I just want my omega. I want to take him home."