by Leta Blake
Gritting his teeth, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to get a grip on his emotions. He was not going to be a child about this. He was going to be a man, an alpha, and woo his omega into falling on his knees willingly. Where he belonged. He just had no idea how to even start with that. None of what was happening was by the book.
“Did you hurt this omega, son?” Father asked, gently, touching Jason’s chin to bring his gaze up. His father’s eyes were tender and blue, soft like a sky, with a wheat-colored ring near the pupil. “I understand how hard it can be to control the impulse. And taken by surprise like that, in your first week of university, it’s a wonder you didn’t do more damage. But I know you’d never intend to hurt him.”
Jason’s throat grew too tight to talk, but he shook his head.
“The omega was fine,” Xan interjected again. “Not for lack of Jason’s barbarous attempts to disrobe and mount him, mind you.”
Shame curled in tight, and he pulled his hand out of Pater’s grip to hide his face.
Xan went on, tone irritated. “The omega was calm enough about it. Got Jason to unhand him, at least.”
He wished he knew why Xan was so mad. Jason’s life had exploded into a big mess and Jason could use a friend’s gentle support right now.
“His omega’s name is Valendo Aman, by the way. Goes by Vale, apparently. Lives on Oak.”
“Those are nice homes, Yule,” Pater said to Father, hope threading into his tone, despite the worried crinkle on his forehead. “He must come from a good family. We’ll need to speak to his parents.”
“Good luck with that,” Xan said under his breath.
Father’s eyes narrowed on him again. “What the hell is going on? Jason?”
Chancellor Rory’s bald head poked into the room at that moment. Another alpha added to the mix, and when his eyes narrowed on Pater, Father straightened up sharply. Pater averted his gaze to the floor.
Chancellor Rory adjusted his vest and cleared his throat, taking a moment to adapt to Pater’s post-heat pheromones, and then he entered the room with a warm smile for Father. “Good evening, Mr. Sabel, Mr. Hoff. It seems we’ve run into quite the situation, doesn’t it?”
“It does indeed,” Jason’s father said roughly. “I think the first question I’d like answered is what was a young, unbonded omega doing on campus to begin with? What fool brought him here?”
“I see Jason hasn’t told you much about his omega.” He ran his hand over his shiny dome. “Mr. Sabel, Mr. Hoff, your son’s omega is not from this year’s crop—”
“Next year’s?” Pater said quietly. “So young!”
“No, Miner,” Father said, obviously putting the pieces together. “He’s older than Jason.”
“Oh!” Pater frowned. “Then he should know better than to be on campus. How did he ever get in?”
“Vale Aman is a professor here,” Chancellor Rory said, raising his eyebrows and letting that sink in. “He’s thirty-five. Well past the expected imprinting age. He never found his Érosgápe.” He shrugged and pulled air through his teeth. “Assumptions were made.” He flicked his gaze to Jason. “It’s an unusual situation. We’d assumed Vale’s alpha was dead or otherwise incapable of finding his omega. Professor Aman has lived alone as an uncontracted omega for nearly fourteen years.”
“Wolf-god, what a mess,” Father whispered, pinching his fingers between his eyes and sighing.
“He’s healthy?” Pater asked.
“Quite. As far as I know. Never missed a class outside of heats and always available for students and other professors alike. Intelligent. Educated. Fantastic work ethic.” He clucked his teeth. “That will have to change, obviously. A newly imprinted alpha isn’t going to react well to his omega teaching classrooms full of virile young competition. Vale will need to make arrangements, and so will the school. I’ll be down a professor.”
“You say that like it’s Jason’s fault,” Father said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Everyone knows imprinting between alpha and omega carries no fault. If we’re lucky, we find our Érosgápe. If we’re not, we settled for a contract, or go single in the world. It’s as simple as that.” He sighed. “I do fear for Jason. His omega has been on his own for quite some time. It won’t be easy to bring him to heel. And Jason’s so young, unschooled on control…”
Father’s eyes narrowed. “Does this Vale Aman have ties to omega freedom groups?”
The chancellor shrugged. “I have no idea. But I do know Vale is a fiercely independent man. It’s going to be a challenge no matter what.”
Pater’s eyebrows furrowed as he peered at Jason with worry. “Did he seem resistant?”
Jason shivered, his mind trying to encapsulate the way Vale had at first fought him, then subdued him, and finally cooperated with the law, but words failed him. His omega had been perfect, doing everything just the way he should have. Jason was the one who’d screwed up.
“He was surprised,” Xan said. “But law abiding.” He handed over the slip of paper with Vale’s information to Father. “He said he’d wait to hear from you and Mr. Hoff.”
Pater brushed his fingers over Jason’s cheek again and whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”
“I’ve spoken with Vale,” Chancellor Rory said. “He’s at home, where he plans to stay until the police take his statement. Speaking of, they should be here soon for Jason and Xan’s.”
Jason’s bladder ached after the many glasses of water he’d had since arriving at the university health clinic. His head was clearer than it had been since he’d first scented Vale, and he stood slowly on shaky legs to go take a leak.
Pater followed him like he was a toddler again, one hand on his elbow to keep him steady. Father was at Pater’s side, watching him, and Jason huffed a laugh at the little trio of protectiveness they made together.
After he pissed and washed his hands, he got dressed slowly in the clothes he’d been wearing before arriving at the clinic. There was a slight tinge of his omega’s scent lingering on the fabric, but he girded himself against going into another wild state. He refused to be in a doctor’s office gown when the police came for his statement, and he would control himself. One bout of alpha madness was enough for the day. Jason assumed they had injected him with a dose of alpha quell when he arrived. That was supposed to help.
Pater stood by the window, arms crossed over his chest, looking out at the river. It flowed by the campus medical center, and Jason could make out the blue-and-gray waves with caps of white, rising and falling in the oncoming autumn wind. Pater’s shoulders rounded tiredly, but he held himself with a pride that Jason wanted for his own omega one day. Miner Hoff knew who he was, whom he lived for, and who lived for him. It gave him a steadiness even his fragile health couldn’t break.
Father stood by Jason’s bed, watching him dress. He kept his hands shoved into his pockets and tilted back on his heels. His broad shoulders stretched his shirt. “Thirty-five years old,” he whispered. “Childbirth will be problem—”
“Hush,” Pater said over his shoulder. “Not now.”
Father nodded his agreement in the way he always did when Pater made his desires explicitly known.
“The police have arrived,” the nurse said, sticking his head in the door again. “They’re checking in now.”
“Good. Let’s get this over with.”
“And let’s take Jason home right afterward,” Pater murmured. “We’ll decide how to proceed from there. Xan, you’re welcome to join us if you’d like. I’m sure Jason could use a friend.”
Xan glared at Jason from his seat by his bed. “No. I’ll go back to the dorms and field the questions there. Everyone will want to know what’s going on. Rumors will start if I don’t put the record straight.”
“If I hear later that you insulted him—”
Xan held up his hand. “I thought we trusted each other. With everything.” His brows lifted, and Jason wondered how it could have only been this mor
ning that he’d fucked Xan and played their dangerous game together.
“I trust you.”
“Good,” Xan said. “Because we need each other.”
Before Jason could ask what he meant by that, two police officers entered the room, notepads in hand, and noses twitching at Pater’s lingering post-heat scent. Jason watched his father place an arm around Pater’s shoulders, shielding and announcing at the same time. He yearned to be that man for Vale. He hoped he’d get the chance.
If only he could remember what Vale looked like. If only he knew for sure Vale wanted it, too.
Then the questions started. Jason had to relive his humiliation, his near-assault of the man he hoped would bear his children, and to make it worse, he was fully aware that it was only the first recitation of many to come.
He’d have to tell the police, then tell the attorneys, then add a description in their contract, and in addition, he hoped to have a chance to tell Vale to his face what it had been like for him. So he could beg his forgiveness.
With any luck, Vale would grant it and fall to his knees in willing submission.
CHAPTER FOUR
Vale stirred the fire with a brass poker.
It was early in the season to need additional warmth, but the study he’d created from his pater’s old gardening room was poorly insulated and drafty. It was also crowded with books, loose papers, sketches, and notes he’d made over the years, and which he never knew how to file away. The furniture was all fairly new, purchased by his own earnings with his first check after making professor at Mont Nessadare. The floor was carefully laid polished brick, and the windows along the back of the room looked out on the overgrown garden, abandoned to nature since his pater’s death.
Vale loved his study. But he couldn’t bring himself to sit on the leather couch or to collapse at his wide, wooden desk. Instead, he paced by the fire, leaning against the mantle now and again to peer into the flames. He glanced toward Urho, who sank into the leather wingback chair they both preferred, swirling a tumbler of bourbon with a thoughtful expression. He couldn’t be more opposite of the boy who’d grabbed Vale in the library: dark skin to Jason’s pale, gray-dusted black curls where Jason’s hair was straight and blond, and older than Vale by five years while Jason must be fifteen years younger.
“What are you thinking now?” Vale asked, though he was sure he’d regret it.
“He’s too young for you,” Urho said gently, rubbing a hand over the fuzz on his cheeks. Vale remembered Urho’s taut ass as he’d stood naked at Vale’s bathroom sink that morning, scraping away his salt-and-pepper stubble with the sharp razor blade he carried back and forth between their houses as needed.
Vale sighed. He was going to miss seeing that ass.
“Did you hear me?” Urho asked.
“You said he’s too young. Since when does that matter with Érosgápe?”
“It’s always mattered. It’s why they created surrogates in the first place.”
Vale poked at the wood hard enough that a few logs shifted, sending up a whirl of sparks. “Not really. The original surrogates were alphas like you—left uncontracted through death or other circumstances. They were brought in to help likewise uncontracted omegas through the pain of heat.”
Vale hated to bring up Riki, Urho’s long-dead omega, even in a roundabout way, but he also couldn’t allow Urho to deny what had happened today. Even if he did it out of a misguided fear for Vale, or a realistic sense of loss for what they’d shared for almost ten years now, they couldn’t avoid the truth.
But Urho seemed unaffected, only saying, “Or when an omega suffers from nymphomania.”
“Interminable heat,” Vale corrected. “Nymphomania is an outdated term these days.”
Urho grunted.
Vale took that as acknowledgement and went on. “It was only later that omegas were taken as surrogates when an ‘unsuitable’ social match occurred with Érosgápe.” He sniffed in disdain.
“Or when a contracted omega proves to be infertile,” Urho corrected, obviously determined to paint surrogacy in a positive light.
“Yes, well, all of that began at a much later date. The courts simply referred to the precedent set by alpha surrogates to approve it.”
Though, really, despite Urho’s resistance to the situation, what was his alternative to accepting Jason as his alpha? An accusation of assault? Easily overcome with all the witnesses and the lack of actual harm or rape. Throwing himself into the arms of one of the omega freedom groups? Possibly, but he’d have to give up his life, and he rather liked his home and his job and his friends. Suicide? No.
Vale had seen kindness in his alpha’s eyes, deep beneath the wild lust and possessive rage. Perhaps that was something he might rely on. And perhaps it wasn’t. Only time would tell. And maybe it would all come to nothing. He wasn’t unattractive, but he was older, well past the time to be a good or reliable breeder. He wasn’t going to contract for a live birth anyway, come hell or high water. So it was possible, even likely, that his young alpha would choose a surrogate, and Vale would be fine with that.
A pang hit him, and he took a sharp breath.
It was ridiculous how the imprint dictated everything, against all logic or intelligent interrogation of the situation. His attachment wasn’t real, not based on affinity or commonalities like what he shared with Urho, and yet he couldn’t deny the ball of pain in his gut, weighty and burning, at the very thought of his absurdly young alpha claiming a surrogate in his stead.
“You’ll have another heat coming in six weeks,” Urho said, his kind brown eyes shining. They’d both been looking forward to it and had even planned to go out to Urho’s vacation house in the country for extra privacy. “Who will help you through it? The boy’s unfit. Too young, too wild. At the very least he’d hurt you, and, in the worst-case scenario, he’d impregnate you against your will.”
“You’re so sure my alpha is a rapist, huh?”
“No. He’s not a rapist,” Urho bit out. “He’s a child. I remember being nineteen. If I’d met Riki then, I’d have filled him up with a baby before he knew what hit him. I’d have been unable to stop myself. The drive at that age is intense—even at later ages it’s more intense between Érosgápe than with a contracted pair. Why else do you think they keep the genders separated until the age of majority? To help keep omegas safe.”
“It’s intense on the omega’s end as well, you know.” Vale flushed.
He didn’t have to remind Urho of the way he begged for babies when they fucked during a heat, how he pleaded for him to take off the condom and give him what they both wanted. And Vale certainly didn’t need to be reminded how steady, honest, old-fashioned Urho would deny him, and deny him, and deny him until the heat had passed.
Because they both knew that neither of them really wanted a child together, and they both knew Vale wouldn’t ever bear children. It was just instinct talking.
With Jason, however…
“But you’re right that it would be hard for a boy to resist me in a heat. It’s a fair problem.”
“Oh, yes. You’re quite compelling,” Urho said, eyes lighting with memories. “Some heats I’ve nearly given into you. And I’m not even imprinted on you. Imagine what a young, out of control, imprinted alpha would do? He’d fuck you to death trying to get you with child.”
Vale sighed.
“So you’ll let me help you with the heat?” Urho said, brows low and voice gruff. “Even if you’ve determined to contract and bond with another?”
“You know I can’t. It would be unlawful.”
And immoral. As far as Vale was concerned, that was the deeper problem.
“You’ll suffer if you don’t let someone help you.”
“I know.”
“You could try another round of heat suppressant.”
Vale shuddered, shooting Urho an angry look. “Because that worked out so well the last time.”
“It’s been many years now, Vale. It’s a diffe
rent formula. You might not have the same reaction.”
“And if I did?”
Urho groaned and rubbed at his face. “I would help you through it.”
“You and how many other alphas? No. I’ll never try the heat suppressant again.”
He’d only given in to that temptation twice since he’d been weaned from it as a young omega. Both times had resulted in the dreaded rebound heat: longer and more intense than a regular heat.
The second time, he’d lost his mind in the haze of lust, slipped the care of his beta friends, Yosef and Rosen, and ended up the ragdoll fuck toy of a band of alphas in the kind of establishment quality people never visited.
It was a memory he’d worked hard to forget. But now it all came roaring back.
He turned away from Urho, staring into the fire, seeing it all again in his mind’s eye.
He’d been there three full days taking strangers’ cocks, the object of more than one alpha challenge and fight, when his friends had finally found him edging down from the heat. Humiliated, bruised, injured inside, and pregnant with an unknown alpha’s child, he’d never imagined himself capable of such a low place in life.
As soon as possible, he’d endured a painful and highly illegal abortion and sworn off heat suppressants forever. The only good thing to come out of it all was meeting Urho in the midst of it all. They’d agreed to an arrangement, and his heat problems had been settled.
But humiliation and horror stung him anew as the memories played, and he scrubbed his face with his hand, trying to banish them.
Urho knew everything about that incident, but neither of them ever talked about it.
While Vale trusted Urho with his life, the man was conservative in some of his beliefs. He’d been a medic in the military, alongside alphas who fought against omega freedom groups. And his opinions on omegas were shaped by that experience as well as the intense bond he’d shared with Riki, who, from all reports, had been a demure and quiet man.