by Leta Blake
Vale’s gut knotted up, anxiety-laced sadness trotting through his heart along with the memories of pain and blood. He closed his eyes. Urho’s initial assessment and a subsequent visit to another physician to examine why Vale sometimes experienced pain on Urho’s knot hadn’t brought good news. Scar tissue had formed, and it was unlikely he’d survive a birth.
What’d seemed formlessly sad when the doctor delivered the initial diagnosis now had a shape and a name: Jason. How terrible to have a beautiful young alpha to wound and disappoint with his past mistakes. How horrible to take away the boy’s chances at a life with his Érosgápe.
Shame twisted inside.
“Do you want children, Vale?” Yosef asked gently.
“We both know that isn’t going to happen,” he whispered. Yosef quietly accepted his response, and they let the sadness hang in the air between them. Finally, voice quivering, Vale asked, “How do we handle that?”
“Miner Hoff’s disclosure gives us the perfect card to play, actually.” Yosef squeezed Vale’s knee. “An omega who’s suffered like he has—and likely suffers still given the laws around surgical remedies—won’t insist that another omega submit to an unwanted, painful, and potentially deadly experience. Not unless he’s a terrible person, and that seems unlikely. Just put your foot down, make it clear that it’s against your wishes, and either they’ll cave and agree to always employ alpha condoms for contraception or they’ll look for a surrogate. It’ll be up to Jason at that point, I imagine.”
“He’s so young, it’ll really be up to his parents. They’ll be able to persuade him.”
“What do you want to have happen?”
“I don’t know.” Vale ran an anxious hand through his hair. “As Jason put it to me today, there’s the me that’s me, and there’s the me that he’s awakened, and they don’t want the same things. Twenty-four hours ago I was happy, content with my life. Tonight, I can’t truthfully say I wish this had never happened. It’d be a lie to claim that I don’t want him to choose me.” Vale scoffed, stood up, and headed over to the liquor cabinet, where he poured scotch for them both. “I know nothing about him and I’m already moping at the idea that he’d make the smart choice. He should choose a young surrogate with years of breeding ahead. What do I have to offer him?”
“Yourself. And you’re nothing to sneeze at.”
“I’m much older and won’t provide him with a child. I know the union of Érosgápe is supposed to be near bliss, but can it really be worth the rest of the hassle? The social ostracization he’ll have to face when the others of his cohort all have appropriately aged omegas? When they’re having wild bashes and I’m more interested in a dinner party for a select few? When they’re popping out babies and making families? Will he think, ‘Well, at least I knotted Vale until we both couldn’t see straight, at least I shot my condom full of massive amounts of jizz during our brilliant and fruitless coupling?’ I think not.”
“You’re Érosgápe. No one else will ever satisfy him the way you can. That’s the way it is and will always be. He’ll choose you, Vale.”
“I don’t want him to!” He threw his drink back and poured a second as the liquor scorched his throat.
“You just said you did.”
Vale groaned and filled a glass for Yosef, too. “I know that. I mean I want him to have a good life. When he came over this morning…” He handed Yosef the drink.
Yosef tossed his back as well, and his voice came out hoarse when he said, “Go on. When he came over this morning what?”
Sitting beside his friend on the sofa again the papers mocked Vale with a promise of a family he’d never make. “He’s a good kid, with a soft heart, and he deserves a family and a good, normal, solid life.”
“Wah, wah, wah.”
“What?”
“You must stop punishing yourself for the rebound heat you suffered and what happened after.” Yosef’s eyes glowed with bare truth, the way they always did when he drank. It’d probably been a mistake to give him the scotch. “You deserve to be happy, Vale. If you’re going to refuse to contract with him, at least do it because you genuinely believe you’d be happier alone.”
“I wouldn’t be alone. I’d have you and Rosen and Urho.”
“You’ll have us anyway. Maybe Urho won’t be your lover anymore, but he’ll always be in your life. You can have all of us and this thing with Jason, too. You aren’t required to give us up. And you don’t need to punish yourself for suppressing that heat years ago when you didn’t have Urho to help you and you didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’d endured a rebound before, though,” Vale whispered. “I should have known.”
“Vale, desperate people do desperate things, and it’s not your fault.”
“I could have had the baby.”
“Is that what this is about? Do you feel guilty about your choice?”
He hadn’t felt like he had a real choice at the time. The idea of carrying a strange alpha’s child to term, birthing it alone, and then raising it on his own had been terrifying. Add to that trying to manage his existence as an uncontracted, unbonded, alpha-less omega with a child in tow? In their culture? And so soon after his parents’ deaths? It had seemed impossible and unfair to the child. What kind of future would it have?
Looking at his life now, he couldn’t imagine it with a half-grown child in it, complicating this situation with Jason even more. No, he didn’t really have regrets about his choice. He only regretted the consequences of it, and the fact that now he had so much less to offer the young, handsome alpha he desperately and illogically wanted to choose him.
“I want my whole life to have been different. I want to have met Jason when I was supposed to, when all my age mates met their Érosgápe. I want to have born him several lovely children by now. Or I want to have never met him at all and to have kept on happily with Urho until one or both of us grew tired of it, or we died.”
“You’ll be a perfect match for a nineteen-year-old after all,” Yosef said. “Mooning over things you can’t have and what can never be.”
Vale snorted. “Is this your way of saying I should grow up?”
“Yes. Grow up, Vale. Get your head out of your ass and face the situation full on.” Yosef’s white eyebrows lowered. “You’ve got to make a plan. Everything will happen faster than you think.”
Zephyr knocked another book from the shelf, and they both jumped.
“See, even your cat agrees with me. Stop self-flagellating and stop wishing. Take a deep breath. Let it out. Accept this situation for what it is, and then let’s move forward together. Understood?”
Vale swallowed the last of his drink, slammed the glass on the coffee table, and nodded. “Your logic can’t be faulted. I’m done moping. What’s next?”
“Here’s a list of their properties. Let’s see what your alpha stands to inherit, compare that to what you bring to the table, and determine what kind of bargains we can anticipate and negotiate in your favor. It shouldn’t be hard, especially since he’s an only child. He’ll be spoiled, I’m sure. His parents probably have little to no practice saying no to him.”
Vale nodded, taking up the list of properties. There was nothing to be done but move ahead as if Jason might choose him despite his failures and faults.
And if Jason didn’t? If he took the smart option?
Vale would deal with the heartbreak then.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jason stood by his bedroom window gazing out over the manicured lawn to the road he knew led to Vale’s house. He’d taken his entire dose of alpha quell that morning, supervised by Father who’d come into his room just before his usual waking time to make sure he downed it all.
The drug helped him keep his wits about him, but he resented its effectiveness, too. He wanted to feel the pull of the imprint; he wanted to give into it and run off down the street, past the other alphas and omegas going about their day, to see Vale again. Protocols be damned. But he knew better, and the
alpha quell helped him remember all the reasons why he needed to be patient.
At least for today.
He headed downstairs to the kitchen, prepared his own breakfast of an egg sandwich, and ate it leaning against the study door listening for any scrap of information in Pater and Father’s muffled tones. He jumped away and pretended to be examining himself in the ornate mirror across the hall just as the door opened. Patting at his hair and inspecting his teeth, he hoped it seemed as if he was doing nothing more than indulging in some vanity.
Pater’s raised brow told Jason he hadn’t fooled him one bit.
“Come in, son. We’d like to share the information Jeft Mellor brought for us.”
Jason leapt away from the mirror and ducked into his father’s office. The windows were open, allowing a cool autumn cross-breeze to carry away the cigarette smoke, but the brass plate on the edge of Father’s desk and the four crumpled stubs spoke to Pater’s continued anxiety or pain.
“Sit.” Father nodded at the second chair opposite his desk. He was dressed in his usual oxford shirt and a pair of dress pants. His jacket and a tie hung at the ready on a coat stand next to his desk, but he only added those if a business associate came to visit.
His blond hair was slicked back from his worried forehead with the lemon-scented oil he used to style it, and his blue eyes seemed tired but not angry. Jason took that as a good sign.
Pater folded himself into the other open seat. He’d eschewed the soft pants of the day before for a nicer pair of trousers, cut in the latest style. A fashionable sweater was pushed up at the forearms, revealing his trembling hands. He tucked them between his legs and nodded at Father.
“You can smoke if you want,” Jason whispered. “I can deal with it.”
Pater smiled gently. “I’ve indulged myself enough. It’s time to get to business.”
Father slapped an inch-thick stack of papers on his desk alongside three slim fabric-covered volumes. “Hopefully Mr. Aman will have hired an attorney who can help him prepare his disclosure forms. I doubt he has an omega packet prepared and set aside. In all likelihood, any information his parents prepared is long gone, deemed unnecessary. We may never have all the details we’d like about his family.”
“It’s fine,” Jason said.
Father’s lips pressed together, but he didn’t object to Jason’s opinion. “The good news is that his father was a research assistant at Mont Juror, so there’s no lack of intelligence, most likely. And his pater was considered a fine man by all accounts. Kept a good house. They were sociable and well-liked.”
Jason kept his face neutral. He knew he was supposed to care about such things, but he didn’t. The draw of social status paled in comparison to the beauty of Vale’s eyes.
Father went on, “The first thing we have here is the projected value of the house on Oak Avenue. It’s Mr. Aman’s free and clear, inherited from his parents. Since you’ll be inheriting our house, however, you won’t need to hold onto his. Once you’ve bonded, you can sell it and use the proceeds to buy a more suitable property closer to us, and—”
“But if he likes his house, why couldn’t we just live there?”
Father frowned and Pater coughed lightly.
“Well?” Jason pushed.
“Oak Avenue is in an upper-middle-class section of town. Nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but it isn’t fit for a man who stands to inherit as you do,” Father said.
Jason clenched his hands together, listening as his father droned on about the small cabin in the woods Vale’s parents had also owned, but which seemed to have fallen into disrepair long before their deaths. “You’ll sell that, too,” his father stated.
“Can I have a piece of paper and a pencil?” Jason asked.
Startled, Father looked up from the documents. “I suppose so.” He passed a yellow ruled pad and a pencil. “What do you need it for?”
“Just to keep track of my thoughts.”
He scribbled:
If Vale likes his house, we will live there as long as we want.
If Vale wants to improve the cabin, we will. If he’d rather be done with it, I’ll fix it up and sell it.
Pater adjusted his position and pretended not to be trying to read what Jason had written. Jason didn’t hide it, but he didn’t make it easy for his pater, either.
“Okay, I’m ready. What’s next?”
“He writes poetry,” Father said, a hint of disapproval in his tone.
“I know.”
“He told you?” Pater sounded surprised.
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you it was…” Father cleared his throat. “Did he say it was racy poetry?”
“He said he didn’t think I should read it just now, that he’d written about heat, and about other alphas who’d helped him with it.” His fists clenched, and the pencil jabbed into the flesh of his palm.
“It’s only instinct,” Pater whispered, touching his knee and nodding to his gripped hands. “Logic can rule instinct if we take command of it.”
Jason forced himself to relax his fingers. “I don’t like it, but it’s not his fault I wasn’t around when he needed me.”
Father darted a glance between Pater and Jason, measuring them both, and then nodded slowly. “Agreed.”
“But I agree with Vale on this,” Pater said. “Knowing that he had little choice in choosing a safe alpha to help him through his heats and reading the poems about it are two entirely different things. I suggest you let go of any thought of reading these volumes.”
“Why he was even compelled to write poems about it, I can’t imagine.” Father leaned back in his chair with a tight expression. “It simply wasn’t necessary.”
Pater rolled his eyes. “Yule, what’s done is done.”
“Will he write poems about Jason? I think we should include a ban on poems in any contract we draw up.”
“That’s absurd.” Pater laughed.
“No,” Jason said. “No ban.” The idea that Vale might write poems about him was deliriously wonderful. His heart squeezed and jolted. He wanted to be deserving of Vale’s attention and dedicated words. “He’ll write according to his inspiration.”
Father snorted but shrugged.
Jason scribbled on his notepad: Vale is allowed to write about anything he wants.
Pater clucked his tongue and whispered, “As if you could stop him, but that’s fine, love. Write it down.”
Father tugged another piece of paper out with a frown. “This one is troublesome. It’s part of a file from a doctor’s office he visited several years ago with complaints about taking a knot during heat.”
Jason’s fists clenched again, but he took a long breath and let it out slowly.
“Apparently there’s some scar tissue of unknown origin that looks problematic for childbearing.”
“Childbearing is inherently problematic,” Pater said quietly. “Add his age, and now this? I don’t think it’s right to expect him to be able to—”
“One,” Father said firmly.
“Yule…”
“Jason’s our only son, and after all we went through with my pater, all we suffered so that the line would carry on?”
Pater covered his face with one hand, patting for his cigarettes with the other.
“Jason, this is important. If you intend to contract with this man, you need to think about this hard and long.” Father peered at him, forehead crinkled. “Do you understand what’s at stake? You have to take it into account. Generations of people before you have suffered in order to bring you into the world, to carry on the genetic line. If he’s incapable, there are other options. You can contract a surrogate—”
“Stop,” Pater said, cigarette dangling from his lips as he struck a match and lit it. “We have no idea if the man wants children or not. We’ll cover this in negotiations.”
“Who cares if he wants children? What about Jason?”
“Like you said, Jason has options.” Smoke swirled from Pat
er’s nose as he exhaled roughly. “The choice is theirs to make as Érosgápe, not ours.”
Father’s shoulder’s rounded and his jaw clenched, but he didn’t speak about surrogates or breeding again, moving on to the income Vale had lost when Chancellor Rory removed him from his position at the university.
“Obviously, we’ll replace it as his allowance. It’s a reasonable sum.” Father picked up the papers and shoved them into a brown file folder. “Aside from gruesome reports on his parents’ deaths, all of which seems unnecessary for you to hear about, that’s all we have today. If we get more information about him, we’ll be sure to let you know.”
Jason stared at the poetry books on his father’s desk. “Are those ours to keep?”
“I thought we agreed?”
“But not every poem is about heat or sex, surely?”
Father glanced toward Pater, and they had one of their silent conversations. After Father nodded, Pater reached to take up both of the books. “I’ll read them and tear out the ones suitable for you, if you’d like.”
Jason licked his lips. Vale had given the sexual poems as the reason why he didn’t want Jason to read the books. He hadn’t said anything about the other poems, had he? And while the idea of destroying the volumes to get at some of the poetry was unpleasant, it was still better than not knowing what his omega had written about all these years. “Yes. I’d like to read them.”
Pater nodded and tucked the books beneath his arm. He stubbed the cigarette out and rose slowly. “I’ll be in the conservatory. What’s for dinner?”
Father snorted softly. “Take-out at this rate, but I did set those flanks out to thaw.”
“I’ll eat whatever you bring me.” Pater smiled at him. “Anything I don’t have to cook is always my favorite.”
“Ours, too.” Father laughed, his blue eyes losing their tired grimness. “Go on. Get your day started.”
“What about me?” Jason asked. “I should be in political science class right now.”
“Chancellor Rory has agreed you can return to your classes on Monday. It’s protocol to keep you isolated until the alpha quell has a chance to settle into your system.” Father frowned. “Still, it’s no good for you to sit around bored. Why don’t you wash and polish Miner’s car and then we’ll find another way to keep you busy when you’re done.”