by L. C. Davis
"Yeah," he lied. "I guess I get that."
Connor watched him doubtfully. "Why did you hold back?"
"When?"
"When you knotted me, you could have taken advantage. I know you hate me. You could have done whatever you wanted to me and no one would have held you responsible."
Duke frowned, struggling to make sense of the omega's words. He didn't like the implications when they finally started to, so he stopped fast. "Of course I'd be responsible. Heat isn't an automatic invitation for mating and knotting doesn't mean an alpha can do whatever he wants." His next words caught in his throat, stuck on rage. "Is that why you panicked when you realized my knot was coming out? You thought I'd use it as a chance to hurt you?"
Connor seemed suddenly incapable of meeting his eyes and he shrugged. "It's what any other alpha would have done."
"Bullshit. Alpha or not, that's fucked up. And I don't hate you," he muttered. "I don't understand you for shit, and my life would be a hell of a lot easier if I could hate you, but I don't."
Connor listened and the curious glint in his eyes made it clear the alpha might as well have been speaking Greek. Then again, the omega was a fucking genius, so he probably spoke that, too. He seemed to give up on understanding and sighed, settling a bit closer. Duke offered his arm and Connor reluctantly laid his head on it. "That makes two of us."
Duke let out a slow breath as the omega fell silent next to him, deep in thoughts the alpha couldn't begin to guess the nature of. In one encounter, he had gone from distraught to seductive to enraged and now melancholic, shifting back and forth between emotions with far more fluidity than Duke had previously thought him capable of. Maybe it was still an act, but it was getting harder to convince himself that Connor was the unfeeling psychopath he'd hunted and then resisted for years. As the omega finally curled up in his arms and fell asleep, Duke realized he was something far more dangerous.
Chapter Seven
CONNOR
"So," said Mel, kneading a ball of dough into a cloud of flour he had sprinkled out on the cutting board. Connor wasn't sure why the other omega was attempting to bake when he had a mate who not only enjoyed cooking for the family but possessed the gift of not starting fires every time he turned on the stove--a gift the spirits had clearly not seen fit to bestow upon Mel--but he had agreed to help if only out of self-preservation. And wine. Three glasses in and he was just starting to forget his humiliation over the weekend. "You wanna talk about why you've smelled like my replacement for the last week?"
"Not really," Connor said, throwing back the last of his glass before pouring another.
Mel took the bottle and gave him a worried look. "Ease up, it's barely noon."
"I was thinking of going with the alpha from Melbourne, so I figure I'd better start early."
Mel frowned and seemed to be racking his brain. "You mean Carson? I thought you said he was 'greasy and underread.'"
"He's both, but a little soap can fix the one and there is a certain appeal in an alpha without any brains to get in the way."
Mel rolled his eyes. "Whoever it is, you're both going to have to stay here. At least until Mitchell trusts you both enough to let you leave, and then there's the Tribunal..." He shook his head. "You're changing the subject again. At some point, you're going to have to tell me what happened."
"Am I?"
Mel dropped the hunk of dough and a cloud of flower went up around it. "Connor, you stormed off and the next time anyone found you, you were curled up in bed smelling more like Duke than yourself. Convincing Hassan and Toval not to hunt him down was hard enough, especially since I'm not sure I don't want to kill him myself."
"He didn't attack me, if that's what you're getting at," Connor said, rubbing his temple to stave off the headache that had plagued him on and off ever since his heat. His encounter with the massive alpha had succeeded at putting it to an end, at least, but there was still the mystery of why it had happened in the first place and he wasn't nearly drunk enough to start on solving it.
"If I didn't know Duke as well as I do, I'm not sure I'd believe you," Mel said quietly. "What are we supposed to think? You're not acting like yourself."
"Isn't that a good thing? Maybe the drugs are finally kicking in," he said, running a finger along his collar. The feeling of Duke's teeth at his neck had never quite left his skin, and the worst part was, he'd liked it. Being bitten by an alpha had been the subject of his nightmares ever since he could remember, and yet it had actually fucking turned him on. Just when he thought rock bottom couldn't get any lower.
"I'm serious, Connor. I'm worried about you. We all are."
"You're not going to let this go, are you?"
Mel gave him an entreating smile. "Not a chance."
Connor sighed heavily, snatching the bottle back from his brother. "I went into heat."
Mel blinked. "Seriously? I thought you didn't....do that."
"I don't," Connor said, filling the glass to the brim before chucking the empty bottle into the trash behind him.
"Nice shot." Mel seemed to hesitate, worrying at his bottom lip. "Can I ask you a question that's going to piss you off?"
"Most of your questions do."
"Why'd you stop taking suppressants?"
"I never started," he said with a shrug. When the confusion on Mel's face told him that wasn't a satisfactory answer, he continued, "I figured out how to stop it long before those shitty, unreliable pills ever hit the market. Back then, it was a matter of survival. I was working in a ruthouse and living on the streets, so going into heat at random wasn't exactly convenient."
Recognition shone in Mel's eyes and the way his confusion melted into sympathy only confirmed for Connor why he hadn't wanted to tell him. He barely tolerated sympathy even when it came from Mel, and only then because his brother was one of the few omegas who understood the life he had led. Despite the distance that had separated them for most of their lives, their existences had mirrored each other in the worst of ways. "Oh. But how?"
"Willpower," he replied with a shrug.
Mel stared blankly at him. "Tell me you're joking. You're not psychic...are you?"
"The mind is a powerful thing, Mel. You'd be surprised what even the simplest one is capable of under the right circumstances."
"Holy shit."
Connor smirked. "See, this is why I love you. You're so easily impressed."
"I'm not sure impressed is the right word, just shocked and kind of unnerved."
"Same difference."
"And that's why everyone is scared of you."
"I can live with that." His eyes narrowed. "Not a word to anyone about this."
"Fine, but why? So you went into heat. I mean, you were surrounded by alphas who were there because they want to mate with you," Mel reasoned. "If you're not on suppressants, it'd be weirder if you didn't go into heat."
"Please stop using that word," he muttered. "I don't expect you to understand. You've embraced that whole alpha-omega thing," he said, waving his hand around in the air with a distasteful sneer.
"Where Hassan is concerned, yeah, but I took suppressants while I was on the task force. I get it. Being in heat around the wrong alpha makes you vulnerable."
"Any alpha," Connor corrected. "The unmated ones, at least."
"And Duke?" Mel cocked an eyebrow. "Where does he fit in?" He winced. "Bad choice of words."
Connor rolled his eyes. "It was a one-time thing. He was useful, but that's all."
"Useful?"
"I needed to get out of heat, he's an alpha, he was there. You do the math."
"So he didn't take advantage of you?" Mel asked warily, wincing at the icy glare Connor shot at him. "I'm sorry, I have to ask."
"This is exactly why I didn't want to do this. It takes a goddamn decade to craft a reputation and one lousy little party to ruin it."
"Okay, okay, calm down. No one else even knows about it."
"Good. And no, he did not take advantage of me," he grumb
led. "He was very...thoughtful."
Connor could see the wheels turning in the other omega's eyes.
"What?" Connor snapped.
"I mean, you do have to find an alpha. If you and Duke get along that well..."
"Please. I'd hardly call fucking once out of necessity 'getting along.'"
"Who's fucking what?" Toval asked, striding into the room. He eyed the dough on the counter like it was going to sprout teeth and bite him. Connor thought that was probably a preferable end to biting it.
"I fucked Duke and Mel is being sappy about it," he replied boredly. When he noticed the shock on Mel's face, he added, "You were going to tell him anyway. You can't help it, but at least this way I don't have to deal with you ingesting and apologizing out of guilt."
"Duke?" Toval's nose wrinkled. "We talkin' about the same fellow here? Big guy, about yea high?" he asked, stretching his hand towards the ceiling.
"That would be the one," said Connor.
"Just so we're clear, who was doing the fucking in this scenario?" Toval asked warily.
"Figure of speech," Connor snorted.
"Oh. Yeah, couldn't really picture it the other way around," Toval said with an awkward laugh. He grimaced. "Not that I wanna picture it at all. Ech. No offense."
"None taken."
"So, you decided on Duke?"
"No, I had sex with Duke. I decided on Everett, or at least, I've decided that's who I'm going to ask Mitchell and Hassan to decide on."
"Gotcha."
"What?" Mel cried. "No 'gotcha,' he barely talked to Everett for ten minutes and he slept with Duke!"
"See what I mean?" Connor asked pointedly. "Sappy."
"Pregnancy hormones," the beta mused, earning a halfhearted elbow in the ribs. He grinned at his mate, pulling Mel into his arms. "Aw, come on, baby, I'm just kidding. You were a sap way before then."
"Forgive me for thinking the mate bond deserves a little more consideration than a couple of dances."
"Not everyone can be like us," he purred, tilting the omega's chin towards him. Mel melted at his mate's touch, his eyes glazed like the beta was some celebrity he'd been idolizing for years. "I knew I wanted you the moment I laid eyes on you, but you've gotta let him do things his own way. Remember what Hassan said."
"Yeah, I know," Mel mumbled.
"What did Hassan say?" Connor demanded, less than thrilled by the prospect of the three of them talking about his problems behind his back.
"Ask him yourself. You're meeting with him and Mitchell later while I take Mel to his doctor's appointment."
"That's tonight? Didn't I just see the doctor."
"That was your GP, this is the OBGYN."
"And the difference is...?"
"Come on," Toval said, gently leading his mate away from the dough. Maybe they would live after all.
Before long, Mel and Toval were out the door and Connor decided to occupy himself with cleaning up. He would have once had servants to do that kind of thing for him, but he found that he had a lower tolerance for being alone than he wanted to admit and it was a distraction. He knew better than to think he had any real privacy. There were cameras all over the compound and guards stationed at every border, including outside the apartment. He didn't mind as much as he should have. Even with frequent visits from Mel and his mates, they had all been busy with their own lives and Connor had been alone with himself for much longer than that. Mind controlled alphas weren't much company under the best of circumstances, and his disdain for other omegas left him with little desire or options for socializing. Not that they were overly fond of him, either.
Even during the days when Connor had lived and worked in one ruthouse or another, he had found himself isolated from the other omegas. He told himself it was a matter of choice, that he had no use for the weak class of wolf who lamented not their subjugation but their servitude to the wrong alpha, always waiting for the "right one" to come along and rescue them. He had taken pride in being the only one to know that no knight in shining armor was coming for any of them. The only way out of a hell like that was to rescue yourself and to become stronger than your captors, and he had.
At least, he had been then when he was Cutter, the arms dealer, Cutter, the soulless monster who compelled warriors and sold his own kind. In the beginning, he had quelled what was left of his conscience and his emotions that the alphas who owned him hadn't taken away by telling himself that if it wasn't him it would be someone else. That the auctions he profited from were better from the ones he'd been sold on years ago. That he was a necessary counterpoint to the ruthless alphas who would have dominated the underbelly of shifter society if he wasn't there to keep them in check. Eventually, he had stopped needing a justification at all. He felt nothing, but two years of isolation and boredom had robbed him of that gift. The same weakness that had plagued him as a child was returning, proving that his heart hadn't so much been cut out of him as it had been frozen, and now that it was beginning to thaw out, all those years of torture were for nothing.
Going into heat was bad enough, but the thing he feared most was that it was just the beginning of a broader transformation into the very thing he'd promised himself he would never be again. If he didn't find a way to stop it, he knew that every sin he had committed in the interim would become impossible to bear. A monster capable of feeling guilt was just a charity case. He knew, if only because he had been raised by one. Mel didn't remember her or the downward spiral she had fallen into after selling off her firstborn, but Connor did and the closer he got to human, the closer he came to feeling, the more like her he became.
This had to stop. He had to find a way to become numb again.
The front door opened and Connor jolted, nearly dropping the dirty glass in his hand. When he saw that it was just Hassan, he relaxed. "Your mates are out."
"I know," Hassan said, frowning. "Are you alright?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You've just got something..." The alpha trailed off, touching his cheek.
Connor touched his own and realized it was wet. He quickly wiped off the evidence and turned back to load the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. "I'm fine. I'm just allergic to your cheap fucking dish detergent."
Hassan said nothing and when Connor turned around, the look of concern on his brother-in-law's face filled him with irritation. "What?" he snapped.
"Nothing," Hassan murmured. "I'll be sure we get a different kind next time Toval and I go shopping. Mitchell would like to meet with us both to discuss things, but if you're not feeling up to it..."
"I'm fine," Connor muttered, brushing past him and into his room. "Just let me get changed."
Chapter Eight
CONNOR
Mitchell's office was every bit as Spartan and organized as Connor had imagined, except for the toys scattered on a colorful mat in the corner. The second-youngest member of the Teak clan was gnawing on a plastic teether as he arranged blocks around the mat, and Mitchell was holding his newborn daughter in a sling around his neck. The contrast between the colorful fabric and his own olive drab attire would have been hilarious under any other circumstances, but Connor found less humor in the topic of choosing his own mate than he ever had.
Hassan sat in a chair next to him across from Mitchell's desk and seemed to be struggling to hide his own amusement. "That's an interesting look."
Mitchell shot him a withering glare. "Angel is visiting the twins at camp so I'm on baby duty. The sling is supposed to facilitate a sense of secure attachment while I keep my hands free for...you know, fighting and stuff."
"Mhm." Hassan's mouth quivered in a firm line. "Most of the omegas in my home country use those. They're very fashionable."
Mitchell opened his mouth to retort but seemed to think better of it when he realized his toddler was listening intently and growled. "You'll be wearing one soon enough. Mel and Angel are always giving each other ideas."
"I think I'll manage," he grinned.
"Can we ju
st get this over with?" Connor pleaded. The toddler's babbling was starting to grate on him. At least he was still an atypical omega in that regard.
"Fine," said Mitchell, opening a file on his desk. "The turnout at the gala was better than we expected. I've had about a dozen alphas approach me after who actually seem qualified for the position."
"I want Everett Hauser."
Mitchell blinked. "You what?"
"Did he make the short list?"
"Yeah, but... How can you be sure after meeting him once?"
"This isn't a love connection, remember?" Connor folded his arms, trying to ignore the fact that he could see Mitchell's youngest son crawling towards him out of the corner of his eye. Just don't move and it'll think you're part of the chair.
"I know that, but you hardly even know him. Neither do I, for that matter."
"I just want this to be over. No more parties, no more dancing. He's an alpha, he's fit to lead the unit, that's all that matters."
Mitchell frowned. "I'm taking your opinion into account here because of Mel, but you don't just get to snap your fingers and decide how things go. That's not how this works."
Hassan leaned forward in his chair. "Perhaps we could expedite things with a more intimate meeting? I'm sure Everett would be willing to spend some time here and you can get to know him better before we proceed."
Mitchell grunted but seemed to be considering it. Connor gave a startled cry as something grabbed his leg. He looked down to find Owen trying to climb his chair, his teether still caught between the fangs he hadn't quite grown into yet. Connor scowled. "Shoo. Shoo, get away."
The boy laughed, seeming to find Connor's attempts to be rid of him hilarious. He reached for the omega and cried, "Up!"
Mitchell sighed. "Owen, come here."
Owen ignored his father, grabbing at the watch on Connor's wrist. "That's Cartier, you little mongrel," he grumbled, reaching down to lift the boy up while keeping him at arm's length. Owen cackled as if it was all just a game."
