Page 97 of Knot Your Business

Phillip lets his hands drop to his sides, the tension easing away from his shoulders.

“Good,” he says, his voice full of relief. “We were worried she’d shelve her dream of research once she matched. It’s part of why we never pushed her to do it.”

“Not that she needed much convincing to wait,” Kurt murmurs with a dry sort of humor. The exasperated look he gives is identical to the one Violet uses. “It’s not like she had an example that had her tripping over herself to set a date with the Council.”

Johnathan sighs and rubs his eyes. “We did our best to shield her from the worst of it.”

“Didn’t stop her, though,” Phillip says with a resigned sadness. “She was always the most curious.”

I clear my throat and lean forward. This was the information I came for.

“Your match has always been tense?” I ask.

Kurt nods. “The process was different thirty years ago. Not the galas themselves, but the follow up. There wasn’t really the trial run they give now. You got handed a match and were told to make the best of it. So we did. It was… fair.”

Phillip snorts in derision, and Kurt pins him a look. He shrugs before crossing the room, sitting next to Kurt and taking his hand. Kurt’s mouth opens, his gaze snapping back to me.

“By the time we realized we’d rather be just a trio,” Johnathan says, interrupting whatever Kurt was about to say, “Sienna was pregnant with Scarlett. It was an accident. We thought we’d taken precautions during her heat. In dissolutions, the Council almost always sides with the Omega when children are involved. If we left, we’d lose Scarlett.”

Pain flashes across all three of their faces. Phillip shakes his head.

“So we stayed,” he says. “We’re not oblivious to Sienna’s...”

He trails off, clearly trying to figure out what word to use.

“Bullshit,” Kurt supplies.

Phillip nods and laces his fingers with Kurt’s, his knuckles whitening from his grip.

“But we’ve tried to balance it out,” Johnathan says. “Tried to make sure all three of our children know that we love and adore them.”

The others murmur their agreement, and then the conversation lulls into silence. I adjust my cuff links. Johnathan crosses the room, pouring a single knuckle’s worth of amber liquor from a cart tucked in the corner. He glances at me and holds up the decanter. I shake my head.

I don’t want to be drinking during this.

Once Johnathan is resettled, tension grows between us, buzzing through the room so intensely I’m surprised I’m not electrocuted by it.

“Is Violet all right?” Kurt asks, his body tight, his gaze hard. “That son of a bitch didn’t touch her, right?”

“No permanent harm done,” I murmur. I’m not willing to outright lie to him, and I don’t want him to carry the weight of knowing just how close his daughter came to being hurt. “To be honest, I’m not sure how much of it all she’ll remember.”

Hopefully very little.

Phillip frowns. “It doesn’t matter if she remembers it. It’s inexcusable either way.”

I nod.

Their devotion for Violet eases some of my coiled anger. My voice is gruff as I say, “The problem is that she had a heat in March.”

Johnathan freezes, a low growl rumbling through his chest. I breathe slowly, reminding myself that he’s angry for Violet and not at her. He’s on my side of this entire clusterfuck.

Kurt frowns, but it’s Phillip that asks the question that’ll set us past the point of no return tonight.

“Then how could she have possibly dropped into heat while at the event?”

Kurt says it before I can, his voice ice cold. “She was drugged. And it would have had to be an incredibly high dosage if she was three months out from her heat.”

“She hardly interacted with anyone,” Johnathan says slowly, like he’s terrified of reaching the inevitable conclusion of this train of thought. I don’t blame him. “And the only drink she had was given to her by Sienna.”

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