Page 17 of His Prodigal Alpha

Ollie cackled gleefully. “Oh, you’re kind of vanilla, huh?”

If only he knew.

“Oliver…” Beck warned.

The youngest man in the room held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, sorry,” he was still giggling to himself, so I didn’t think he really meant the apology. He cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he tugged at the collar of his sweater and tilted his neck, showing off a shiny scar in the shape of a bite mark. “Thisis what happens when an alpha bites an omega when they’re mating. Beck’s got one, too. It, um, it kind of tied us togetherin a magical kind of way. Like…a mystical connection.”

“A mystical connection?” I tried not to sound too dry when I repeated his words.

“I know how it sounds,” he took a sip from his coffee and then sat on the armrest of Beck’s chair, one hand draping behind Beck to toy with the hair at the back of his head, their earlier disagreement forgotten, “but we can feel each other’s emotions, sometimes physical sensation,” his cheeks pinked a little as he admitted that, “and proximity.”

“That sounds…” Invasive. Frustrating. Terrifying.

“Yeah,” Ollie agreed, nodding. “But we’ve been working on controlling it so it’s not constantly ‘on’, you know? It’s all hit and miss, but…yeah. That’s what we call bonding.”

“Well, I didn’t feel inclined to bite him, no,” I shook my head.

“I wonder if other conditions need to be met, then,” Ollie mused as he looked towards Eric. “I mean, Beck and I did it on instinct, but we were so far gone with the mating heat…Do you think the weeks between meeting and finally satisfying the heat and rut cycle contributed to the spontaneous bonding?”

“Possibly,” Eric said with consideration. “Then there’s the fact that you bit each other, so the physical position must play a part in it as well.” He glanced at me. “When you and Damon—”

“Nope,” I held up an index finger, already guessing where his question was heading. “That’s taking things a bit too far.”

“We’ll circle back to it,” he shrugged, then asked, “would you mind if I conducted some tests? I just need some basic samples. Hair follicles, blood, semen: the usual.”

“Semen?” I backed up a step. “Why? Isn’t Damon’s condition proof enough that everything down there’s in working order?”

“Well, I’d like to compare your semen to Beckett’s. Comparing a bonded alpha to an unbonded one. It may hold the answers to questions we have about inter-species breeding.”

“Inter-species breeding?” My voice pitched higher with the question as my head swam.

“He’s not going to use your sperm to impregnate any other omegas,” Ollie said, but the words did little to reassure me.

“Otheromegas,” I repeated.

The fact that I’d knocked up anyone at all was still freaking me out.

I sat down heavily in the armchair I’d started in and ran my palm over my face. “Christ, this is actually happening, isn’t it?”

“Let’s steer away from talking about pregnancies for now, yeah?” Beck suggested. The comment itself was laughable coming from him, given that he was bouncing two babies in his lap. Babies that he had put inside Ollie.

“Here, hon, drink some more coffee,” Jazz suggested, pushing my mug into my hands, and I startled at the sound of her voice. I’d forgotten she was even in the room. “Don’t go passing out on us now, okay?”

I drank because it was easier than talking. Who would have thought that at forty-two years of age, I’d be panicking over knocking someone up? Plus the whole ‘I’m not human’ thing, but I’d pretty much already come to terms with that.

“Have you shifted yet?” Beck asked me gently after I’d taken a few deep gulps from my cup.

And maybe I haven’t come to terms with not being human after all, I thought to myself.

In response to Beck, I just sighed and shook my head. “I wouldn’t know how, and it’d be just my luck that I’d get stuck in my animal form or somethin’.”

To my surprise, Beck didn’t laugh at me. He nodded and hummed his agreement. “I had the same concerns. But after Ishifted that first time, it was just instinct.” His brow furrowed. “Of course, I kind of followed Ollie’s example through the bond. You don’t have that.”

Ollie giggled and then clamped his hand over his mouth when everyone turned to frown at him. “Sorry,” he offered sheepishly. “That just reminded me of earlier, when Day…” Expression falling, Ollie looked to his feet. “Never mind.”

“Anyway,” Beck redirected, “you should consider trying to shift. When I shifted, it was like…like missing pieces had all been put together inside me. I stopped freaking out about being a shifter because it felt natural, like it had been a part of me all along.”

“Technically,” Eric interjected, “our running theory is that itwasa part of you. Just hidden, or locked away, or whatever analogy you’d like to use.”

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