Page 6 of Vegas Baby!

“Come back to my room with me?” he asked. Or maybe it wasn’t a request.

I swerved over to them, recognition—and her candied pecan scent—hitting me like a brick. “Ava?”

The omega jerked, swinging panicked hazel eyes toward me before she recognized me in turn. “Luke? What are you doing here? Do youlivehere?”

One thing more important than answering her questions clawed at my every instinct.

Scent match.

Ava’s scent sang through me, even with all the burnt edges to it.

Fucking hell. I hadn’t seen her since she was a tween running after Nathan and me. I hadn’t talked to her brother in ages, not since I’d moved to Nevada.

“Is this guy bothering you?”

“No, he’s?—”

“Her scent match.”

Absolutely fucking not.

I stared at her obviously pregnant stomach with numbness crawling up my spine. I’d known about her crush on me through a good chunk of our childhood, and out of respect for her brother being my best friend, I had always done my best to shut it down. Ava hadn’t presented as an omega the last time I had seen her. I’d had no idea we would turn out to be scent matches. If she had, I’d have known that we were scent matches, and the baby she was carrying would’ve been mine and not the child of whoever this fucker with her was.

“You’re being a shit scent match if your omega is crying in the streets,” I snapped.

The other alpha looked way too fucking polished. Who the hell walked around the Vegas Strip in a suit?

“Fuck you! I’m not the one who made her cry.”

I wasn’t sure who the hell he thought he was fooling. Who else would’ve made her cry like that? “You’re the only one around here.”

Ava let out a soft distress whine and the primal demand to pay attention to her roared up my spine. “It’s not his fault. We just met and he was trying to help.”

Why was this all getting weirder by the minute? Had this asshole literally passed her on the street, declared them scent matches, and invited her back to his room when she was already obviously in distress?

Nathan would push me off a cliff if I ever thought about walking away from his little sister in a situation like this. I wouldn’t regardless. I didn’t care if this guy was scent matched to her; Ava was mine too, and unlike this asshole, I wasn’t going to tell her until she was in a better mindset. She could find out later when I washed up and she was in a better state of mind.

“You just met and he’s asking a crying woman back to his room? Classy.”

The other alpha growled. “I was offering her the space. I wasn’t going to stay there with her.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “Sure. Super believable. Ava, you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Ava launched into a tale of meeting her baby daddy when she was eighteen, the long-distance relationship, and all the way up to Bryce exploding the whole can of worms a few minutes ago.

Holy fucking shit.

Guilt sat like a ball of lead in my chest. I never should’ve left her behind. There was no way she’d be in this situation now if I had stayed. It didn’t matter now that staying might’ve killedme. I was safe, and Ava was fucked. That was a consequence of leaving I had never expected.

If she had been old enough when I had bolted out of town, maybe I could’ve asked her to come with me, but her mom probably would’ve called the cops, saying I was kidnapping her, however willingly Ava might have come with me.

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. “I already quit my job and ended the lease on my apartment because I was supposed to move to New York at the end of the month.”

“I live in New York.”

If this asshole thought she was goinganywherewith him, he had another think coming. “I’m not letting her move in with someone she met today.”

“Who the hell evenareyou?” the other alpha growled.

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