Page 57 of Instant Bond

“Is there some other alpha out there who I’m going to have to fight when he gets pissed about me trying to replace him?”

“Another alpha?” I questioned. I didn’t have a clue what he meant.

“Ty’s dad,” he clarified. “I never really asked because it seems like he isn’t in your life, but…”

I shook my head. “He’s not around. He won’t be around,” I added.

“He didn’t want to support you?” Karter asked. He sounded angry on my behalf.

“It wasn’t like that. He doesn’t know about Ty, actually.”

“You never told him?”

I blew out a long breath. “It’s kind of a long and dumb story, but I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”

“I want to know everything about you, Cameron.”

“Um, okay,” I said. I wasn’t too nervous about telling the story. He already basically knew everything anyway, and had never judged me. “To start off, my parents were betas. Well, everyone in my family, really. I don’t think anyone on either side of my ancestry had presented as an alpha or omega in, like, forever. So when I did, my parents were really thrown.”

“They didn’t like it?”

“They weren’t upset or anything, they were supportive. They were great, really.” It wasn’t often I thought about my parents. I kept myself busy and tried not to linger on the past. “But they just… Didn’t get it, you know? They couldn’t understand how I felt and I wanted to feel understood. And, uh, so I kind of went through a rebellious phase.”

“A rebellious phase?” Karter echoed, chuckling a little. “I have a hard time imagining you being rebellious. Did you wear a leather jacket and ride a motorcycle?” He teased me.

I snorted, giving him a light smack on the shoulder. “Shut up, you know what I mean. I went to parties and stayed out and stuff like that.”

“And that’s where you met him?”

“Well, kind of, yeah. Basically. I met a few guys, if you know what I mean. Alphas.”

“Sounds pretty rebellious,” he acknowledged.

“Anyway, he was just a friend of a friend. He was visiting from another state, actually. And, um, we met and we got along pretty well and, you know, did whatever, and then he went back home.”

“And then you realized you were pregnant.”

“Yeah. I always made them use a condom but I guess something screwed up that time.”

“It happens. You must have been scared,” he commented, stroking down my hair. I smiled, leaning forward to kiss him.

“I was scared shitless, yeah. My parents were too, I think, but they tried not to show it. They didn’t get pissed at me like I thought they would. They helped me a lot.”

“Ty was two when they passed, right?” He remembered. We’d only talked about it once before, but I’d at least told him that much.

“Right. And we didn’t really have a lot of money, they didn’t have anything to leave me. The bank was taking the house so I just sold as much of their stuff as I could to get enough money to leave town.”

“Starting over in a new place with a two-year-old,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine.”

“Yeah, that part sucked. Like, really bad. But it got better.”

“And the alpha?”

“I could have gotten in touch with him, through my friend,” I said. “If I’d wanted to. At first I was too embarrassed, and then after everything happened with my parents… Well, I looked him up and I found him online.”

“Did you reach out to him?”

“No. He had pictures of his wedding up, and he already had a new baby with his wife. They were mated and everything,” I added. “I felt too guilty to say anything. I didn’t want to, like, ruin his life.”

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