Page 9 of Knot All is Forgiven

"Your last name?"

He stares at me unblinking, placing his hands flat on the desk. "You think my last name is Vickers?"

"It's not?"

"No, it's not!" he scoffs. "God, you listen to me put my foot in my mouth about your body type, but you didn't listen to my name?"

"Then what is it?"

"Icarus. Icarus Valentine." I cover my surprise with a cough, but it doesn't hide my amusement. He rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. "I get it, it's a shitty name. You don't have to remind me."

"I can kind of see where I got Vickers from," I mumble, not making eye contact with him. I'm mortified that I not only got his name wrong but also made fun of him for his unusual name. "Not to be a bitch, but why did your pack choose Valentine as its name when it sounds so bad with your first name?"

He sheepishly ruffles his hair. "Oh uh… I don't have a pack. Never met the right Alphas, you know?"

"Oh, I know. I don't have one, either. But I suppose that was obvious." We stare at each other for a moment, and I wonder if he feels as defective as I do. It's uncommon for an Alpha not to find a pack bond with someone. It's not as unusual as being an Omega who hasn't presented at thirty-two, but hey.

Maybe we're both a little broken.

He pushes the folder closer to me. "As I was saying before I sounded like a creep from another planet, your genome is pretty clearly one we would identify as having a high likelihood of presenting as an Omega. The only anomaly is this gene right here." He taps his finger on a string of letters and numbers. "It's one we've yet to catalog, so it must be fairly rare."

"Will you try to find out what it is?" I ask hopefully. "I've always said maybe I had some sort of genetic mutation, and that's why I hadn't presented."

"I love a challenge, Miss Cross." When he grins at me, he tilts his head, and I can imagine sitting across from a man like Dr. Valentine at a dinner table. For a moment, we look at oneanother in silence, not awkwardly or uncomfortably, but with curious gazes.

I feel comfortable around him. Like I've known him for ages. But that's weird, right?

Dr. Valentine clears his throat. "Anyways, the point of all this is that all signs point to you being an Omega. I cannot say definitively that you are or why you haven't presented yet, but I don't think it's all in your head, Jordan."

Every bit of tension my body has gotten used to holding in medical facilities drains out of me. A sense of relief washes over me.

And it quickly becomes tears.

"Oh – ah! What did I say?" the doctor stammers, searching his desk for a box of tissues. He eventually finds one on his bookshelf and brings it to me, sitting in the chair beside me. "What did I say?"

"It's nothing bad," I say through sniffles. "It's just … you're the first person to believe me. Up until now, I've been told that it's in my head, that I'm in denial, that maybe if I lose weight, I'll present…"

His chest rumbles with a growl at that last one. It startles him almost as much as it does me. We lock eyes for an awkward moment, and he clears his throat. "Well, I'm glad I could give you some relief, then." He hands me the entire file with the breakdown of what my genome says. "I wish I knew how to bring your Omega out. I…" he inhales deeply, and I wonder for half a second if he's trying to scent me.

But I already know I don't have an Omega scent. If I did, someone would've realized it by now.

And yet, I must be imagining a slight flare of his nostrils. His eyes drift closed, and he shakes his head slightly to clear it. "I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought there."

I sniffle, trying to dry up the happy tears still springing to my eyes at finally being believed. After all this time, there is someone who sees what I see. Unbidden, a rumbling sound fills the air, and my mind and body relax. It takes a moment for me to place the sound.

Dr. Icarus Valentine is purring.

And he looksdistraught.

"Oh shit, fuck," he stands up, stumbling away from me. "Goddamnit, my language, fuck!" He's tripping over himself to get behind the shield of his desk. I chuckle at the foul language coming out of the mouth of such a refined doctor, and he shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Jordan, Miss Cross, I don't know what came over me. I… That was all incredibly inappropriate of me."

I wave off his apologies. "No need to get your undies all twisted, Vick," I tell him.

"Don't call me Vick."

"What about Ick?"

He growls under his breath, "Om… Jordan." My eyes widen at his chastising tone. "This is spiraling wildly out of control," he mutters.

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