Page 6 of Knot Their Valentine

I may not know where I’m going just yet, but I’ll take my chance on independence.

Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?

Chapter Two

“No. No fucking way.” She has got to be fucking with me! I can’t believe I blindly trusted her. What is it about our mothers that allows us to let our guards down? I thought maybe she was finally understanding me. Maybe she wants to see me happy. Then I stepped into this hall, and the scent of apricots hit me.

“Oh, Harlow, isn’t it wonderful!” My mother’s giddy clapping echoes in the empty space. She ignores not only my words but the look on my face.

I try to look serious. I try to growl, but as an Omega, the best I can muster isn’t the least bit intimidating. “No. No, Mom, this is not wonderful!”

This is bullshit.

It is damn near impossible for an unmated Omega to get a lease on their own.

And by damn near, I mean that you need more money than my entire familial line combined. Which I do not have. I’ve been living back home with my parents for almost three weeks, and it has been driving me up a wall. So last week, I started begging for my dads’ help to find something of my own.

They clearly betrayed me to their beloved mate. Do they know this is where she brought me? If I tell them, will theyoverrule her? Not likely… She’s the center of their world, but more than that, she’s the damn boss in this family.

I stare my mother down, considering my options. I could run…

She isn’t deterred by my frown or the fact that I’ve now taken several steps away from her toward the emergency exit. She marches right up to me and pushes my pink hair behind my ear. This close, she doesn’t look as…powerful? She’s soft and cuddly. Strict but loving.

I know she loves me, she just doesn't understand me! She doesn’t even try to.

“Oh, Har, don’t be so grumpy.” Her vanilla scent is strong as all hell, but it’s also comforting. She’s my mom, after all. No matter how menacing, meddlesome, or difficult she is, she is always doing what she thinks is best for me. Even when I almost always disagree.

The only people who have ever been able to reel in her crazy are my fathers, and even they aren’t often successful.

“Grumpy? Mom, you’re moving me into an apartment that’s already occupied by an Omega! And his mates…” This time, the panic in my voice, or maybe the way my hands shake, get her attention. She sighs, reaching up to fix her perfectly in place gray hair, while her blue eyes take in the sight of my anxiety. Her scent changes, filling the air to calm me. It half works. Right up until I remember who’s on the other side of that door.

“Don’t be silly, you’ve known each other since before either of you perfumed! You won’t upset anyone’s instincts any more than you would mine.”

My mother, who’s never been very self-aware, pats my cheek, nods once, and turns to knock on the door.

She never gets the chance. The door swings open, and there he stands. The most insufferable Alpha alive and the bane of myexistence. Just the sight of his stupid handsome face sets me on edge.

Damn him.

“Good to see you again, Emily,” Caelum says, wrapping his obscenely beefy arm around my mother’s tiny form. “You’re looking radiant, as usual.” His compliment to my mother makes me bare my teeth. He glances up at me, slowly. As if just noticing I’m here.

As if my very existence is so minuscule that I don’t register to the superior Alpha.

“I hate you,”I mouth, glaring at him as he smirks.

“Right back at you,”he mouths back, and my mother is none the wiser.

When I was sixteen years old, I fell madly in love with Caelum Baker. He’d been my next-door neighbor most of my life and the son of my mother's best friend of twenty-five years.

For years, we only really interacted when they forced the issue. After all, they were the ones who couldn’t bear to be apart, and that had nothing to do with us. The more my mom tried to dress us in matching clothes or force me to play his dumb boy games, the harder I fought to dislike the kid.

That didn’t deter our mothers. They started scheming ways to get us to like one another, and all it did was create a rivalry. Who could do better in their respective sports. Who could get better grades? Who had better manners, and the list went on.

Until hormones, and being an Omega, did me dirty.

I still remember that fateful day, when I saw him shirtless in his tight-fitting football pants. Dumping water over his head. Shaking his shaggy hair…his muscles, which are so much fucking larger now, on display. I certainly wasn’t the only teenager drooling over him. But I was one of the few who’d already perfumed as an Omega.

His scent, his smile, everything about him drew me in, and like the silly love struck fool I was, I fell hard and fast as teen girls do.

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