Page 46 of Knot Alone

“Maggie?” Linus asks, quiet and careful. They’re both uncertain, like they don’t understand what their noses are telling them.

“It sounds charming.” I choke out.

I know right then with sick certainty that my heat hasn’t dissipated.

I’m going to need to have sex again in a few minutes. I’m going to need to have sex with these two Alphas knowing that next week they’ll be at lunch while I’m home alone. They’ll be together, while I deal with my family’s Alpha intervention. They’ll sprawl in the spring sunshine, exchanging tender kisses while I lie to my family that I’m fine. It was just a hard heat; it was just for a weekend, I’m fine.

“Maggie?” The men cross the space between us, reaching out to ask, “What’s wrong?”

I shove away from their arms, stumbling to my feet with the blanket dragging me down. My stupid vagina doesn’t know what’s good for it because the air is thick with their scent. I clench at the movement, my body wondering why in the hell I’m moving away.

I wrap the blanket tight and breathe through my mouth, but it’s not enough.

Despite all the shit people have said to me about Omegas, I’ve never been so ashamed of myself as I am right now. I desperately want these two men who don’t want me.

And not… not just for the heat.

I want them. Like some Omega trollop in the terrible old books, I want these married Alphas for more than sex.

I’m ashamed for being so stupid. For being such an Omega. It’s not just about this heat or the next one. I want to sit with them on a blanket in the park and exchange our own silent stories. I want to know everything about them.

Naked on the floor before me, they take one another’s hands. That hurts, and it shouldn’t. I knew the score when we started.

“Maggie, you don’t have to come on a picnic with us,” Linus says. “You don’t… you don’t have to see us ever again.”

“What?” Why is he phrasing that like a question? Of course I’m not seeing them again. At least, not until my next heat, if they choose to be kind after seeing me lose my mind like this.

“You don’t have to go out with us. Just because we want you, that doesn’t mean you need to want us back. You’re more important than that.”

What… what?

“You want me to go to lunch with you?” I gulp out.

“Okay.” Graham takes control. “Let’s lay our cards on the table. Maggie, Linus, and I feel like you’re a piece of us that we didn’t even realize we were missing. Now that we’ve found you, we would like to take you to lunch and dinner. And if we were still 19 and didn’t know how creepy it sounds, we’d take you home with us, and bond, and make our lives together.”

That… my brain blue-screens. I must’ve heard wrong.

I look at Linus, who shrugs. “I thought it was obvious.”

“You… you’ve never wanted anyone else.” I stumble out.

“I have very high standards.” That’s putting it mildly. Somewhere during our breaks, Linus talked about his family’s attempts to shame him for Graham. How long it took for them to realize these men were desperately in love. They’d built a life together.

Linus isn’t the sort to bend, but he’s looking at me like he means it.

I look at Graham, who’s smiling, no trace of hesitation in his eyes or in his scent. While Linus showered earlier, Graham had murmured to me about society Omegas turning up at Linus’ dorm room when they were in college. Half of them had been teetering on the precipice of heat like Graham wasn’t even there. “It used to hurt,” he said, “knowing that everyone in his life, in his world, thought I was just a whim. But Linus proved himself to me. That he wasn’t going anywhere. Then I just felt bad for them, offering themselves up like cattle for a bit of his family’s fortune.”

“I promise you, Maggie,” Linus swears to me from the floor, “what we want, we want forever.”

Graham rolls his eyes. “Chill, Linus. We’re being chill.”

“You said ‘make our lives together’ that’s the same thing!”

“Forever is a loaded word.”

I cut them off by throwing myself into their arms, too overwhelmed for words. I desperately switch back and forth, trying to kiss them both at the same time while I stumble out a dozen ‘yes-es.’

“Yes?”

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