Page 22 of Knotty New Year

Not an hour after my little omega had left the morning of Christmas Eve, her shoulders rounded and her head low, Lindyann called. Benjamin was on my office floor, playing with soft blocks, and I put her on speakerphone.

“How’s my baby?” she asked immediately. “Did the betasitter work out?”

I couldn’t answer her, and to my mortification, when I tried to speak, a sob was all that emerged.

A fucking sob.

“Is Ben okay?” Lin demanded, shouting for her husband to start packing and get a flight while I fought for control.

“He’s… fine,” I said, my voice stretched thin. “It’s not him. It’sher.”

“Her?”

“The betasitter. Not a beta. An omega. She was my true mate.” I clenched my hands into fists so tight, I thought they might break, and cut her off when she squealed with happiness. “And I can’t ever see her again.”

“Tell me everything,” Lin ordered.

“I can’t,” I said truthfully. “I’ll lose it completely, and I have to be here for Benjamin.”

“I’ll be home tomorrow.”

“That’s Christmas Day, Lin.”

“See you soon.”

“Don’t—” I began, but she’d hung up.

The next day, Lin and Ben Sr. arrived, dressed in tropical attire with winter coats, their faces appropriate for a funeral. Lin kissed Benjamin, then handed him to Ben Sr. and pulled me into my office.

“Jeez, this place is a wreck,” she muttered, picking up tissues and whiskey bottles as she made a circuit of the room. Her eyes fell on the trash can, overflowing with crumpled papers and topped with a soiled dish towel, and I blushed.

“Leave it,” I grunted, and she nodded.

“Now, tell me.” Leading me to the leather loveseat, she pulled over an ottoman so she could sit directly in front of me. “You found your true mate. And she left you? Is she an idiot?”

“No,” I replied. “She’s your age. Young, with her whole life in front of her.”

Lin blinked at me. “And she didn’t want you because…?”

I rubbed my hand over my face. “She wanted me. She fucking built a nest in your closet. Went into a mating heat.”

Lin growled low at that, paced to the door, and shouted, “Ben! Keep out of my old room!” He yelled back in the affirmative, and she settled back on the ottoman. “And after the heat—I’m assuming you stayed for that—what happened?”

“I didn’t bite her, if that’s what you’re asking. She begged me to, but I couldn’t. She deserves better than me. I sent her away with enough money to get back on her feet, enough plans in place. She deserves her choices to be—” I had to stop talking, because Lin slapped me across the face, hard.

“What thehell, Lin?”

She was glaring at me with more disgust and rage than I’d ever seen directed my way. “You went into your true mate’s nest, fucked her, knotted her, thendumped herand sent her home with money, like you could buy her off?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I protested.

She rose, dark curls bouncing around her reddened face. “You threw away your chance at happiness—you threw awayhers? For what? Do you know what it does to an omega, to be rejected like that? It empties her out. It makes her life flat and dull. I had a friend who lost fifty pounds and almost died, you asshole.”

I sat there, frozen, while she castigated me. Had I done that? Had I harmed Candy in some irreparable way? But I hadn’t meant to… I had meant to set her free. Maybe find her again someday in the future. I tried to stand, but staggered as a wave of dizziness flooded me.

“Pax?” Ben Sr.’s concerned voice at the door broke through the fog. He held his son in one arm, and the phone I’d left in the kitchen in the other. “It’s been ringing for the last ten minutes. Someone named Rain said Candy’s going to get engaged to Booger Nose in an hour if you don’t get your ass to Candy’s house. She wanted me to say these words: ‘You left her no choice.’ Is that a corporate espionage code or something?”

Lin pulled me to the door. “Go get your omega, Nicky. And bring her back. I can’t wait to meet her.”

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