Page 32 of Knotty New Year

“You’re biologically dependent, Candy. You’re scratching at your neck like you’ve got fleas. It’s making you itchy to be apart from him.”

“It’s probably just a rash.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What did he do?”

I crumpled. “Where do I start?”

“How about with why all your clothes are on the floor?” She gestured to the piles along the walls and the open suitcases.

“I’m packing. For our first vacation ever.”

“Yeah. New Year’s Eve with the future in-laws, the reason you told Soleil not to come home early from the Caribbean. Which I’m still mad about. With you and her both gone, my New Year is gonna suck donkey balls. When is he picking you up? Today, tomorrow?”

I couldn’t look at her. “I’m not sure he is picking me up. I think he’s sending me on ahead.” After she let out a string of expletives so loud my mom yelled up the stairs for us to turn down the television, I finished, “By myself, while he hangs out with hot lady doctors and hides the fact that I even exist.”

Rain grabbed both my hands in hers. “Tell me.”

Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I told Rain everything: how he’d changed almost immediately after we’d claimed each other. How he’d been too busy to talk, which made it all that much harder to be mated to a stranger.

“An old, soon-to-be-dead stranger,” Rain muttered. “Go on.”

“And then this doctor came to the house, and she was his age, but super hot, you know? Unfairly thin and elegant, smart, with perfect clothes, and when she asked who I was, he got awkward about it. He hasn’t told anyone, and I’m not sure he’s going to.” I knew I was being slightly dramatic, but sometimes emotional exaggeration was a girl’s best friend.

“What. The. Actual…” Rain stopped for a calming breath. She held up a finger and closed her eyes, pressing her other hand to her diaphragm.

I knew what that meant. Rain had anger management issues, and even though she’d taken every meditation, yoga, and emotional health course our local Omega League offered, she just got madder and madder as the years passed. Her latest online therapist was big on using a certain pattern of breathing to calm down.

While I waited for her to finish her pattern, I thought about the Omega Bride subscription that Mom had just sent me on my tablet, and wondered if I’d even need a wedding dress. My eyes stung with tears.

Huh.Maybe I needed to try the breathing.

When I sniffled, Rain stopped trying to breathe peacefully and started pacing, all five feet no inches of her bristling with rage.

I sat on the edge of the bed. “I think he regrets claiming me.”

She made a weird growling noise. “That’s not possible. What was the doctor’s name again?”

I told her, and she looked it up on her phone. “Aw, hell. She’s practically Margot Robbie with a PhD in molecular biochemistry. Thank goodness she’s a beta… andnot his true mate.”She rolled her eyes at me. “And he still wants you to go meet his family, right?”

“I suppose. He texted me and said if I wanted to start planning my future wedding, his sister Kati would help.” It had kind of surprised me to hear his rich sister was a wedding planner. But I guess even billionaire betas needed something to fill their days.

Rain blinked. “Wait. You said he was sending youon your own, to meet his horde of siblings?” I threw her my phone and let her read his texts. “Holy shit—your wedding? He honest to god calls ityourwedding.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, definitely needing the breathing now. Of Pax’s nine siblings, eight would be at the lodge. Meeting the future in-laws was hard enough. Meeting them alone? Terrified me more than a little. “I’m sure he meantourwedding.”

“Sure. Slip of the thumb,” she muttered. “Old people suck at tech.”

“He’s a CEO. He doesn’t suck.”

“Wait. Are you telling me he doesn’t go diving?” She pointed to her crotch, as if I didn’t know exactly what she meant.

I rolled my eyes. “No, Rain. He’s all about the breakfast in bed.” I managed to laugh. “I didn’t know a woman could get sore from too much oral, Rain. The man is insatiable.”

“Damnit, you make it hard for me to want to murder him, Candy. An alpha who eats pink breakfast tacos in bed? Those aren’t all that common.”

I knew that; at the Omega League, we even had a name for alphas who didn’t snack down south. We called them Uptown Men, sometimes in front of their faces. They thought it was a compliment about their social status, but it was really omega code for “selfish lover.”

“Sex isn’t the problem, Rain. I’m just not sure he really wanted a mate. Or at least, not one like me. I think he’s having second thoughts. I keep wondering if he’s looking for a way out.”

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