Page 10 of Knotty New Year

I straightened and stared at him. “Listen, Mr. Paxson. I get that you don’t want me here. I’m not a professional betasitter, I’m an omega. But I do have plenty of experience with children. And if I stay here through the end of the year, taking care of this baby, I get paid for my work and a ten-thousand-dollar bonus. I need that money to start my life over. When I’m done, I will leave this house and not darken your door again. I signed an NDA, so I’m legally bound to keep this entire experience secret. I do need the job.”

Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest. “You come from a well-off family in the Westclear community, Miss Kane. Your parents have no other children. They have enough money to give you what you ne—”

I stood, fighting the rage tears that threatened. “No one has enough money to give me what I need.”

His eyes widened in shock. “What the fuck doesthatmean?”

“You knowwhyI have an unfinished degree? Because my university automatically unenrolled me when I presented as an omega, sending a full refund for the final semester along with a letter of congratulations to my parents.” I wiped my eyes with the back of one hand. “I had a 4.0 grade average, and a professor who wanted to hire me as a teaching assistant. I had plans for a life where I would berespected.” I laughed. “And then I woke up one day with my dorm room smelling like what used to be my favorite dessert. And that was the end of having what I needed to be happy: a choice.”

His eyes felt heavy on me somehow. Like he was pressing on me with his regard. I folded back into the chair and spooned more peaches into Benjamin’s mouth, wiping his face with the cloth.

“What is it you wanted to do?” he asked, just when the silence in the room had stretched me to the breaking point. “Didn’t you want a family?”

I scoffed. “Not every omega just wants to be a baby factory. Sure, I wanted kids someday. But after my career was established.”

His voice was strangely rough when he finally spoke. “What… What were your professional plans?”

“Nothing amazing. I wasn’t hoping to go to med school. I was studying marketing, social media. I had just proposed a senior thesis on how larger companies could use their media footprint as well as donations to make a real impact on fighting poverty around the world.”

“Philanthropy. I wouldn’t call that ‘nothing amazing,’” he muttered. “Your parents didn’t fight for you to stay at the university? Omegas can—my sister Lin is an omega. She got her degree.” He sounded truly confused.

I let out a soft laugh. “Let me guess: you made sure she had the very highest-grade pheromone blockers so she could attend classes? They let her take her exams privately, so the hormones she released during stressful times didn’t affect anyone else? They probably excused her absences during her heats.”

He made an odd sound at that. I kept feeding the baby, who was now fingerpainting in dribbles of peach on his tray and babbling soft nonsense words. A few sounded like mama and dada, but I had the feeling he was trying to say peach, too.

“My parents are well off, but not like this. And they were soproudof me. It’s supposed to be a status thing, you know? An omega born into their family tree for the first time ever? They were over the moon. Started alpha shopping that very evening, while I cried.”

“Alpha shopping?”

I nodded at the horror in his tone. “You think unclaimed omegas get to stay that way? When we’re not permitted to work most jobs, not allowed to get a degree? I was a miracle baby, a late-in-life surprise. My parents say they need to see me ‘taken care of’ before they die, and they think finding an alpha is the best way to do that. As I recall, they waited an entire day to sign me up for Knotmate.com.”

“Forwhatthe fuck?” he barked.

I froze as his alpha bark pinned me in place. I’d never heard a bark at such close range, and for a moment, I was afraid I might wet myself. Palpable waves of rage flooded the kitchen. I held my breath, praying it would stop soon.

And then the anger was washed out of the kitchen in a split second, as Benjamin lifted his peach-covered face and said distinctly, “Fuck.”

Chapter5

Pax

The young woman in my kitchen was going to be the death of me. My inner voice corrected me:No, that’ll be your sister, after she learns you taught her one-year-old to sayfuck.

She hadn’t answered my question, and I’d fled the room in embarrassment. Not just at cursing, but at the way I’d lost control of my alpha impulses. I hadn’t barked in the presence of an omega since… Well, at least for a few years. For most of my adult life, omegas had hounded me, setting up all sorts of situations to try and force me to claim one of them. They’d engineered a ridiculous number of stunts to get close enough to “prove” they were my true mate. I’d barked at one particularly persistent one who’d tried to corner me in a men’s toilet at the opera.

Honestly, if I hadn’t realized this bundle of strawberries and cream was my true mate, I’d have thought she was another alpha-chaser. Well, and if I hadn’t already had my investigator pull everything from her pediatric dental records to her high school yearbook.

Shit, almost all her memories would be from high school, or before. I was such a fucking deviant, staring at her, sniffing at her, like this. Until today, I’d thought never meeting my true mate was an ugly trick fate had played. Now I knew she’d had a worse trick up her sleeve: sending me one I couldn’t claim. Not if I considered myself a decent man, and a decent alpha.

No. It wasn’t fate who’d done this. It was Theodore Sands. I stormed to my home office, grabbed my phone, and called my old PA. Damn him for retiring. Seventy wasn’t that old to still be working, was it?

Edward answered promptly, though I could hear his family singing Christmas carols in the background. “Yes, Mr. Paxson? Is everything all right?”

“No. You have to come back to work. I’m going to fire my new PA, and no one else can do this job.”

“No one else wants to put up with you, huh?” He laughed. “Give him a while. He’ll figure it out. Do you still have electricity?”

“Yes, why?”

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