Page 68 of Their Alpha

“Hot off the presses,” I said, beaming.

Simon flipped through the thick, hardback book with a dragon on the cover. It was the advance copy of the first book in the new series I’d just written. The new, super steamy retelling ofThe Captive Omega Princes and Their Secret Dragon Princes, or as I’d rebranded it,Omega Fairy Tales. I’d published it under my own name, Gideon Battersea-Montgomery, too.

“I can’t wait to read this!” Simon said, flipping quickly through the pages. He stopped and scanned one page in particular, and his eyes went wide. “Maybe we should read this together, Sir,” he told Victor with a naughty wink.

“I can already envision a few scenarios where that might work perfectly,” Victor said in return.

“Guys, guys. Not around the babies,” Fletcher teased them.

I laughed, leaning into him and kissing his cheek. “That’s how we ended up with babies in the first place,” I whispered.

Fletcher and I shared a dirty giggle. In fact, he and Artemis had helped me write the hot scenes, since I’d only ever written for young adults before. We’d come up with a few ingenious ways to act out the scenes so I knew what I should write. It had been fabulous.

“I come with other gifts, too,” Victor said, looking excited. When we all looked at him, he said, “Forbearance and Nicodemus Goode were apprehended yesterday.”

I gasped in surprise. Then I nearly burst into tears of joy. “They caught them? Did they stop the trafficking ring?”

“Looks like it,” Victor said. “Better still, they found a dozen omegas who have been missing for some time. They’dbeen forced into, well, I hate to say it, but a brothel. They’ve all been taken to safety now, and they will be reunited with their families when and if they want to or helped into a better life, if that’s what they choose.”

“We’ll do everything we can for them,” Artemis said, thumping his friend on the back.

In the last year, while I was shifting my career and being celebrated by the book world, Fletcher and Artemis had been working to establish a foundation to help young people from The People of God on Earth and other cults and communities who wanted to get out find their footing in a new world. The Freehold Foundation also helped victims of trafficking to get the material and psychological help they needed to build new lives. A lot of that meant getting them new identities and surrounding them with people who would keep them safe in case their former abusers tried to find them again, but so far, we had a one hundred percent success rate.

Some of the people we’d already helped to find new lives were my brother Malachi and my sisters, Mary and Ruth. The three of them were living together in a house not that far away from our cliffside vacation home.

“I know they’ll be in good hands with your people,” Victor said, thumping Artemis’s back in return. “And now, Simon and I should get going and leave you guys to rest.”

“We’ll come back soon for a longer visit,” Simon said, squeezing my shoulder as he stood. “Bye, babies,” he cooed over our little ones.

I was so glad they’d visited, even if we were too exhausted for company.

“We’ve made so many good things,” I said, settling Brenda in her bassinet on one side of our bed as Artemistook Nathan and put him down in the other one. “Even if we had to work hard and overcome a lot do to it.”

“It was worth it,” Fletcher said, snuggling down into the pillows and closing his eyes.

“Definitely worth it,” Artemis echoed him as the two of us climbed into bed with him.

I snuggled against my omega and reached a hand toward my alpha. We would only be able to nap for a few minutes, but as long as we were together, I didn’t mind the sleep deprivation and struggles of having two new babies around. I was happier than I’d ever been, and I knew things would just keep getting better.

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