Page 94 of The Price of Ice

Kallen frowned, trying to remember how he’d done it. “Not at first, with you, I just—” His teeth clicked as he bit back the rest of the sentence. He’d wanted Levy so badly and he’d simply understood that wasn’t attractive, that toattracthe had to stop reaching and open up instead. “At first, I thought what would be appealing and I don’t know, I thought of myself as an oasis. I really connected to that, and I got all calm and kinda left it there.” He shrugged, even though obviously Levy couldn’t see it. “And it worked.”

He bit his lip, but this time Levy’s answer didn’t take long. “An oasis.” He sounded thoughtful, not shocked, at least. “But you said you offered them a hug, right? Not just the oasis?”

“Well... it’s kinda the same thing, isn’t it? An oasis is a place where you are safe, where you get what you need.” His throat clicked so loudly he was sure Levy must have been able to hear it. “I guess that’s what I was saying, really. Come here and you can get what you need. But in the case of an omega, a hug made sense.”

While with an alpha sex did.

He closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure leaving it unspoken wasn’t somehow worse. Levy had to know very well what he’d been offering since he’dgot it.

And then suddenly he remembered the way he’d used it to make Benny feel safe after that mess with his brothers. Maybe what the oasis offered wasn’t so much about alphas or omegas, but aboutneeds.

“Guess you were right,” Levy said slowly. “Very much so, if someone else got affected. So, are you hanging out with old friends, is that who these omegas are?”

“Have I told you about Analisa?” he found himself asking in response.

It wasn’t a lie.

“No, who’s that?”

Kallen went with it, despite the discomfort. “Childhood friend, we used to play together. She was really into baseball. Like proper obsessed. I’m shocked she’s not a pro!”

Levy laughed a little. “Not everyone’s crazy like us, you know.”

“Well, you should have seen Analisa and me arguing about what sport our group of friends would play!”

Telling Levy about their childhood shenanigans had helped soothe his guilt over the deflection, and then his friend asked, “So she is an alpha?”

Kallen closed his mouth, he’d been about to add something, but he’d forgotten what at the question. It wasn’t like people didn’t ask these things, but he couldn’t help but feel hownotcasual it was. “No,” he said after another beat of uncomfortable silence.

He didn’t mind Levy knowing, but it was hard to know how to feel about Levycaring. Maybe he’d been right all along and it wasn’t the best idea to try to be friends when they’d been halfway to somewhere else together.

“Oh, okay,” Levy said. He sounded openly relieved.

“Um, so how many days a week are you volunteering?” he asked, desperate to get them out of the spot.

HE DID HIS BEST TOput their awkward exchange out of his mind. Levy was all the way in Jiro and even if he was a little jealous, it wouldn’t come to anything.

Besides, Kallen had more immediate problems, such as Taylor wanting to meet up with him to discuss what had happened.

Kallen had agreed to drive down to the community centre where the meetings happened one hour early. Analisa had agreed to come with and wait in a café across the street with her laptop since she had work to do for school.

“Hello, Kallen.” Taylor had answered the bell a little too promptly for his taste, though maybe it was better if he didn’t have any more time to overthink it.

“Hello.”

“Come on in.” He tried to surreptitiously inhale and hold his breath while he followed the other omega to what turned out to be an office—a technique for pre-game nerves from a childhood coach.

“Welcome to my day job,” Taylor said, taking the chair behind a post-it covered desk and gesturing to the other one.

Kallen sat, gaze falling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have... I don’t know what I’m doing, with lure. It was stupid to offer to do it.”

“Pretty sure it wasn’t the best idea toaskyou to do it, either,” Taylor suggested in a thoughtful tone. “But what’s done is done, isn’t it?”

Kallen looked up, the other omega was smiling gently, the softness more in his honey brown eyes than on his mouth. “I guess.”

“I’m not gonna try and argue you out of feeling guilty, because God knows I have made a full-time pastime of it, but let me at least point out that I’ve got, what,” he squinted. “Twenty years on you?” Kallen confirmed with a nod. “And I have been running the group for over a decade, and I still made the wrong call. If anything, I owe you an apology for asking you to do something so rash.”

They were all good points, as things went, but Kallen shook his head. “I justreallywanted everyone to know about lure. For me it was... Well, it doesn’t solve everything, but at least it’s kept me safe a couple of times.”

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