Page 166 of Knot Playing Fair 2

I ducked down to catch his gaze with mine before speaking again. “I was afraid you’d say that. Which is why I wanted to talk to you about a way you could be more of a... part of things, I guess you could say. Even if it’s only some of the time, not always.”

He frowned. “I don’t know what you’re asking. A part of things how?

I took a deep breath.

“It’s illegal, just like every other damn thing for omegas seems to be illegal,” I said. “But, I did some digging, and found a fair amount of informal research on betas taking omega fertility hormones in the run-up to a pack heat. If you were willing to risk it, they say it lets betas be part of a pack mating bond as long as the heat lasts. Is that something you’d want, Nat?”

Nat gaped at me, his mouth hanging slack.

SIXTY-EIGHT

Nat

MIA WANTED ME TO TAKEomega hormones. Or rather, she wanted to know ifIwanted to take omega hormones. She was offering me, to the best of her ability, a chance to be part of the bond... for a few days, at least.

I’d stuttered something about needing to think about it, probably looking about the same as I had right after Blake Berlusconi’s goon had punched me in the kidneys in a back alley. Mia seemed to understand that she’d blindsided me.

“Okay,” she’d said, and kissed me lightly before heading for the nest she shared with Luca.

Staring blankly at the wall of my room, I lasted about an hour before I couldn’t take it anymore. And now, here I was, pacing restlessly back and forth across the length of the converted attic where Emiel slept as I tried to verbalize the crazy ping-pong match going on inside my skull.

“What if I do it and I hate the way the hormones affect me?” I said, my hands tangled in my hair. “I’m not an omega, I’m a beta! Isn’t it unnatural to try and change that?”

Emiel was lounging on his bed with his laptop out and Princess curled up next to him. At that, he looked up.

“Is that you talkin’, or your old man?”

I came to a halt so abrupt it felt like I’d walked face-first into a brick wall. “What?”

“I’m saying, that sounds like your shit-stain of a dad,” he said. “Not you. If Luca or Mia had been alive fifty years ago when the fuckin’ fascist regime used to rip out omegas’ wombs and remove their mating glands, would you call it unnatural if they wanted to take hormones so they could bond?”

My stomach rolled in a sudden bout of queasiness at the reminder of where we’d been as a society a scant few decades ago.

“No, of course not.” I rewound the words that had poured out of my mouth in an unfiltered stream of consciousness. And goddamn it... they’d been my dad’s words, just like Emiel had said.

I was standing there with my mouth hanging open, and I must’ve stayed like that too long—because Emiel frowned and asked, “You okay?”

My left hand was still tugging painfully at my own hair. I unclenched my fingers and let it drop.

“Christ,” I said. “He’s still living rent free inside my fucking head—even after everything that’s happened.”

“Yeah,” Emiel agreed without judgment. “Shitty dads tend to do that.”

He paused, his attention visibly turning inward in a way that I knew meant he was feeling something through the bond.

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