Page 168 of Knot Playing Fair 2

Which had led me to have a heart-to-heart with Mia, where I’d begged her to have natural heats more often, going forward. She’d climbed in my lap, kissed me soundly, and promised that she planned to haveallthe natural heats from now on.

All of them.

Of course, my dick had promptly surged at that, and we’d ended up having noisy sex in the TV room.

God, I fuckinglovedmy life now.

Then, with typical A+ timing, I’d opened my laptop that evening to check my emails, and found an angry message waiting in my inbox from my parents.

Oh, joy.

SIXTY-NINE

Nat

AT FIRST, I’D DONEa pretty decent job of ignoring my parents’ emails and phone calls. My mother was pissed that the house in Jennings had been closed up and empty on the five—five!—separate occasions when she’d driven over there to ‘visit’ me.

The first email had demanded to know if I’d moved out. Subsequent emails had grown increasingly butt-hurt, accusing me of being the worst son in the history of sons for daring to do so without informing them first. After listening to thirty seconds of my father yelling at me through voice mail, I’d started deleting those, as well.

I told myself firmly that I had more important things to worry about, and that was one hundred percent true. Emiel and Zalen had wasted no time tracking down omega hormones for me, from a source Zalen assured me was reliable, if not exactly legal.

I was okay with that part. Anyone who’d had an omega in their life long-term understood that you weren’t going to get the shit you needed legally, a lot of the time. Trusting that the alphas wouldn’t have given me something they didn’t think was safe, I started the injections as soon as the stuff arrived.

And holy shit, had I underestimated what I was signing up for.

Omega heat and fertility hormones were a whole different ball game than beta hormones. It took exactly seventy-two hours for me to start rethinking a lifetime omega stereotypes.

“It’s been like this for you every single time your heat approaches?” I asked Mia, dumbfounded. “And you justwent to work like nothing was wrong?”

“Yup,” Mia said, stretching up to kiss my cheek. “Speaking of which, aren’t you due at the Elderflower Inn in half an hour?”

In the corner of the kitchen, Luca hid his mouth behind his hand.

“You’relaughingat me,” I accused.

“Maybe a little?” he admitted.

I grumbled something uncomplimentary and went to get my keys.

While the mood swings were bad enough, it was the waves of horniness that were the absolute work of the devil. I’d grown used to getting as much sex as I wanted since I’d moved into the Ladue house. Now, I was pretty sure it would bephysically impossibleto get as much sex as I wanted. Not without an embarrassing trip to the ER being involved at some point, anyway.

“It’s the alphas,” Luca told me, one evening when he was more inclined to sympathy than amusement at my expense. “When you and Mia lived together, she probably just felt irritable in the run-up. But you’re stuck in a house full of tasty alpha pheromones—plus, you’re not used to it. Makes it worse. Let’s go to your room... we can suck each other off real quick before dinner.”

And it helped. For, like, ten minutes.

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