Page 73 of Labor of Love

There was a beep from the other end of the line as Grandma Josie bowed out of the conversation before Ezra could respond. Giovanni was going to have to get that woman something nice, after the rightful amount of side eye he’d send her for putting him in this situation in the first place.

“You’ve wanted to mate me since middle school?” Ezra asked.

“No, I’ve wanted to fuck you since middle school,” Giovanni corrected. “I’ve wanted to be your mate since I was about five, if I remember right. That was when Mom gave me my first relationship talk.”

“Five?” Ezra’s voice had gone breathless, and the scent of awed hope was starting to bloom off his skin.

Giovanni nodded as he pulled into his driveway. “Five. Now, if you’re amenable I’m going to lay you down on my bed and put my head between your legs.”

“Yes.” The word was out of Ezra’s mouth before Giovanni had finished speaking.

Giovanni ran his fingers over Ezra’s bare neck, picturing what it would look like with a silvery mating scar painted across the skin. Ezra hadn’t agreed to the bite yet, but Giovanni was willing to wait decades if he had to.

Just lying on his back with Ezra snuggled into his side as they came down from the afterglow was enough for him. It would always be enough. After all, Giovanni had been fully prepared for rejection when he’d brought the omega to his house.

It would have hurt, but it was Ezra’s choice. Giovanni couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than curling up with the other man, even without the sexual elements.

He’d tried to date over the years, but no matter if they were a female or male omega, another alpha or a beta, Giovanni never seemed to find the spark of permanent interest. It had been Ezra since the start; it had always been Ezra.

Giovanni had his suspicions as to why that draw had been so strong, even when it had been mostly platonic.

Fated mates were rare, but they did happen. A couple dozen pairs popped up every generation or so, characterized by immediate romantic or sexual attraction that never entirely faded and a mate bond that snapped on the first bite and lacked the need for reinforcement of normal mate bonds.

Of course, to confirm that suspicion he’d have to find a shaman capable of making the distinction between a persistent childhood crush and the mate pull—and shamans were rarer than hen’s teeth these days.

Or wait until Ezra let him bite him and the mate bond formed—or didn’t, as the case might be.

Which brought Giovanni back to a question that had been sitting in the back of his brain since he’d realized Ezra was pregnant.

“Am I going to have to fight some random military alpha for father of the year?” Giovanni asked.

Ezra turned over and burrowed into his side, a sad chuckle slipping past his lips. “No, Edmundo’s dead. He was doing a rotation on base security and died in the line of duty, domestic gone wrong. After his funeral his mother started to get nasty about… everything, so I got out of there as fast as I could.”

Giovanni pulled the omega closer, running fingers over tightly coiled black curls. Even if Edmundo hadn’t been Ezra’s mate—even if they hadn’t been closer than a passing friendship—losing the person who had helped make your child had to be painful.

“What was he like?” Giovanni asked.

“We weren’t friends, if that’s what you’re asking,” Ezra snorted. “We ran in the same circles, most military shifters do, but… well, he was a bit of a preppy rich boy from one of the big East Coast city packs, and you know how Grandma Josie raised me. But he was so sweat and a bit naive about how the world works for people outside of the upper middle class.”

Giovanni made a noise of acknowledgement. The Fleet household had never gone hungry, but they were barely on the edge of middle class. A lot of the food they ate came right out of Grandma Josie’s garden or from kills that the two remaining Fleets made while shifted.

“He’d gone through a messy divorce,” Ezra continued. “The two of them got married when they were eighteen. She cheated while he was on deployment, they tried counseling, and it didn’t work. Our friends took him out when the papers finally got signed. We both got a little drunk and one thing led to another, we didn’t think anything of it.”

“Except it was a one-night stand between an alpha and an omega and your birth control failed?” Giovanni said.

“We used the wrong kind of condom,” Ezra admitted.

Giovanni pulled back to stare down at his childhood friend and the delicate blush that was spreading across his face. The wrong kind of condom, a human grade condom, without the extra space that allowed for a knot, even a deflated one. The thing had probably rolled off and gotten lost in the bedding the second friction was introduced to the proceedings.

“We were tipsy,” Ezra protested when he caught sight of Giovanni’s judgmental eyebrow. “And you know that hormonals are hit and miss with most omegas.”

Giovanni actually hadn’t known that one and was suddenly glad that he’d never risked leaving birth control up to the various partners he’d taken to bed. Looking back on it, some of them had definitely been trying to baby trap him, even some of the one-night stands.

“Okay, I am going to be about five percent less judgmental about that,” he said. “But, Ezra, really? Why did you even have human grade condoms on offer?”

Ezra rolled his eyes. “Because I don’t discriminate with my one night stands, some people don’t like the mess, and most human women don’t trust an omega when they say they don’t have enough swimmers in their spend to actually do anything outside of a heat.”

“Fair enough… Do you want to go get dinner later?” Giovanni asked.

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