Page 44 of Bitter Heat
“Maybe,” Kerry admitted. “And maybe I’m embarrassed. To have been so wrong. To have made such a mess of it all.”
They sat in silence, weaving their hands around in the water, watching the darting fish. Letting the sun beat on their shoulders and the tops of their heads. The words they’d shared drifting on the air around them. Finally, when enough time had passed, and the silence felt safe again, Janus dared to interrupt it with a question, “When did you leave? How old were you?”
Kerry didn’t hesitate to answer. “When I was fifteen. I knew it was time. If I stayed much longer, I’d go into heat, and that meant I’d have to choose an alpha to handle it for me. Here in the mountains, we don’t have ready access to heat suppressants before the onset. That’s why so many of us contract young. And part of why our birth survival rates are so low.”
Janus nodded. He was well aware of that. He’d checked on a pregnant seventeen-year-old omega the other day. It was something unheard of amongst the middle and upper classes in the city. There, the heat suppressants were administered to young omegas while they attended Mont Juror. They were then weaned off after meeting theirÉrosgápeor making a contract. First heats after years of suppressants were terrible, he understood, but better than beginning the paternity path at such a young age.
“I didn’t want to become a pater that young. And there were no young alphas on the mountain who appealed to me. I wanted to get to the city, be educated, and then find myÉrosgápe. I believed he was out there. That I’d find him. I knew it deep in my soul. I belonged to someone.” Here, Kerry’s voice trailed off, and the yearning in it reminded Janus of the first night they’d met and his words about the lake not being able to heal everything.
“I thought I’d find mine as well,” Janus offered quietly. “When I didn’t…” He shook his head. “I turned my back on a man I cared about—and who cared about me—for incredibly selfish reasons, and then went on to make some very poor choices with my life.”
“How poor?”
“Let’s just say I decided if life wasn’t going to give me what I thought I deserved, then I’d ruin what I couldn’t have. I drank. I gambled. I fought. That kind of poor.”
Kerry turned to him, a small smile playing on his lips. “I didn’t take your path, but poor choices are something we have in common at least.”
Janus wanted to protest that they’d always had plenty in common, but he didn’t know what that might be. Sharing a home, not to mention half-carrying Kerry through the woods—both of them naked and Kerry bleeding and in agony—seemed like enough to start a friendship to Janus, but it clearly wasn’t for someone as wary as Kerry. “Oh?” Janus asked, hoping the neutral question would open Kerry up again.
“I made so many poor choices,” Kerry said, slapping at the water with one hand. “Not at first, mind you. I mean, not willfully.” His brows furrowed and a thickness filled his voice like he was holding back a strong emotion. “Not onpurpose.”
Kerry scooped water up and let it drain from his hands, leaving a sparkle of sandiness in his palm. He dunked his hand under and washed it away. “Anyway, so I left Hud’s Basin when I was fifteen. I got on the heat suppressants and went to Mont Juror. I was young to attend, I know. I tested in, and they accepted me despite my age. And I did well enough in my classes. I’m not the brightest student, but I made it worth the scholarship they awarded me.”
“If you had a scholarship, then you are plenty intelligent.”
He shook his head. “I got the scholarship due to my deformity. It was an Omega Medical Scholarship, so while I was at Mont Juror, I had to submit to tests and allow research into my…” He trailed off and waved at his sunken chest. Water ran between his pecs. Janus’s eyes drifted down to his bulging stomach again, and the urge to touch it filled him. But he held back.
Kerry sighed, tucking his chin down to look at his chest. Shrugging, he met Janus’s eyes again. “I didn’t like having to let them do all of that to me, knowing that I was going to be in medical books as an oddity, but it paid for my schooling.”
“What kinds of exams did you have to submit to?”
Kerry raised a brow again. “All kinds. For example, one doctor told me that based on the location of my womb, which is lower than the average omega, I should be safe to birth a child. Probably.” He frowned. “Other doctors have been less sure.”
The nurse and now pseudo-doctor in Janus leapt on this new information about Kerry’s chances. He needed to know more so that he could prepare for any eventuality, and he felt vaguely ashamed that it wasn’t until this conversation that he’d realized he should even ask. He’d been too busy worrying about the reasons why Kerry didn’t want the child to consider the safest way of delivering him of it when the time came. “Was there any indication that if the child grows too large, labor should be brought on early by a doctor?”
Kerry shrugged. “I don’t remember them talking about that, no. But if the child grows very big, I suppose, it could get dangerous. But the Mont Juror doctors said my womb was low, nearly down between my hips, so…” He shrugged. It went without saying that his hips were quite slender and, therefore, a very big child would pose a danger there as well. “Is that right? It’s still low, isn’t it?”
Janus nodded. He’d noticed that in his examination, too. All omegas were different, but most had their wombs located a bit higher up. When their womb dropped and opened during heat, only an alpha’s long cock could reach inside. Kerry’s womb was low enough that Janus wondered if a very large beta’s cock might breach him. Of course, that was a test that no one would be performing.
Janus ran a hand over his face, trying to dispel thoughts ofanycocks breaching Kerry’s womb. It both aroused and upset him, especially imagining another alpha’s cock. He needed to be careful. The urge of an alpha to protect a vulnerable, pregnant omega was well documented, but his feelings were so laced with eroticism and possessiveness that he was in danger of forgetting that Kerry could never belong to him.
“Anyway, after Mont Juror, I didn’t meet myÉrosgápe,” Kerry said softly, the disappointment still in his voice. “Obviously.” He picked up a rock from the muddy bottom and tossed it, making rings in the surface of the water. “I moved into a small apartment with my friend Reyman. He was a beta and had some extra space. He’d come from Blumzound, so he knew what I was trying to escape.”
“Escape…” Janus frowned. “I understand that you felt like an outsider, but I thought you loved it here.”
Kerry splashed his face, and Janus admired the copper-colored freckles appearing on his nose and cheekbones. So pretty. “I do. But before…” Kerry grimaced. “Beforeeverything, I believed that the world was betterout there. Anywhere out there. The boarders here had convinced me that city alphas were more cultured and brighter, that they all had fantastic jobs and wealth. I dreamed of a future that wasn’t about scraping by and hoping for the best, and working my fingers to the bone.”
Janus had seen enough of that in the last few weeks that Kerry wasn’t far from the mark. Had he stayed in Hud’s Basin, he’d have several children and be working himself into exhaustion most likely.
Kerry went on, “Monk’s House is nice now, but six years ago it was falling apart.” Kerry twitched and darted a shy glance at Janus. “My alpha paid to have it fixed up. A courting gift to me. One of many. Too many, I see now.” Kerry’s shoulders drooped. “I wasn’t worth all that.”
Janus bit his tongue, wanting to argue, but something about the distant look in Kerry’s eyes and the careful set to his face told Janus they’d reached a fork in the road. A single word from Janus could end this now.
It reminded Janus of the nights when he’d courted Caleb at the Philia soirees. Sometimes, he’d sensed that Caleb wanted to confess something important to him, and not wanting to hear it, knowing it would change everything, he’d purposely cut Caleb off, redirected the conversation, and dragged the charade of their potential future out for so much longer than it’d needed to go. Hurting them both in the process.
This time, he kept his mouth shut and let Kerry say whatever he needed to say. They weren’t courting. They were just trying to be friends. Or housemates. Or doctor and patient. Janus didn’t know anymore, but he wanted Kerry’s truth out in the open, so they could both move past it.
Kerry caught Janus’s eye and said, steadily, “When I met him, I was nothing and no one. He didn’t have to work that hard to win me. I’d have gone with him forso much less.”
