Page 27 of Bully for Sale
Da sighed and wiped a hand over his face. “I know that’s how you see it, Ezer, but I’m trying to help you.”
“He’s decided I shouldn’t return to school. He wants me to sell my heatnow. Make me breed! Marry!”
Da didn’t look surprised. Ezer’s stomach tightened and twisted.
“Ezer, listen to me. I’m trying to protect you.”
Ezer went cold all over, reality bending and distorting as something near to understanding began to dawn. “You planned this with him.”
“I don’t plan things with your father,” Amos said. “He’d never allow that. Not now. But I planted the seeds of certain ideas in his head, knowing how they’d come to fruition, because I knowhim.”
Ezer shook his head. “No. You wouldn’t have.”
Amos put his hand on Ezer’s knee, eyes pitying. “But I did.”
“Why would you want me to sell my heat now? Breed and marry so young? Why? You’re an omega. You know what all thatmeans.”
“It means you’ll be safe.” Amos pulled his hand back and sighed. “The boy in question is in love with you.”
“What? Who? How? No, don’t answer those questions. I don’t care. You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. There are consent laws.”
Da put his own tea aside and leaned forward. “Ezer, listen to me. There are forces at work in your father’s heart that you can’t begin to understand. The risk of an auction for your first heat—and frankly ongoing heats—is so much higher than this plan. Who knows who might buy your heat? And for what purpose?”
“I think the purpose is rather obvious, but at least I’d have my own money then. Father is paying to have someone take me off his hands! I won’t have a dime to my name. Nothing of my own.”
“You’re naïve! An auction is full of risk. The bidders are vetted, of course, but once you’re alone in a heat house with an alpha, there’s no promise that he’ll be kind. And once you’ve agreed to breed with him, there’s no promise that he’ll be a good father to your children. He might, for example, kick them out of the house in the middle of the night and send them to their omega parent in the slums unless they agree to an early heat with a man of their choosing!”
Ezer shook his head. “Youwantme to do this?”
“I want you in a good situation with an alpha who won’t do to you the things your father has done to me. I want you happy, Ezer. You’re my baby, my dear son, my favorite.”
“Why? I’m not half as lovely as Shan, or as smart as Flo, or as handsome as Yissen, or as sweet as Rodan.”
Da’s eyes softened. “Is he still sweet? I’d hoped so.”
Ezer ground his teeth and said nothing.
“Ezer, haven’t you noticed that you’re different?”
“Stupid, you mean?”
Da blinked and rubbed two fingers between his brows. “Omegas have between five and eight heats in a lifetime. That’s a limited number of opportunities to reproduce, to have children with the alpha that they love.”
Ezer put his tea aside and stood up. “I know how babies are made, Da.”
“Sit down,” Amos ordered. “Listen to me.”
Ezer sat again, his stomach hurting, and a terrible feeling whatever his da was about to say, he really didn’t want to know.
“When I was a young man, there was an alpha in my hometown whom I cared for very much. He was handsome, and sweet. Small. Not much bigger than me. My father refused to let me consider any sort of relationship with him—not a heat, not a breeding, and definitely not a marriage. He wasn’t considered a good risk. He couldn’t read and he was poor. No future in it.”
A cold finger of knowing slid down Ezer’s neck.
“I never forgot him, though. Not through the first four heats with your father. Two were fruitless and the other two were your older brothers. So when I felt my fifth heat coming, worried it was the last, I did something very stupid.”
“Stop.” Ezer stood again. “I don’t want to know about this.”
“When the signs of the heat started, I left Wellport. I went back to my hometown and found Finn. He was still there. Married to a kind omega with whom he shared three children—two betas and an alpha. He struggled to feed them all. I understood then, when I saw how they lived, why my father had said Finn and I would never have stayed happy together.” Amos’s lips twisted. “But with the heat coming on, with the longing I’d always had for Finn, it didn’t matter to me anymore. Finn felt the same. He still wanted me, too, but we agreed we could never have more than this one heat, and that his omega and George must never know about it.”
