Page 1 of Alpha Dragon's Mating Contract
1
RAPTOR’S RUT PROBLEM
“These are my conditions,”Raptor announced, waving a sauce-covered spatula at the contract.
His interviewee watched as brown sauce splattered across the printed pages. “Uh.”
“Tick tock. I emailed it to you. Haven’t you read it?” Raptor clucked his tongue. The dinner crowd was almost here, and he didn’t have time for wishy-washy small talk.
The young man eyed the contract again. Then he looked at the stains on Raptor’s apron, and the burned sleeve of his T-shirt. “Are you sure you can pay me? This seems like a lot.”
Raptor stared.
Behind him, hidden in the hallway, his butler snickered.
“I told you. You shouldn’t hold your interviews in the kitchen,” Hassel whispered. “Everyone thinks you’re some poor, overworked chef.”
Raptor’s sharp hearing picked it up. His interviewee completely missed those words.
“Iamoverworked,” Raptor grumbled. Rather, hiscockwas overworked, because he kept going into these random ruts that were hell to get through by himself. It was why he was searching for a rut partner in the first place.
All of his candidates had either failed their interviews, or quit within the first few days of being employed.
His current interviewee scrunched his brow. “I don’t know.”
Raptor sighed noisily and flapped his hand at the door. “Then stop wasting my time. Shoo! Scram!”
He snarled and flashed his eyes red. The man yelped and scrambled out through the back door; Hassel held it open for him.
Elsewhere in the kitchen, the other cooks continued their prep work without even pausing, because this happened three times a week.
Good thing the Nood’s Good staff knew to keep their mouths shut.
Hassel closed the door and wandered over, ever so smug in his farmer outfit. Not that he had spent a day in his life in the fields, that impostor.
“Sorry to inform you, Chef Master, but yousuckat interviews,” Hassel crowed.
Raptor flipped him off and turned back to his busy kitchen. “Go the fuck away.”
“Wow, youreallyneed to get laid.”
Raptor could get laid, no problem. But finding someone who could be here at the snap of his fingers, someone who wouldn’t bat an eyelid at his desires... That was more difficult.
Especially when he really wanted to breed his partner.
It burned, knowing that he didn’t have a mate. His twin, Ace, had recently found an omega and knocked him up; Ivo had just given birth to a set of beautiful identical twins.
Most days, Raptor tried not to look out of his bedroom window at Ace’s property next door, where Ace had built Ivo a giant nest.
Until a few months ago, Ace and Raptor had spent all their free time together. They hadn’t needed anyone else. Then Ivo happened, and now Ace spent a lot more time curled around his omega.
Raptorwasn’tjealous.
I want a mate too! Why is it so difficult to find one?
A quiet voice in his heart said,Because you’re too strange for most omegas to accept.
Raptor grumbled under his breath and stirred his pot of sauce.
