They stared at each other as the birds cawed and swooped overhead. The trees rustled and swayed in the forest around them, and the house stood behind him like an empty, cavernous maw, devoid of anything but echoes of recent joy.

“Um, so, thanks,” Adrien said quietly. He licked his lips and looked down at the ground and then up at Heath again. “For, you know…”

“Buying your heat?”

“Yeah, and for being so nice.”

“Was I nice?” Heath asked. He remembered ordering Adrien to the ground outside and then rough-fucking him in the entryway. He regretted that treatment now.

“You were…” Adrien glanced away and then seemed to force himself to meet Heath’s eyes again. “You were what I needed. Thank you for taking charge.”

“Anytime.” He meant it, too. He’d take charge again right now if he thought Adrien truly wanted him to. There was a glimmer in the boy’s eye that made him wonder…but, no, he’d follow the contracts to the letter. There was every reason to hope the breeding would take, and then he’d have over a year of Adrien at his side. He could get to know every inch of Adrien inside and out, find out what made him tick, discover what motivated a young man like him. Learn the scent and look of him in every season. There was no reason to push it now.

Well, aside from the growing sense of despair at the thought of Adrien getting into his car and driving away. The impending loss reminded him of how he’d felt after Nathan died. Not so soul-wrenching, but a similar imprint of pain, just enough that it was horribly familiar.

“I guess I should go,” Adrien said, scuffing his tennis shoes on the

ground.

You don’t have to, Heath almost said, but he kept his mouth tightly closed on the words.

“I’ll, uh, I guess I’ll be in touch. About how it goes. If the breeding took or not. I should know in a week or so.”

Heath nodded.

Adrien chewed on his bottom lip. “Before I leave, though, I wanted to ask one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Would you kiss me?”

Heath grunted and took two long strides forward, grabbed Adrien by the waist, and kissed him hard and possessively. He tasted the boy’s tongue and plunged deeper, taking ownership of his mouth. Then he released him, his heart pounding and his throat working to keep from demanding that Adrien stay.

“Thank you,” Adrien whispered, his lips red from their kiss. “I’m glad it was you.”

He broke out of Heath’s arms like he was in some kind of rush, jumped into his car, and started it. He pulled away down the drive, kicking up dust and leaves behind him.

Heath stared after him, stood his ground and let the surrounding forest soothe his sense of loss.

PART TWO

Pregnancy

Chapter Eight

THE DAYS FOLLOWING Adrien’s first heat were covered in a strange sense of unreality. He walked through the world as though barely tethered to it. Some vital part of himself remained behind in Heath’s heat cabin, and only his shell went about his day-to-day life.

For the third day in a row, he sat at his desk in the campus’s old art building staring at the latest swatches of the Hontu fabric he was studying.

The patterns were as bright as ever, the design as flawless, and the mystery of meaning just as deeply hidden within the heart of the fabric itself, but he couldn’t seem to summon a passion for it. Today, he held an orange and blue swath, noting that it demonstrated a more evenly battened weft than any he’d previously studied, but he couldn’t focus his mind long enough to start a list of investigative questions. Even wondering “why this change?” and “how this change?” didn’t come to him.

He rested his chin in his hand and growled at his own lack of focus. After a few more minutes of staring at the new fabric, he put it aside, and spoke sternly to himself. “What’s wrong with you? You did this so you could stay in school and continue on to become a professor. You’re ambitious and intelligent, remember? Get it together.”

But no matter how he argued with himself, his mind wandered until he finally abandoned his desk and left his work behind in order to return to the comparative nest of his room.

“How’s it going?” Lance asked, falling into stride beside him on the sidewalk outside the art building.

“All right,” Adrien muttered. He wanted to get back to his room and curl up in his bed. He missed the stew Heath had fed him, though he couldn’t say why. When he’d first finished the heat, he’d thought he’d never want to taste it again. Now it seemed like the only thing that would satisfy him.

Lance clucked his tongue. “I don’t buy that, friend. In fact, I’d say you’ve seemed sort of down since you got back.”

“Is that unusual?” Adrien asked, stopping in his tracks. He didn’t know

how he was supposed to feel or behave after having turned himself over to someone like Heath, but he felt disoriented and lost. And a little ashamed.

Not of what he’d done, or what they’d shared, but that he couldn’t seem to get his act together now that he was back at school. Heath had bid on him because he was ambitious. Where was his ambition now? Fucked away in a week?

He took hold of Lance’s arm and said, “Is there something wrong with me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He grinned. “But for someone who earned a ton of money for his first heat, I’d have expected you’d have a bit more spring in your step. Think of all you can do with your life now. All the places you could travel! The things you could see!”

“Hmm.” Adrien released Lance’s arm, pushed his glasses up his nose, and shrugged. “I guess.”

Lance’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline, but all he said was, “Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know how,” Adrien said. “It was the most important thing that ever happened to me, and I shared it with a guy I barely know. It feels like it was all a dream.”

But that wasn’t accurate at all. It felt like his life now was the dream. The heat cabin and all the scents, sensations, and pleasures of it seemed the only real thing in the world. Lance even struck him as strangely false. All he really wanted to think about now was Heath. Where was he? What was he doing and who was he with? Did Heath think of him at all? Did he miss him? Or had Heath simply moved on with his life as though the heat cabin had never happened, only caring whether the breeding had taken?

They started walking again toward the dorm, and Adrien was glad to be moving. It helped him focus to know that he would be back in his bed soon, where he could sleep and dream of the heat cabin.

“Have you talked to the guy who won your heat? You know, since you got back?” Lance asked. “Sometimes that helps, you know. With the post-heat separation, that is.”

“Post-heat separation?”

“You went through an intense bonding experience. Literally, if you’re pregnant. Like, the two of you are bonded together into another life. In fact, I’d say your state of mind right now leads me to think you are pregnant, and

that it did take.”

Adrien palmed his flat stomach. He didn’t feel any different, aside from this morose disinterest in his former life and a deep yearning for Heath. “It’s too soon to know.”

“Maybe, but I’ve seen it before. I’m the oldest of six, remember? I’ve seen how both my step-omegas acted after they got knocked up during heats.

If it didn’t take, they shook off the post-heat melancholy easily. If they were growing a new life inside, they turned inward and got really dependent on my father. The worst was the time they were both pregnant simultaneously. I thought my father would lose his mind. But that’s another story.”

Adrien didn’t want to be dependent on anyone. And yet he couldn’t help but recall how nice it had felt to be hand-fed by Heath, cared for, and bathed.

He could put up with some more of that quite happily.