stuffed in the bottom of his bag. Because, truth be told, aside from Lance, he wasn’t sure anyone would miss him. His professors and colleagues had wished him well, but none of them were likely to want to check in. His co-researchers barely spoke to him outside of their work on the project. And his father was long gone.

A sudden, painful loneliness gripped him, and his throat went embarrassingly tight as his eyes filled with tears. He shoved his glasses on top of his head and wiped ferociously at his eyes. He would not cry. And over what?

Over how completely confused he was and how uncertain the future seemed? Over how he had no one in his life to even worry about him while he was gone living with a stranger and birthing a child?

Wow, he was pathetic, and he hadn’t even known it.

“What?” Heath said, coming closer, every inch of him looking like a protective alpha, ready to slaughter whatever or whomever was upsetting his pregnant omega.

Oh, God, he was this man’s omega.

He was stuffed with this strange man’s child, and he was trapped here in this nest for the next four months. He breathed roughly, trying to get a good lungful, but the room started to spin around him.

“Adrien?”

He stood up from the table and tried to speak, desperate for some fresh air, but the spots in his vision swirled faster and darker, and then it was all very black.

Chapter Twelve

HEATH CAUGHT ADRIEN as he fell, eyes rolled back in his head and his body going suddenly pale and limp. He patted Adrien’s cheeks, relieved when he opened his eyes and muttered, “Need some air.”

They’d just turned on the heat because Adrien was too cold, for God’s sake, but who was he to argue with a pregnant omega? He lifted Adrien easily—he really had lost weight since the heat cabin—and opened the door leading out to the walled garden. The twinkling lights Simon had insisted on putting on the fruit trees gave enough light to see by, along with the full moon. Adrien’s color was returning. He sat down on the closest bench by a flowering rosebush and cradled Adrien against his chest.

“Did I pass out?” Adrien asked, his breath a puff against Heath’s throat.

“Yes.”

“I got too hot.”

“We can turn the heat down. The oven can be adjusted and the heat reduced.”

“No. I’ll be too cold.”

Heath huffed a laugh. “Which is it?”

Adrien struggled out of his lap, wiping a hand over his mouth and pulling at his clothes. “I don’t know. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

“Do you feel better now?” He kept his hand on Adrien’s back, but he didn’t move it in the stroking, soothing manner Simon had used when he’d been sick as a child. He simply held it there, steady and sure, and tried to judge if Adrien was going to bolt, or cry, or scream. He felt a building tension in the air alongside the sweet scent of the roses.

“I don’t have anyone who cares where I am,” Adrien said finally, taking in shaky, slow breaths. The cool night air was making his cheeks go pink. His glasses had slipped again, and Adrien straightened them.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Heath said, hearing the need for reassurance in his omega’s voice. “You’re safe here. I promise.”

“I know. Maybe I’m too safe.” He smiled with a hint of embarrassment.

“I mean, I feel caged in.”

“What will help with that? You have your phone. There’s this garden always at your disposal. If you want to go out on the town, I can take you. Or the driver can take you. At least until you start to show, and then I think you’ll be far too uncomfortable to want to leave.”

“You keep saying that.” Adrien tugged at his jeans again, adjusting the fall of his hoodie.

“It’s just the facts. I have some books inside about pregnancy and birth.

You’ll read them,” he said, pushing command into his tone, knowing that Adrien would respond to it the same way he had from the moment they’d met.

“What if they scare me more?”

“It’s better to know what to expect than to be taken unawares.”

“I guess.” Adrien tugged on his hoodie again. “This is… It’s…” He pulled at the bottom of it, and then finally huffed, tugging it off. His skin prickled with goosebumps in the night air, and his nipples hardened into pink nubs. “There,” he sighed. “I can breathe.”

Heath said nothing. He only looked at Adrien with meaning in his eyes, and finally Adrien’s head bowed.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what you’ve been telling me about the clothes.”

Heath put a hand on Adrien’s back, his muscles leaping underneath his skimming touch. “It will only get worse. After the baby comes, once you’re past the critical first few days, clothes won’t bother you so much, and you’ll probably look forward to wearing them again.”

Some omegas didn’t like it, though, and continued to go nude at home for the rest of their lives. He didn’t think he’d tell Adrien that. Not yet. He seemed so shaken already. Heath wondered what Adrien would think of the other changes his body would undergo—the widening of his hips and the lactation, just to start.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Heath said calmly, keeping his voice low. He could sense Adrien’s reaction to that timbre in the way his muscles relaxed beneath Heath’s hands and the small shudder of arousal that went through him. “We’re going back inside, and I’m going to fuck you. That will calm you down. Afterward, we’re going to rest together and start reading one

of the pregnancy books. I’ll help you through whatever feelings come up about that.”

Adrien shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose, looking around at the rose garden in the darkness. Their scent rose around them with every small breeze. “Do you like roses?”

“Yes.”

“I do, too,” he said quietly.

Heath turned to the bush next to them, which he knew was full of fat pink roses with an orangey tip. They smelled sweet, but also spicy, and he carefully tugged a blossom free and handed it to Adrien, who sniffed it and smiled.

Heath placed his hand on Adrien’s neck. “The garden is full of them.

Tomorrow morning, after breakfast, we’ll walk out here.”

“Naked?” Adrien asked in a small voice.

“It’s up to you. I’ll be clothed.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“It’s the nature of things,” Heath stated. “But we’ll be naked together in your room.”

“I’ve never been naked outside,” Adrien said, hiding his face by sniffing the rose again. “Or in front of anyone but you. Aside from when I had the pictures made for the auction.”

“Not even in the dorm showers?”

“We have stalls.”

Heath had lived in those dorms as well, having attended the university twenty years earlier. The difference was, he’d been a randy alpha, and he’d brought plenty of willing omegas up to play. He frowned at his memories.

He’d been an awful, entitled asshole back then.

“I wore a robe in the hallway. My father always said modesty was important in an omega,” Adrien said quickly, as though to prove he wasn’t acting without reason.

“Of course,” Heath said. He threaded his fingers into Adrien’s blond hair, a shimmer of rage under his skin at the thought that any alpha might have ever treated Adrien as casually as he’d treated omegas in college. He pushed it down by reminding himself that was not the case and that Adrien had never been touched by anyone but himself.

He really shouldn’t feel so chuffed about that. But he did.

“I don’t want to be naked in front of Simon,” Adrien said. “Or anyone else.”

“I see.”

Adrien met his gaze again, his eyes bright with determination. “Who do you expect me to be naked in front of exactly? Your servants? Your friends?”

Adrien really had led a sheltered life if nudity was such a problem for him. Most city omegas were content to be naked in their homes. It usually meant they were more likely to get laid, and, if they were lucky, find a mate to build a life with. But religious families were different. Clearly, Nathan hadn’t cared at all that his baby was going to be raised by a conservative, sex-shaming man of faith.