Adrien wiped a hand over his upper lip. How was he ever going to get through a heat with a stranger? He’d been so embarrassed to have Ron take pictures of his asshole. It’d been horrifying. His eyes pricked and burned.

Would the shame of bending over and spreading his cheeks for Ron—squat and smoking as he bent over with his camera—pale in comparison to what he was about to face? He didn’t see how it wouldn’t. He’d have to do so much more with whatever alpha won him for his first season.

Just thinking of Ron’s contented sigh when he’d spotted Adrien’s hairless scrotum and bare hole made him feel cold inside. And the way Ron had praised him, saying, “That’s a delicious little pucker. The alphas will want to eat you up,” had Adrien’s small omega-testicles trying to climb up into his body.

“Hey, Adrien!”

Adrien groaned and quickened his step on the sidewalk. Maybe he could pretend not to have heard. Lance was the last person he wanted to see right now. And he didn’t see him, actually. The crowd around them was thick, and his eyes were on the sidewalk. He had plausible deniability.

Not only was Lance his research assistant in the art history department, and thus his underling, but he was also a happy-go-lucky omega with another year and a half at least before he’d have to face his first season. Wealthy and connected, Lance would entertain a completely different situation than Adrien. His father had already sold the rights to his son’s first heat to a friend of the family, a man Lance had crushed on since childhood. There would be no humiliating public online auction for him. Money had its privileges.

“Wait up!” Lance’s voice called out, but Adrien hurried on, pretending obliviousness.

The idea of telling Lance what he’d just been through with Ron and the necessary photographs filled him with boiling, frothy shame. He wondered if there was any way to keep all of this to himself for as long as possible.

Maybe, when the time came, he could just tell Lance and the others in the department that he was taking a vacation, instead of confessing to everyone that he was off to have his heat handled.

In a stroke of luck, a crowd of students burst out of his dormitory building just as he reached it, separating him from Lance’s long-legged advance.

Adrien ducked inside and took the empty stairwell rather than risking crossing the busy lobby to take the elevator up to his hall. He didn’t want to run into anyone he knew and field an awkward conversation, nor did he want to give Lance the opportunity to catch up with him.

He just wanted to be alone to process.

Safe inside his dorm room, he sat down, shaky and sick, in front of his computer. He had to see the truth for himself. He had to know. With clammy hands, he typed in the address of the university’s omega auction site and sat back in his seat, fingers pressed over his mouth.

There on the front page under the heading NEW AND FRESH was his listing.

He stared at the photos that Ron must have loaded as soon as he’d left the office. His asshole was there on the internet for the whole world to see. His own white hands held his ass cheeks apart and revealed it like a secret he’d kept and never wanted exposed.

His entire body flashed hot and then cold, before going so hot again that he felt sweat slipping down the side of his face. He stared at the photo of his face. In it, his eyes glimmered with unshed tears, and his cheeks flushed with his embarrassment. His full mouth was slightly open and looked obscenely red.

Creamy, pink skin! read one of Ron’s captions. These sweet buns are worth grabbing! read another. Adrien shuddered. Apparently, this was what being an omega really meant: being nothing more than a product to sell.

The rest of the write-up was similar:

Adrien is an intelligent omega with a beautiful body, a focused mind, and a pleasant personality. An excellent student with a near-perfect GPA, his goal is to become a professor here at our very own university. Needless to say, a good return on his first heat would go a long way toward making that possible for him.

Adrien’s is a special kind of beauty. Notice the fine hairs on his buttocks.

Though blond, they shimmer beautifully in the light. His fleshy ass begs to be gripped and one can easily imagine how nicely it will bounce with an alpha’s deep thrusts. His skin is pale, yes, but will flush attractively in the throes of heat.

“Painting a picture, creating a fantasy is an important aspect of my work,”

Ron had said while he took picture after picture. “And I know just what I’ll say about you.”

Adrien tucked his lower lip into his mouth, chewing it anxiously, and read on. His eyes flew wide at the next words.

Adrien is untouched. A virgin in every way. Oh, lucky alpha, you’ll be winning more than just his first heat.

How had Ron known that? Did he have access to Adrien’s health files?

He must. The only person Adrien had confessed his virginity to was the nurse he’d seen for his regular checkup, and only because it was part of the questionnaire he’d been asked to fill out for his heat risk assessment.

Shaking, he allowed himself to scroll down, heart in his throat and fingers trembling. The number at the bottom indicated the current highest bid was greater than he’d feared but far less than he’d hoped. What if he did this and didn’t even get enough to pay for his school, much less the government’s fee to become a certified professor? He buried his head in his hands.

He shouldn’t have looked.

After a few long minutes, he lifted his head, noted the highest bid had gone up, but just barely, and closed down the site. Then he clicked open his research files on Hontu dyes and fabrics instead. He had work to do and continuing to fret about something he couldn’t control wasn’t going to change that.

What choice did he have? His first season was coming, and he had a heat to sell. There was no shame in it. Every omega faced these kinds of choices.

As he began to reorganize some of his most recent research notes, he scoffed under his breath. “Tell that to my ears.” They continued to burn hot every time he remembered the way his eyes had met Ron’s camera lens and the resulting image he’d glimpsed online. In it, he’d looked scared, exposed, and vulnerable.

Probably because that was exactly what he was.

Chapter Three

HEATH STARED AT the photo of the boy on the auction page. He didn’t usually look for heats to bid on, but his friend, Felix, had been bragging about holding the top bid on the newest boy offered by their shared alma mater’s matcher. When Felix had described the boy’s looks as being very like Heath’s own beloved Nathan’s, his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

And now he was hooked.

The ripe, slightly open mouth combined with the blond hair, almond-brown eyes, and high cheekbones did remind him rather intensely of Nathan, the only omega he’d ever made the mistake of loving. And losing. In the darkest hours of the night, he still tried to convince himself that Nathan had loved him in return. He’d only had five years with his beloved before he’d died from a previously undiagnosed fatal flaw in his heart, but they had been years of such intensity that Heath was still reeling from them. Memories of Nathan, along with pain, rose up in him again, raw and aching.

Shattering grin. Mischievous eyes. A penchant for trouble.

Good God, Nathan had brought Heath to his knees again and again, and then died there in his arms. Tragic, in every damn way. But alongside the pain came a beating pulse of desire for the boy in the photograph. Certainly, though, the lust had little to nothing to do with the boy himself and everything to do with Heath’s memories of Nathan squirming beneath him in the throes of ecstatic heat.