Page 4 of Knot for Sale

From a beta, it would have been a blatant pick-up line. From him, it was a totally innocent offer. In the absence of either an active heat cycle or alpha arousal pheromones, sex between two omegas wasn’t generally on the table. Elijah, I knew, had turned his bedroom into a proper nest, with blankets and fairy lights and mountains of squishy pillows everywhere. I wanted its comfort—and his—with sudden, desperate longing.

That abrupt, crippling need was enough to have alarm bells clanging inside my brain. I jerked away and stood up, putting distance between myself and the things I couldn’t afford to want.

“I don’t need anest,” I snapped, scrubbing at my damp cheeks. “I need paying jobs that don’t disappear out from under my feet.”

Elijah blinked up at me like a recently debauched, green-eyed owl. “Em. I hate to be blunt, but you need a nest more than anyone I’ve met in the last ten years.”

Red flags waved frantically in the air, joining the blaring mental alarms. I took another step backward, away from him. “Why would you say that?”

Elijah grabbed a pillow from the sofa and hugged it to his stomach, still examining me intently. His expression grew cautious. “Don’t take this the wrong way, dove—but you’re not nearly as subtle as you think you are. You must be popping pheromone suppressor pills like clockwork, but I know perfectly well you’re an omega like me.”

THREE

Emma

ELIJAH KNEW MY secret. Other omegas were always the hardest to trick, damn it. I wavered, part of me wanting to let everything go; to be weak for once. It wasn’t as though Elijah was going to call up my agency and announce my omega status to the world. I doubted he cared one way or the other, aside from being worried for me.

But the idea of letting my guard down was too frightening—especially now, with things already falling apart around me.

“My gender designation is none of your damned b-business,” I said coldly. “Not everyone can flaunt it like you do without paying a p-price. Some of us have a hard enough t-time of things without also dealing with anti-omega p-prejudice.”

Jesus. I had to get a grip on myself. The last thing I needed was to walk into my agency on Monday and end up stuttering through my meeting with the owners.

Elijah looked mildly hurt by my words. Not a surprise; he was probably still swimming in hormones after his heat. He drew breath to reply, but I whirled and stormed out of the room before he could get past a plaintive “Em! That’s not—”

I power-walked to my bedroom and closed the door behind me, collapsing onto the edge of the stupid beta-style bed with a choked-off noise of frustration. How had this day gone off therails so spectacularly? Everything had been fine until I left the Lyrik Sherina show.

My phone dinged. With a sense of sick foreboding, I pulled it out of my pocket and unlocked the screen.

Four words.

See you soon, bitch.

The text stared at me from its cheerful blue bubble, raising gooseflesh along my arms. It was too much. I deleted it, set the phone next to me on the mattress, and burst fully into tears. Afterward, I sat there staring at the too-white bedroom wall for a very long time, my face caked with ruined makeup and dried tear tracks.

What the hell was Idoing? Lashing out at the one person in my immediate circle who was actually on my side? My creepy text-stalker had one thing right. I was a bitch, one hundred percent.

Outside my closed door, I could hear someone moving around quietly. Another door opened and shut—Elijah’s bedroom.

I rose from my pathetic hunch, feeling more like an arthritic octogenarian than a beautiful Greek goddess in a flowing designer dress. Time to make things right... or as right as they could be, anyway.