Page 10 of Omega's Formula

I shrug into my old leather jacket, worn soft from years of wear, grab my keys, and head out the door.

The bus takes twenty minutes to get to the Bureau’s district office, and I spend every second of it staring out the grimy window, watching the city slide past. The neighborhoods get nicer as we go: cleaner streets, newer buildings. By the time we pull up to my stop, I’m in the kind of area where my leather jacket and worn jeans stand out like a sore thumb.

I check in at the front desk at the Bureau building, and the receptionist gestures to the waiting area. “Have a seat, Mr. West. Someone will be with you shortly.”

I sit. I wait. I try not to think about what’s coming.

“Nolan West?”

I look up. The representative is a man in his thirties, pleasant-faced, holding a clipboard. His name tag reads David Sun.

“Yeah.”

“Follow me, please.”

He leads me down a hallway to a meeting room, and I’m surprised by what I find inside. It’s not the clinical, corporate space I expected. The room is clearly designed for comfort—scent-neutral, I realize, which makes sense for matching meetings. There are sofas arranged around a low table, a more formal desk and chairs off to one side, and in the corner, what looks like actual bean bags. The lighting is warm and soft, nothing like the harsh fluorescents in the lobby.

“Please, make yourself comfortable,” David says. “Your match should be here shortly. Can I get you anything? Water, coffee, tea?”

“Water’s fine.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel.

He brings me a glass, then settles into one of the chairs with his clipboard. “So, Mr. West. You’ve been matched with Erik Nilsson. He should arrive in a few minutes. I’ll go over the basics of the contract, and then you’ll both have the opportunity to negotiate the terms before you sign.” He glances up at me. “You understand that a prime match is a legal arrangement that supersedes most other contracts? That you’ll be expected to present as mated, that there are certain social expectations regarding cohabitation and public appearances—”

I stop listening.

I’ve read the paperwork. There were a lot of words for something that isn’t that complicated. You get matched with someone, you meet them, then you sign away your life.

David is still talking, but my attention snaps to the door when it opens.

When Erik Nilsson walks into the room, I feel it.

He’s exactly like his pictures, except the photos didn’t capture the way he moves. He’s all controlled grace, like a predator who knows he’s at the top of the food chain.

He’s wearing a charcoal gray, perfectly tailored suit and those eyes—God, those eyes. They’re blue like the heart of a flame.

Something hot and unwanted coils in my gut, a pull I absolutely refuse to acknowledge.

He’s beautiful. I hate that he’s beautiful. I hate that my body is responding to him, that I can feel the alpha presence rolling off him even across the room, that some traitorous part of me wants to lean into it. I grit my teeth and force myself to stay still, to not react, to not give him the satisfaction of seeing how much he affects me.

He doesn’t look like someone who’s stolen anything. He looks like someone who’s always had everything handed to him on a silver platter.

“Mr. West,” David says brightly, apparently oblivious to the tension crackling through the room. “This is Erik Nilsson. Erik, this is Nolan West. You’ve been matched by the Prime system, which means—”

“I know what it means.” Nilsson’s voice is smooth and controlled, a low rumble that I feel deep in my core. “And you’ll know I put in an objection to this match.”

The words hit me like ice. Of course he did. He knows who I am. Of course he doesn’t want this any more than I do. If he marries me, he’ll have to look me in the face for the rest of our married lives. I’m walking evidence of his own bullshit.

But it still stings for some inexplicable reason. It feels like rejection, even though I don’t want him either.

His eyes meet mine, and for a moment I can’t breathe, but then I recognize the expression on his face.

He’s looking at me like something he’s stepped in. Like I’m beneath him, an inconvenience, a complication in his perfect fucking life.

Yeah. The bastard knows who I am. He knows exactly what he did.

“Well,” Sun says, clearing his throat awkwardly into the heavy silence. “Shall I leave you two to get acquainted? I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”

He practically flees the room.