Page 13 of Slow Heat

“He can’t know about that,” Vale said.

“This young Jason Sabel, you mean?” Urho asked.

“Who else? You’ll keep what you know about my past to yourself.”

Urho swirled his drink and nodded, a frown creasing his forehead. “As you wish.”

Vale hoped he could count on his friends Yosef and Rosen’s discretion, too.

A new alpha like Jason would never understand what’d happened and what Vale had been through. He’d never know the insanity of the rebound heat, and the desperate, instinct-driven choices Vale had made. As for the helpless realization that he was carrying an unknown alpha’s child? The risk and pain of the abortion? The shame that still consumed him when those memories surfaced? No matter how their contract negotiations went, Jason couldn’t know about any of that.

Vale groaned. In so many ways, it would’ve been better if Jason had never found him at all.

“I could suggest you’re carrying my child,” Urho offered in that unusually canny way he had of coming close to reading Vale’s mind. “We could stage a miscarriage once the damage to your reputation and desirability is done.”

Appalled, Vale shook his head. “Besides the fact that I’d never agree to lie because I do, in fact, value my reputation, it wouldn’t hold up. A simple examination from a doctor, or, wolf-god, a sniff from any alpha, including my own, would confirm I’m not pregnant.”

“Icouldimpregnate you on your next heat if you hold off contracting that long.”

“Putting protocols aside, and the many ways impregnating me at this juncture would violate them, you don’t want a child with me.”

“I don’tnotwant it.” Urho’s voice was tender, affectionate.

“Well, that’s a compelling reason to reproduce if I’ve ever heard one!”

What they shared had been good for them both—affection, sex, friendship. But neither had ever wanted more than that. Vale had his own life and so did Urho—and of course, Urho had his memories of Riki. Reproducing with an alpha who’d known a true bond seemed an insult both to Vale and to Urho’s lost omega.

“If it’s about the scar tissue, I know ways to induce the labor early and you’d probably live through the event.” Urho frowned again. “It would be risky for the babe, though.”

Vale scoffed. “As if I’d put you in that position after all you’ve been through? No, Urho, I won’t risk any of that. You told me once that giving birth was not in my cards now, and that opinion has been confirmed by every doctor I’ve seen since. Let’s not go to drastic measures.”

Urho sighed. “You’re important enough to me to try anything.”

“You’re trying so hard to help me, going beyond your usual comfort zone, even, and I appreciate it.” Vale smiled at Urho, affection burning in his heart. “But has it occurred to you that it’s possible I don’t need your help?”

“So you’re going to just submit?”

“Like the omega I am?” Vale challenged him.

Urho sighed. “You’re not just any omega, Vale.”

“Everyomega is ‘not just any omega’. Even if we all abide by the same laws and the same nature.”

“You’ve built a whole life! To see it dashed at the feet of this young idiot is—”

“That’s my alpha you’re insulting,” Vale said quietly, poking at the embers again.

“How can you roll over and leave it all up to him? How can you let him choose whether or not he wants you?”

Vale shot Urho a wry glance. “Those are nearly revolutionary questions, my friend.”

Urho huffed, looking away and out into the dark, overgrown garden. “I know my usual stance is that omegas belong with alphas, and vice versa, and that our laws exist for a reason, but dammit, Vale, that’s when things work out the way they should.”

“The way they did for you and Riki.”

“Yes.”

Vale let the words hang in the air for some time, letting the truth set in without having to say it aloud: not everyone got to be Urho and Riki. Some, like Vale, got years of unbonded independence and now this mess. Finally, he reassured Urho the best way he knew how. “I’ll have some say in it. The law doesn’t require me to sign a contract holding terms I can’t abide—and he’ll want me to be happy with the terms.”