Page 60 of Slow Heat

And to Yule if it was determined he was complicit. Anton wouldn’t have a prayer in the world. If it was uncovered, an investigation would no doubt be launched, and who knew how many other omegas might be sussed out using these illegal drugs? Wolf-god, it could be horrific.

Rosen’s eyes darkened angrily. “I’d never put anyone at risk. I only told you because, well, perhaps he can help you if the worst ever happens.”

“Anton or Miner?”

“Either. Both. I can’t imagine the omega we met the other night would ever want you to suffer a birth at the risk of your life. He was a good man.”

Vale nodded.

Generally, he agreed, but a jittery fear rode his nerves. He didn’t want Jason to lose his parents to something so scandalous. The family name would be forever tarnished and their lands and business forfeit to the state. Jason would be left destitute. His parents would be imprisoned and possibly executed for crimes against humanity. It made Vale’s stomach turn.

How could Yule be so selfish that he’d impregnate Miner when he knew the man couldn’t handle it? He’d played the devoted alpha at The Feast of Alpha’s Blessings. Vale never would have suspected he’d be so cruel. He wondered if Jason knew. He couldn’t imagine those wide, innocent eyes knowing anything about it at all.

“It’s too much to be believed,” Vale breathed.

“Some people play the hero to the point of idiocy,” Rosen observed. “But I don’t think either one of us would accuse Anton of that. Not given what we know and what we’ve seen.”

Vale rubbed at his mouth and said nothing.

Rosen returned to his painting, and for a while Vale watched in agitated silence. Eventually, the quiet in the room coupled with the breeze calmed him. The pace of Rosen’s work was soothing as well. The progress was similar to how Vale wrote poetry: he relied on creative flow to get a draft of his initial inspiration, and then he took away from the piece a little at a time, narrowing it, focusing it, until the words were perfect, like blades of grass, sharp and green.

Rosen painted broadly first, and then used a scraper to narrow bits that were overlarge, adding details with smaller brushes and a lighter hand. Perhaps all art started out as a mess and was refined gradually to something worth sharing with another person.

“Should I not have told you?” Rosen asked after almost an hour had passed.

“Admittedly, I’m not sure what to do with the knowledge, but I’m glad to have it.”

“I thought you shouldn’t contract without knowing. Not only because he can help you, but it’s only fair that you understand the risk of association.”

“Yes, getting more deeply invested with a family that could be extinguished in one swoop of the executioner’s blade does seem precarious.”

Rosen shrugged. “True. But I know you don’t think what they’re doing is wrong.”

“I do, actually,” Vale said. “Yule Sabel didn’t strike me as the kind of man to lack in self-control, but to consistently impregnate his omega despite his health? That, I judge him harshly for.”

“We don’t know the whole story. There might be a good reason.”

Vale raised a brow. “Lack of will is the only explanation I can think of.”

Rosen shot him a glance from beneath his strong eyebrows. “The world is vast,” he said in his philosophy-professor voice. “There are things we can’t know unless we ask. And sometimes we can’t ask.”

Vale watched him outline a yellow square with a thick line of the blue. “Perhaps you’re right, but I’ll have a hard time shaking this knowledge when we start negotiations on Friday.”

“Maybe you’ll be stronger for it. You’ll know going in that Yule is a man like any other, hiding his own terrible flaw. It can help you stick to your principles knowing that your past doesn’t hold the worst sins at the table.”

Vale chewed that thought over. “I have one absolute going into the meeting. Anything else, within reason, is open to negotiation. But you and I both know what I can’t deliver on. And that will put an end to the whole thing.”

“Will it?”

“You know it will. Jason will want children and his parents will make sure his imprinting and my ‘omega persuasion’ doesn’t get in the way of that.”

Rosen didn’t seem convinced. But he slipped his brush into a jar of mineral spirits and sighed, turning from his canvas. “I wish I could have a child sometimes.”

“You do?”

“Sure.” His lips quirked in a bittersweet smile. “A little Yosef would be very cute, don’t you think?”

“Especially if he had a little white beard.”