Page 1 of The Omega's Fake Mate

Prologue

NICK

The dayI found out I was an omega was a beautiful October day about a week after my tenth birthday. The air was crisp, but the sun stood high in the sky and the fallen leaves littering the sidewalk made a satisfying crunching noise as I made my way toward Main Street.

My mom had gotten the call back from the clinic in the morning. My twin brother and I were both omegas, she said. Apparently, she thought this was something worth celebrating because she made me chocolate brownies with coconut sprinkles—my favorite kind. My brother got donuts, but I wasn't sticking around for that. I'd fetched a basket, put all the brownies inside, and snuck out before my army of siblings could get their greedy hands on my treats.

There was only one person I wanted to share these brownies with.

Humming the opening tunes of theMidnight RangerTV show, I made my way to the center of the town where my best friend's grandma had a bookstore. As expected, I found my friend sitting on the front steps, a book in his hands. He spent so much time reading—but that also meant he knew all the best stories.

“Zander!” I called, waving.

He lowered his book and looked up, a smile on his face. “Hey, Nick.”

“I knew I'd find you here.” I plopped down on the stairs next to him and held up my basket like I'd found hidden treasure. “Guess what I have!”

My friend sniffed the air. “Smells like...brownies?”

“Yup! I rescued these from my brothers and sisters. They're mine! But I'll share with you.” Fishing one brownie out of the basket, I offered it to him. Zander had tested as alpha a few months ago, but he hadn't gotten brownies. He hadn't gotten anything. His parents weren't very nice.

Gingerly, my friend took the offered treat. “That's nice of you. I know coconut is your favorite.”

I nodded. The smell alone made my mouth water as I picked a brownie for myself out of the basket. “My mom made these for me because I'm omega. They told her today.”

“Oh. Congratulations!” My friend actually looked kind of relieved for some reason.

I bit into my brownie and chewed, savoring the rich flavors of chocolate and coconut on my tongue before swallowing. “I don't know if it's such a great thing.” I'd heard people say a lot of stupid things about omegas.

“No, it's great!” Zander took my hand. He'd been doing that a lot lately, but I didn't mind. It was kind of nice, really. “If I'm alpha and you're omega, that means we're perfect for each other.”

He sounded so convinced of this that I couldn't help but smile. Of course, we were perfect for each other! Following an impulse, I leaned over and kissed my friend's cheek. He blushed. I laughed and bit into my brownie again.

Maybe being omega wasn't such a bad thing after all.

1

Nick

“You're pretty, omega. Are you on the menu too?” The middle-aged alpha leaned in so close I could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“I'm not on the menu because I'm not an object, you fucking bastard.”

The alpha's eyebrows went up.

I beamed.

In the moment, it felt incredibly good to get that out.

Getting fired roughly twenty minutes later didn't feel quite as good.

How was I supposed to know that the asshole was friends with my boss?

In retrospect, I couldn’t say why I snapped at that guest. It wasn't the first time I'd heard that stupid question, and it wasn't the worst I'd heard, either. Sure, he was an asshole, but I had dealt with a lot of drunken assholes in my long career as a waiter. Maybe that was the issue. Maybe it had simply beentoo manyassholes and I'd swallowed down so many angry retorts that there was no more room inside me. And so everything came bursting out.

Oh well, jobs like this were a dime a dozen. I'd find another one. The only thing that really stung was that I wasn't getting my tips for that night. It wasn't like I could afford to lose that kind of cash. If I could, I sure as hell wouldn't be waiting tables. That was not what I'd come to LA for. Mostly, I'd come to LA to be... I didn't even know exactly what, to be honest. At first, I'd wanted to go into fashion, but then I’d realized that I had no eye for design, so that was a bust. I got a few modeling jobs, though, which was cool, but also not really my thing.

This week, my cousin Tam, who was a legit movie star, had gotten me a few auditions for small acting jobs. So far, I'd had no luck with that either.