Aiden
I wake up with Jed’s heavy, tattooed arm slung over my waist, his warm chest pressed against my back. His breath is a slow, rhythmic puff against the nape of my neck, his scent clinging to my skin.
For five incredible seconds, my mind drifts back to last night—the dizzying high of finally feeling his lips on mine, the praise that tumbled out of him every time his eyes swept over my trembling body, the agonizing release of him filling me to the brim.
Then, like clockwork, the anxiety crashes over me.
The wedding is today. An entire day of unavoidable, close-proximity contact with my family, with high emotions and alcohol thrown into the mix.
The tension between my father and I was already nearly at breaking point during the rehearsal dinner, and that was only a couple of hours.
Not to mention the undercurrent of what the fuck that’s constantly scratching at the back of my mind after last night with Jed, a quiet commentary of where do we stand and what happens when this is over that’s running on a loop.
But that’s not the priority for today. I can’t let it be.
Today is about Lucie, and making sure that nothing goes wrong on her big day.
For today, Jed is my alpha; a gorgeous human shield against the torpedo of shit that is my dad, his scent a calming tonic pulling me off the edge of a constant panic attack.
We can figure everything else out later.
Jed stirs behind me, shifting his weight and pulling me a fraction tighter against him. He buries his face in my hair, inhaling deeply.
“Morning,” he rumbles, his voice thick with sleep. He presses a soft, lazy kiss to my shoulder blade, utterly unbothered, and some of my tension eases. At least Jed is incapable of making things weird.
“Morning,” I whisper. “There’s no coffee machine. Should I declare you medically dead now and be done with it?”
“Yes,” he mumbles with a faint, sleepy smile, hooking his leg over mine. “I had a good run. Tell my family I think they’re a bunch of dickheads.”
There’s no doubt that something has changed between us as we get ready—the intimate touches we’d been reserving for time around my family come easily now, even in the privacy of the hotel room.
Jed brushes his thumb over my hip while we share the bathroom sink, and I find myself straightening his tie for him before we leave, running my hands down his chest under the guise of smoothing his shirt, just for an excuse to touch him.
But he’s also as casual as ever. Every time I think his eyes are lingering on me for a few seconds too long, his gaze dropping to my lips, he swoops in with a joke to break the tension. I can’t tell if he’s trying to ease my obvious nerves or avoiding whatever the fuck is going on between us.
By mid-afternoon, the hotel is buzzing with lavish flower arrangements and roaming trays of hors d'oeuvres, and my mom looks both radiant and like she’s about to tear her hair out.
Jed looks distractingly handsome in his brown suit, the color a perfect complement to his auburn coloring, and I catch his eyes roaming appreciatively over the tailored lines of my own dark three-piece more than once.
The ceremony is… beautiful. I’m not one for over-the-top, public displays of affection, and I’ve always held the opinion that weddings are essentially an archaic relic of a time when alphas needed to publicly declare their ownership of omegas so no one else in the town would steal them away, but even I get choked up watching Lucie walk down the aisle.
She’s wearing a simple champagne gown, with a traditional neck-tie that veils the mating bite that’s already on her neck.
The wedding is just a formality, really, as Lucie and her alpha mated during their last aligned heat and rut cycles.
Pete is a tall, straightlaced alpha who I think works in something to do with finance—honestly, I zone out whenever he starts talking about it, but my dad seems to fucking love it.
Pete worships the ground Lucie walks on, though, which is good enough for me.
Jed’s hand squeezes my thigh when he glances over and sees me getting teary-eyed, and his long fingers silently slip through mine during the vows, every touch running through me like a low-level electric current.
Then comes dinner.
The best man's speech is surprisingly hilarious—turns out Pete had some wild days in his youth, and his best friend seems to take great delight in embarrassing him in front of both sides of the family. “As is tradition,” as Jed reminds me afterwards, making the entire table, bar my dad, crack up with a story of his own best man’s speech at his brother’s wedding, which I remember him telling me involved a particularly damning PowerPoint presentation.
My dad makes a long, heartfelt speech, in which he mentions Lucie’s status as an exemplary omega more than once.
The room eats it up—my aunts are dabbing at their eyes by the halfway mark—but Jed presses our calves together under the table, covertly rolling his eyes at me when I steal a glance at him.
And suddenly the slow burn of rage that was building in my gut seems fractionally easier to bear.
But if I think that’s as far as my dad is going to go today, I’m sorely mistaken.
I don’t know if it’s the atmosphere, or the pressure of being father of the bride, or the free-flowing wine, but he seems to be on a mission to make me snap.
At dinner, he sits across from us, cutting his sirloin into neat squares, and tells me I should have ordered the fish instead of steak because it’s “less bulking”.
Jed snorts into his drink and has to pass it off as a sneeze, and I do my best to brush Dad off with a mumbled, “sure, dad”, as my mom sends me apologetic looks across the table and my Aunt Olivia leans in unnecessarily close to Jed to ask him what’s going on.
Having Jed by my side to share in the ridiculousness of the situation makes it easier to endure than it usually is, but by the end of dinner I must have whispered don’t make a scene to myself a thousand times.
It takes until the evening reception for me to finally break.
“So, Jed,” Dad starts, swirling his cabernet around his glass and sitting back with a patronizing smile.
Music has started playing from the room next door, and I wish I’d had the foresight to drag Jed onto the dancefloor ten minutes ago rather than let him finish his second black coffee.
“This new omega boxing division you were talking about at the engagement party. It sounds very… ambitious.”
I hold back a violent eye roll, already smelling a trap. Dad’s clearly been thinking of a response to this since Jed shut him down at the party, and it makes a familiar, icy knot of dread form in the pit of my stomach.
But Jed gives him an easygoing smile. “It’s long overdue, Mr Fraser. Plenty of omegas have the build and power for it, not just Aid. It’s a good business decision as much as it’s the future of the sport.”
My dad lets out a condescending chuckle.
“Oh, come on now. Alpha to alpha, you know as well as I do that it’s not realistic.
It’s simply not in an omega’s nature to participate in contact sports like boxing.
Any sports professional worth their salt knows an omega’s biology isn’t designed to take that kind of impact, or to endure the kind of discipline needed to become a professional athlete.
It sounds like a woke novelty, honestly. ”
Silence falls over our end of the table. Jed’s smile stays in place, but I can feel his muscles lock up, his scent flaring with a dangerous edge that I haven’t sensed in him before.
My mom places her hand over my dad’s on the table. “Come now, Richard. Let’s not do this here.”
But something inside me has already snapped. It’s one thing for him to relentlessly insult me, but dragging Jed’s professional credentials into his outdated bullshit is a step too far.
“Dad,” I say, my voice steady but sharp enough to make Dad’s head jerk towards me. “Can you please just shut the fuck up?”
My mom gasps. Dad straightens, his nostrils flaring with indignation. “Excuse me, Aiden? You see, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You let an omega think they can do whatever they like, and they start to go against their nature. You used to be a sweet boy, Aiden, just like Lucie.”
“And you hated that too!” I hiss. “You told me I wasn’t manly enough. First I wasn’t enough, and then I was too much. Did it ever occur to you, dad, that maybe I’m just a human being who’s nuanced in ways that don’t pertain to my omega-ness?”
Dad blanches, opening his mouth to bite back, but I’m not done.
“And while I’m at it, don’t ever come for Jed again.
You can berate me all you want, but if you question Jed as an alpha or as a professional, you can wave goodbye to seeing me at Christmas and family functions.
And you might not care about that, but boy oh boy will the extended family group chat have a field day wondering what Richard did to fuck up his perfect family. ”
My dad slams his wine glass down on the table, gripping it so hard his knuckles turn white. He turns to Jed. “Are you going to let your omega talk to another alpha this way?”
Jed frowns, turning to look at me. Then he turns back to my father, and lets out one of his joyous, barking laughs. “Richard, if I tried to control your son, he’d knock me back into the dirt in two seconds flat and I’d thank him for it. Aiden didn’t say anything that isn’t true.”
I stand from my seat, reaching out a hand for Jed as my heart hammers frantically against my chest. “Let’s go, Jed.”