Knot My Daddy (South York Sugarverse #1)

Prologue

Charlotte

It all goes downhill the day she's laid off.

"Your work is excellent, Charlotte, but we cannot employ you with an expired visa," the kind, but no-nonsense Human Resources representative explains.

It was always the visa. It was hard enough getting a student visa as an omega, let alone one without a guardian's approval, which she needed, given the fact that she was still preaestral and had no next of kin.

It did not matter that she was twenty-five years old and in a competitive master's program, or the fact that she had been taking care of herself since she was fourteen and fell through the cracks in the system.

It did not matter that she had worked her ass off to get into her Master of Arts program, had already published two peer reviewed papers on medieval omega authorship, or that she had won two full ride scholarships for her undergraduate and graduate degrees.

She was an unbonded omega who had not yet had her first heat, so she was little more than a child in the eyes of the law.

She had only managed to get a limited one year student visa by begging and pleading and hounding a sympathetic consulate after showing up at his office every day for two weeks straight.

And now that year was up. And her internship was about to fall through her fingers.

And her scholarship wouldn't renew without a visa extension.

And she wouldn't get the visa extension without a guardian's permission.

And she couldn't find a guardian without mating.

And she couldn't mate if she didn't have an estrous.

And she wouldn't enter estrous if she were constantly stressing about the $7. 43 she had left in her bank account.

"If you receive your visa extension, Sterling, Butler, and Front Publishing will be pleased to offer you your position back." That was the most she was going to get from the stern middle-aged beta woman.

Her nine-month contract had had the possibility of renewing for another year, which would've gotten her through the summer with just enough money to feed and house herself, if it wasn't for that visa. Should've, would've, could've, she thought...

"I understand. Thank you again for the opportunity," Charlotte had said, her voice fixedly polite, fighting not to let her despair colour her words or allow the tears she could feel building to seep into the corners of her eyes before she got up to leave.

She keeps her face placid, refusing to show any weakness as she walks out of the office.

This job had been the best thing to ever happen to her.

Not only because it had provided a generous stipend that allowed her to pursue the master's program she had always dreamed of.

But, if she were being honest with herself, mostly because it had given her an excuse to see the three most perfect alphas in existence three times a week.

When she had gotten the notice that she had been awarded the internship, she had spent hours reading through the founders' Wikipedia pages (they were so important that they had Wikipedia pages) and scouring all the news articles she could find about them, about their philanthropy and outspoken support for diversity and inclusion.

Sterling, Butler, and Front had made a name for themselves advocating for more representation by omegas in print media and she had admired them so much solely because of that.

Nothing could have prepared her for meeting them, though.

It was the first day of her internship and she had walked into the high-rise downtown building filled with jittery energy and agitated to prove herself.

She had been so excited to see the inner workings of one of the most prolific publishers of literature written by omega authors.

The three alpha namesakes of the publishing house had been everything Charlotte thought an alpha was supposed to be. Tall and handsome, strong and broad, but gentle and kind too. They didn't throw their weight around. They didn't bark at their underlings or bully anyone.

Alex Butler himself had shown her to her desk when he saw her at the front reception filling out the paperwork for her ID badge.

He was so handsome that her mouth had gone dry when he'd strolled up to her and introduced himself.

She had been a nobody, but he had still looked at her and spoken to her like he thought she was important.

Charlotte Hines, intern, absolute nobody.

He was the biggest of the three of them, with bulky muscle and hands the size of dinner plates that had snatched up the clipboard she was holding as he gave her a tour of the office.

His brown hair and beard didn't betray his age, although she knew from her internet snooping that he was older than her.

But that hadn't bothered her, it had made her feel safe and secure under his protection.

He'd been so helpful, showing her around the office and introducing her to everyone, he even offered to buy her lunch and asking a million questions about her research. As if he'd actually cared.

The three of them cared about all their employees, she saw that in the time she had spent there. They knew each person's name, valued each of their contributions, never spoke over anyone just because their voice was louder.

They were good alphas. It was rare, in her experience. All the other alphas she had ever known tended to use their designation to get whatever they want and simply bullied their way to the top.

It was a given that alpha faculty at the university always got tenure and could guarantee themselves the best awards and presented their publications at the most prestigious conferences.

That's if they didn't get promotions and opportunities handed to them on a silver platter simply for being alphas.

But these alphas just wanted to pull other people up with them and help those who didn't have the same privileges as they did.

When Alex Butler had taken her out to lunch on that first day, he'd brought the other two founders, Silas Sterling and Tomas Front with him as well. And they had been just as handsome, and just as kind.

Silas looked like he probably modeled in his earlier years, and even now she could see him gracing the cover of the daddy romance novels she snuck onto her e-reader and devoured in the dead of night in her nest.

He was classically handsome with a little bit of silver glistening in his beard and hair that only made him more attractive. When he shook her hand, she thought it would swallow her up whole. Tingles ignited everywhere their skin touched and she'd barely been able to stutter out a greeting.

And Tomas Front... Charlotte thought she would pee her pants when he met her eyes with the full weight of his gaze. Silvery blond hair fell casually on his forehead above grey blue eyes that had all the force of a North Atlantic storm. Cold and cutting.

The man was intimidating. Dominance rolled off him in stifling waves that made her want to crawl under a table for safety.

It had made her press her thighs together against the onslaught of desire that had crashed over her without warning.

It didn't matter that he was older than her, closer to fifty than to thirty.

He was beautiful. A dangerous beauty that put the fear of God her.

It never got easier being around them, even as the year progressed.

The casual dominance that rolled off them had made Charlotte want to offer them her neck in submission or otherwise hide, but they never flexed it.

She thought they probably politely pretended not to notice how affected she was, because that was the kind of good alphas they were.

They would never take advantage of an omega's vulnerability like other alphas would.

Before her internship, she never would've assumed the powerful men in the c-suite would bother to slum it by fraternizing with interns, but she had seemingly constantly found her flustered self in their presence, delivering urgent documents when none of their assistants were available, photocopying papers for their meetings, fetching them coffee when one of them happened to walk past her desk and casually request a cup.

Even when she was working on something. She had been unable to avoid them, not that she had wanted to.

Even despite the fact that she couldn't talk to them without blushing, they never made her feel like just a silly little girl. After a couple weeks, they had begun to trust her work, asking her to look over things and seeking out her advice and opinion on different books they were optioning.

They had even admired her research, asking if they could read some of the chapters of her dissertation.

Other than Charlotte herself and her thesis supervisor, she thought they were probably one of the only people on the whole planet who had actually read any of her scholarly work.

They even offered to provide feedback to her after they read it, catching things neither she nor even her thesis supervisor had noticed.

For those eight months, she felt more herself than she ever had before.

She felt like she was finally, finally, thriving.

Like she had finally found her stride. Her course work improved, and even her thesis supervisor was happy with the work she was doing.

On the last chapter draft she'd submitted, her supervisor had only had one single revision.

Which was why the crash from that high was so devastating. It was a long way to fall, and Charlotte had no one to catch her but herself.