Chapter 5
FIVE
MAX
Two Years Later
“Hey, Max, how long until dinner’s ready?” Gwen called, bustling into the kitchen with an armful of clean dish towels.
“Not long,” I answered, cutting off the gas range and pouring a generous amount of mustard sauce into a warmed serving dish. “Just need to plate the chicken. Everything else is done.”
“Okay, I’ll go let him know,” she said, plopping the towels onto a far counter before exiting through the swinging door.
With a practiced hand, I broke down the roasted chicken and plated it with a drizzle of sauce next to the charred garlic broccolini and crispy rosemary potatoes.
Finally, and most importantly, I dumped the basket of air-fried dino nuggets onto a second plate next to a generous squirt of ketchup, a heaping spoonful of boxed mac and cheese, and peas.
Friday was chicken night—of the roasted and breaded-dino variety—because there were usually enough leftovers to carry my client, Mr. Marino, and his six-year-old son, Enzo, through the weekend with minimal prep work on other dishes.
Most of the time, though, I whipped up a few other things here and there so they’d have snacks, too. Just because I wanted to. Mr. Marino was a good employer, a good alpha, and I never minded doing extra when they needed it.
If you asked me how I came to be a multi-millionaire’s personal chef, cooking lunch and dinner five nights a week on one of the most expensive oven ranges money could buy, I’d tell you to get some popcorn and buckle the fuck up.
Because it was a doozy.
“They’re ready,” Gwen said, popping her head back into the kitchen.
“Okay, thanks.” Grabbing the serving dishes, I followed her out and down the hall. “Are you staying to eat?”
Sometimes we had dinner together in the kitchen while Enzo and Mr. Marino ate in the dining room before cleaning up for the night.
Gwen was Mr. Marino’s house manager and personal assistant. Cleaners came in weekly for the massive amount of vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing it took to keep a house this large clean, but otherwise, Gwen did the laundry, ran errands, and essentially kept everything afloat.
Including me. She was the entire reason I had this job, after all.
“No, I’ve got a shift at the shelter tonight,” she said.
I averted my eyes. “Ah. Well. I hope it’s peaceful.”
Peaceful probably wasn’t the right word. When she wasn’t at Mr. Marino's, Gwen worked as a survivor advocate at a no-questions-asked domestic violence shelter here in Plover Bay that also served as a heat recovery clinic for omegas seeking asylum.
Statistically, the most dangerous time for domestic abuse survivors was leaving their partner, which increased significantly for omegas in heat with nowhere to go.
The stats for alphas were harder to correlate.
Rut was an equally vulnerable experience, certainly.
The problem was, while omegas went into heat roughly every three months from the time they fully matured, an alpha’s rut was only triggered once they’d met a highly compatible mate, and culminated when the pair sealed their bond through a claiming bite.
After mating, alphas would go into rut with their omega, balancing the heavy physical toll they could have on a partner. They rarely had to consider experiencing a rut without companionship.
I’d always thought that was so unfair. Why did omegas have to manage heat after heat until they found a mate while alphas could go ages, maybe even forever, without the hassle of an unmated rut?
Now, though, I saw the pain in that reality, too.
Still, it wasn’t like alphas couldn’t knot outside of rut—they totally could, if they found a scent match. It just didn’t have the same heightened physiological and reproductive consequences associated with the mating bond that brought on a full rut.
Everything balanced out in the end, though, considering going into rut without a partner could kill an alpha. Their bodies weren’t meant to sustain the raging hormones and shifting blood flow away from critical processes like digestion and brain function for that long.
Death by perpetual knot sounded horrific.
Anyway. All of that to say, most shelters like the one where Gwen worked were catered toward omegas and heats, with the rare mateless rutting alpha thrown in.
Gwen herself was an alpha, but she had a way of being confidently calm and reassuring during times of crisis that wasn’t threatening or arrogant. She was incredibly good at what she did.
I would know. It was how we met.
She gave me a small smile. “Thanks. Yes, hopefully not a busy night. I need to do some shopping this weekend, though, if you wanna come along?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I could grab a few things.”
“Sounds good. I’ll text you.” With a wave, she broke off down the hall that led out to the guest garage—because that was a totally normal thing to have—and I continued into the dining room.
Two hungry faces looked up when I walked in.
“Hi, Max!” Enzo said, bouncing in his seat. “We just got back from piano lessons. Daddy says I’m doing really well. Do you want to hear me play?”
“Oh my,” I said, setting Mr. Marino’s plate down in front of him first, and then Enzo’s. “Of course, I want to hear your song. Which one are you working on?”
“Furry Lisa!” he said before biting the head off a brontosaurus.
Mr. Marino chuckled. He only ever laughed when Enzo was with him. “It’s Für Elise, Enz. And thank you, Max. This looks delicious.”
He had dark hair that was just beginning to gray at the temples, a warm bronze complexion with sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, and beautiful blue-gray eyes.
On top of all of that, he was kind despite coming off cold and reserved at first, and he was single. I’d never asked about Enzo’s omega parent; all I knew was they were out of the picture.
In another lifetime, I might’ve fallen all over myself for an alpha like him, despite our stark class differences. Not now, though.
Not when an entirely different pair of blue eyes haunted me.
I smiled. “My pleasure. There’s a plate of double-chocolate brownies on the kitchen counter for dessert. Do you need anything else before I clean up for the night?”
He shook his head and swallowed a bite of chicken. “No, thank you. You can head home. I’ll take care of our dishes.”
Thank fuck. I was exhausted and could use an early night. “If you’re sure. I’ll leave the leftovers in the refrigerator."
“Have a good weekend,” he said.
“What about my song?” Enzo whined.
“He’ll be able to listen some other day, bud. You’ll have to practice to make it really, really good.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I said with a grin. “Have a good night.”
Rich people had the best kitchens.
Top-of-the-line appliances mixed with homey, cream countertops and warm accents to make the space feel clean and welcoming.
The walk-in fridge—I had gasped when I first saw it—was paneled to blend in with the counters, and the KitchenAid stand mixer had its very own compartment that raised and lowered into the cabinet with the flip of a switch.
This is what dreams are made of, I thought every time I used it without having to lug the stupidly heavy thing around on my own.
I loaded the dishwasher, put away the leftovers, and cleaned the oven range worth more than a house until the brass knobs and dark hunter-green surface sparkled.
Oddly enough, I actually liked the post-meal cleanup. It was therapeutic. Plus, the feeling of walking into a squeaky clean kitchen the next morning couldn’t be beat.
All done for the night, I grabbed my bag off the hook in the mudroom and stepped out the back door.
The warm July air was thick with sensory memories, blurring the lines between then and now. My shirt clung to the small of my back just like it had that night, and the damp evening tasted the same when I took a deep breath.
There were plenty of differences, though; things that dulled those jagged recollections.
My commute to and from work was a short walk down a tree-lined brick path on Mr. Marino’s lake shore estate.
Along with the personal chef position, the job offer had included accommodations in a studio apartment above the guest cottage, tucked away in a grove of trees, overlooking Lake Superior herself.
Solar lamps lit the way, and the house’s giant windows cast a warm glow on the well-manicured lawn. Late summer cicadas were a welcome, low drone, and the crash of waves called me to the place that was now my home.
Even still, I couldn’t help but remember.
Seven hundred and forty-one days ago, I woke up screaming in a heat recovery clinic.
Days and days of the most brutal, confusing, and painful heat I’d ever experienced had passed. Nurses came and went between moments of lucidity, leaving water and crackers and artificial heat aids—knotting dildos—but nothing had eased me.
Waves had passed with no real peak or break in between. When I’d thought one would end, another began. By the end I was certain it’d kill me, but then it finally broke, like a fever that’d exhausted even itself.
There was no satisfaction in the culmination of the worst week of my life; it merely fizzled out like a ruined orgasm, leaving me spent.
Gwen had been at my bedside the first time I fully came to, a stranger then. After she’d made me drink some electrolytes, she’d explained that I was safe. They’d found me curled up in a blanket at their front door in the throes of a chemically-induced heat.
Dropped off like an unwanted pet.
“You don’t need to tell me anything,” she’d said, offering me a fruit cup. “But if you do want to talk, or if you remember anything medically important from before you woke up, I’ll be here to listen.”
I’d given her a stilted explanation of what I could remember; the warehouse—an unregulated, illicit heat club, she’d explained tightly—being drugged and forced into a heat, and then the alphas, one who I’d thought was my friend, all getting ready to—to—
With a shake of my head, I’d told her I couldn’t remember anything after that. It was a lie, but not by much.