Chapter 1
Seven years later … Adrian
Raucous noise swells from downstairs. I know what that means even before Tristan pokes his head around the red curtain over my open door.
“Buck’s night,” Tristan says, his gap-toothed smile wide with delight.
I snort. I wish I shared his enthusiasm.
Sure, a party or large group—buck’s night, military guys on leave, an alpha’s last night before his bonding ceremony—means more money, but I’d gladly take my usual one or two clients for the night and forgo the sore ass taking up to five in a night leaves me with.
Omega slick or not, that’s a lot of dick outside of my heat.
Tristan disappears, the curtain fluttering behind him, and I get up from the stuffy couch that decorates one side of my room to try and make myself more presentable.
Since I never solicit clients at the bar downstairs, just get Tristan to send someone my way, I’m not dressed in the tight black shorts and cropped top that is the uniform of The Omega’s Nest.
Blasphemy, right? A brothel with a name like that spits in the face of an omega’s most sacred space.
But in the years I’ve been working here, I still think I made the right decision.
When my alpha sire died, leaving me unmated and with no family, it was either this or the clergy.
And frankly, if I’m going to get fucked by alphas I don’t want, I’d rather get paid for it.
So I chose the brothel. When the choice is between hell or hell, then that’s no real choice at all.
Tristan’s head pops back through the curtain.
“Military,” he says breathlessly. I laugh this time. Military means we’re going to be working all night, yes, but it also means the alphas will be young and in good shape. Tristan froths over any division coming through, except—
“Hope it’s not Navy,” he says. “Want me to pick someone?”
I straighten my bedspread, roll my bare toes on the red carpet, and run my hands down my tight singlet and baggy jeans. The question’s a formality.
“Yep,” I say and give him my most reassuring smile.
“Adrian,” he says, tone turning serious. “Just try and have fun, okay? I’ll pick someone good, promise.”
“I know. Thanks, bud,” I say, and I mean it this time.
Tristan has been unbelievably good to me since I got here.
I’m not the only omega who prefers not to work the bar and main foyer, and within the limited scope of choices we have, this is allowed if another omega is willing to work with you.
Tristan had found me having a panic attack in my room the night I’d arrived—my first night, the night an alpha took my virginity—and he’d huffed, wrapped me up in a big hug, and said, “I’ve got you, buddy.
” He’d been the one to select the alpha.
A virgin omega—virginal to alpha dick earned the classification—had been advertised and the place was packed.
Fortunately, it was for a set price, unlike our heats, which went for auction.
But a set price meant Tristan could pick, and he went with an alpha on the younger side—mid-thirties, fit, obviously wealthy, and amenable to Tristan staying for the duration.
“It gets easier,” he’d told me afterwards, when I wiped a bitter tear off my face and tried to pretend I wasn’t crying. I didn’t know how to tell him I wasn’t crying over what had just happened—or not only what had just happened.
I’d imagined my first time, envisioned all my times, would belong to one alpha.
One very specific alpha. But my clumsy attempt to show him I wanted him to court me when we were both seventeen had been met with a look of shock I still couldn’t recall without cringing and feeling awash with paralysing shame.
And what no one knew was that wasn’t just my first time with an alpha. It’d been my first time ever.
“Pick someone hot,” I tell Tristan now and give him my best sleazy smile.
It’s totally for his benefit. He’s infected with my mood—we’re omegas—and so I do my best to be genuinely happy for his sake, for the sake of all the omegas here.
We might’ve taken different paths of misery to get here, but as Tristan put it, there was no need to bring the vibe of the whole fucking place down.
“Baby, I’ll pick you the hottest. Only the best for the prettiest omega at The Nest.” He winks, and his fluffy red hair disappears around the curtain with him.
The material breezes in and out, the familiar swell of music and voices an indiscernible jumble of noise from the bar below the balcony that rings the space, where my room and most of the omegas’ rooms sit waiting for clients.
I scoff. I’m hardly pretty. Mousy blond hair, more brown than blond since I never get to surf anymore, dull blue eyes, and an unremarkable face are not a recipe for beauty. Plus, I’m too skinny, and working five nights a week and sleeping all day means my once tanned skin is now pasty white.
I do all right with the alpha johns—the nicer ones lie smoothly about how pretty I am, which is really unnecessary since they’re paying me.
Besides, those compliments are for me as an omega, someone with a hole that slicks up with the coaxing from a finger or a tongue to a degree most alphas consider enough.
Of course they smell like desire when they use me.
The sound of voices gets louder as a few alphas come up the stairs.
I scent Tristan amongst them, only he could radiate that kind of giddiness, and the smell of arousal pouring off alphas about to get laid.
A distinct note of the surf emanates from one of them—a wave breaking, the scent of the ocean—but there’s just no way.
I thought I’d caught his scent often in the years since I’d last seen him, but it was never him. The brothel is on the harbour—someone would open a window, and the nervous hammering of my heart was swiftly crushed each time I felt the sea breeze.
Laughter comes from outside my door.
“It’s time to become a man, flyboy,” a drunken voice booms from just behind the curtain.
I turn my back to the door and focus on the table beside my bed, lining up everything I’ll need.
Condoms, lube—since I often don’t get as wet as I should—tissues, water jug.
The straightening is a habit to stem the burst of anxiety, to give myself a moment to get my game face on before I have to look at the alpha and get to work.
Boots on the carpet thud softly behind me, and the laughter cuts off as the smell of the ocean overpowers the room. I turn slowly, already certain it’s got to be a coincidence, but the smile on my face slips and falls completely when I meet those familiar hazel eyes.
“Addie?” he says, his voice as recognisable as his scent.
A deepness had finally settled into it once we turned eighteen.
Because his voice dropped so much, when it’d crack or break, it was really noticeable.
I used to shove him and laugh. He’d mumble at me to “shut up,” as he tried to hide the blush radiating up his throat into his shaggy brown hair.
That hair is gone now, replaced by a shaved head.
“Addie?” he says again, shock morphing to disbelief.
He’s suspended just inside the curtain. He’s so much bigger than the last time I saw him.
Not taller, it looks like the growth spurt to six foot two at seventeen was it, but his shoulders, his chest, his biceps under his powder-blue button up suggest a bulk he certainly didn’t have before.
Powder blue is a bad choice for him. Green, olive, even brown or black work better with his hazel eyes.
Those eyes I’m staring up at as I try to find my voice.
Shock, fear, and shame cascade through me, rendering me speechless, frozen.
All I can do is catalogue how much more pronounced his face looks with his hair gone.
He’s always had an unfairly good face—strong nose, full lips, high cheekbones, and wide-set eyes.
I loved his hair, but can’t deny the buzz cut is working wonders for his cheekbones.
My heart is pounding. I imagine he can see it against the flimsy white material of my singlet. And that mortifying thought kicks me into gear.
“Fifty for my mouth, one hundred for my ass, one fifty for both.” And it just comes right out—the usual spiel.
Sure, I normally deliver it with a smile, a wink, whatever demure posture I can yank out of myself for the job, but that came out flat and landed between us like the most awkward greeting of our lives.
I drop my gaze to the plush red carpet, clench my fists at my sides, and try to breathe.
“Addie, what …” He takes another step into the room, his voice dropping. “It’s me,” he adds like he can’t believe he has to.
And he doesn’t have to.
I’ve known Leonard Hale since I was four years old—that’s virtually all my twenty-one years—and I’ve been in love with him for almost half of it.
Leo doesn’t have to tell me who he is. I’d know him anywhere. I just wish I’d never had to know him here.
“Addie,” Leo says, his voice shaking with his shock, but a harshness enters it when he goes on. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I work here,” I say to the carpet, my voice pitifully quiet. Shame is winning, shock and fear buckling under the weight of it. I can’t look at him.
“What the fuck? Why?” He’s in front of me now, and he’s so big, he’s a wall blocking the light from the door. His scent envelops me—a wave breaking at sunset. The smell is so powerful, I can practically feel my board between my thighs, the water lapping at my chest.
“Addie,” he says, voice gentling, almost breaking in a way it hasn’t, I assume, in years. “Please look at me.”