2. Resolutions Are For Breaking
RESOLUTIONS ARE FOR brEAKING
The next morning, Emre’s carefully laid plans were all shot to Hell.
He was curled up on his threadbare mattress on the floor, eight-month-old Abbie in her human shape next to him. Like Emre, she had dark brown hair, and her green eyes were huge and innocent.
She giggled when he tickled her belly, all gummy with just one tooth. Emre loved her so much.
“Hey,” Emre said to his daughter. “Why don’t we—”
Heavy footsteps thudded outside the apartment.
His pulse skyrocketed. Had Ronald found them already?
He closed his eyes and hunched over Abbie, waiting for Ronald to smash through his door.
There weren’t many hiding places in here. The tiny living room shared the same space as the kitchen, and the bedroom was even smaller. The bathroom was the size of a postage stamp, its door flimsy like wet cardboard.
Even if Emre tried to hide his baby, Ronald would find them in seconds.
“It’s me,” Zenith said from the other side of the door. “Just thought I’d leave behind some breakfast. That’s all. Sorry if I scared you.”
Sheer relief crashed through Emre like a cleansing wave.
Zenith knocked lightly on the door, and his footsteps drifted away.
Emre waited for Zenith’s door to close, for his footsteps to wander through his own apartment. When he heard no one else in the common hallway, he scurried over and hurriedly unlocked the door, nudging Buttwheel out of the way.
A fancy paper bag hung from his door handle. Emre brought it in and quickly locked the door, before peeking inside.
In one corner of the bag was a large paper cup—hot chocolate, said the label. It was accompanied by a breakfast croissant with ham, egg, and cheese, three chocolate cookies, and two blueberry muffins.
Emre gaped at the sheer amount of food. This is all for me? “Y-you didn’t have to...”
“I was grabbing breakfast for myself anyway. It wasn’t a bother,” came Zenith’s reply.
Well, Emre wasn’t a fool. He wasn’t about to refuse food when he had two babies to feed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Enjoy.”
He brought the bag to his bed, laying out its contents to admire it all.
Abbie crawled over and reached for the colorful wrappers. Emre tore off a section of wrapper and balled it up, letting Abbie play with it.
While she was distracted, Emre sipped on the hot chocolate and moaned at the whipped cream. Then he took a bite of the croissant sandwich, and moaned again. He hadn’t had this much good food in... a long time. In fact, he’d never had such a luxurious spread.
“It’s so good,” he whimpered.
Two doors down, Zenith sucked in a sharp breath.
Was he... reacting to something?
Emre listened as the shower came on in the alpha’s apartment. He ate the sugar-crusted muffin top and moaned, then drank more hot chocolate and moaned again. More sounds fell out of his mouth. The food was all so sinful. He couldn’t stop eating and moaning.
After a while, there came a deep groan from someone in the building. Emre paused, pricking his ears.
Wet, rhythmic sounds—so familiar that Emre dropped everything to cover Abbie’s ears.
Was that... Zenith? Touching himself?
Emre definitely recognized the voice cursing lowly.
Oh, gods. He blushed all over. This can’t be happening. Except it was, the slick sounds growing faster, the heavy breathing growing deeper. He could just imagine those thick fingers wrapped around that bulge in Zenith’s shorts.
He should cover his ears, except he had no free hands.
Emre ended up listening to every illicit second of it, trying not to feel guilty. Especially because he was committing it all to memory.
When it was finally over, he went back to his breakfast, trembling. He ate more of the croissant sandwich and couldn’t help moaning again. How was the food so good?
“Gods, fuck,” Zenith hissed.
Emre wisely chose not to ask what was wrong, because he didn’t want to admit that he had overheard everything else.
He saved the leftovers to snack on later. Then he fed Abbie and let her scamper around as a wolf pup, waiting until she had exhausted herself and fallen asleep.
Emre ducked into the shower and relived Zenith’s sounds, slipping his fingers into himself. He had to add the fingers from his other hand; four of his own were nowhere near the thickness of Zenith’s cock. It still wasn’t enough—he couldn’t get the right angle, and his fingers were too short.
At least they were enough to make him come. His moans punched out of him, his cum going everywhere.
When he could think clearly again, he realized that maybe he had been too loud.
Oh gods, I hope he didn’t hear any of it.
There wasn’t any sound coming from Zenith’s apartment, so... maybe Zenith was asleep?
Emre sent a prayer up to Mother Moon.
For the rest of the day, he pored over the newspapers he’d scrounged from the trash can downstairs. He found a listing for a cashier job on the other side of Cartfalls; it was all that his skill set allowed him to apply for.
Except it was difficult for him to travel anywhere, with his belly as big as it was.
What do I do? I need to pay Zenith back for the food. Maybe he had something else that Zenith wanted? Not money; Emre was broke.
Did Zenith need an omega for sex, maybe?
The typing in Zenith’s apartment stopped. The alpha began to pace. Emre listened as Zenith took five steps down the length of his room, then five steps back, on and on until it made Emre itch.
When he could no longer bear it, Emre blurted, “Is there something I can help you with?”
The pacing stopped. “Huh,” Zenith murmured. “Actually, yeah. What do you know about shopping carts and babies?”
Emre’s eyebrows crawled up. He glanced at Abbie and Buttwheel. “Why do you need to know about them?”
“I’m writing a book. A...” Zenith coughed, and he sounded almost embarrassed. “A romance novel. There’s a scene where—Anyway, I need to know if someone could leave a baby in a shopping cart, and tell the cart to go to a certain location.”
“You can’t look that up on the internet?”
There came a soft rustling noise, as though Zenith was running his fingers through his hair. “I, ah. I’ve cut off my internet so I don’t spend half my time scrolling through CartBook.”
Emre cracked a smile. “I thought authors just sat and wrote all day.”
“You don’t know how easy it is to get on social media and be distracted by the hundreds of baby pictures your friends post,” Zenith muttered.
“Aww,” Emre said, feeling warm. “You write romance novels and you like baby photos?”
There came an awkward silence from the other apartment. Was Zenith embarrassed? Should Emre not have said that?
Zenith cleared his throat. “Anyway, having no internet means I have no access to information and research.”
“That makes sense. How does your character treat the shopping cart?” Emre watched Buttwheel clunk around the living room on its bad wheel. “Carts have feelings. The longer you spend being nice to them, the more loyal they will be to you. If you treat them like dirt, they won’t obey your commands.”
Zenith hummed thoughtfully. “So if a bad guy tries to send a baby away in a cart...”
“If it’s a random cart, it won’t go far.
It doesn’t have any reason to obey. But if you spend time walking with the cart up and down the grocery store aisles, and let it carry lots of things for you, the cart is going to take the baby wherever you want it to go.
” Emre shuddered and added, “Actually, that’s really fucking creepy, if a bad guy did that. ”
“Hmm. I can work with this. Thanks.” Zenith’s couch creaked, and the typing started up once more.
Emre couldn’t help feeling a little proud for helping, even if the subject matter unnerved him.
What kind of romance novel was Zenith working on, that involved bad guys kidnapping babies with shopping carts? How was that part of a romance?
He managed to keep his mouth shut for as long as he could. But his curiosity won out in the end.
“Why is there baby kidnapping in your romance novel?”
The typing stopped. Emre cringed. You weren’t supposed to interrupt an author while they were writing, right?
After a pause, Zenith replied, “The people who commissioned me to write this, they requested it.”
“Who the Hell wants baby kidnapping in their romance novel?!”
“My friends.”
Emre gaped at the wall. “Your friends?!”
“It’s a bit of a long story,” Zenith murmured.
“And a bit of a secret. Amongst my friends, there are two alphas who have been... heading toward a bonding for a long time. At least, everyone else is convinced they are. There’s even a huge betting pool on when they’ll get together.
One of my friends, Crush, commissioned me to write a book about them because they’re taking so long. It’s a gift to his omega.”
“Oh. That’s... kind of sweet,” Emre said. “But also kind of creepy?”
Zenith laughed. “And that’s why this is a secret. I took the job because it pays a hefty commission. Couldn’t afford to turn that down.”
That would explain why the alpha was living in a tiny apartment.
It didn’t explain his huge, comfy-looking leather couch, though.
“And the baby kidnapping?” Emre asked. “They wanted that in the book?”
Zenith sighed. “Have you heard about the recent increase in baby kidnappings? Dual-species kids are especially at risk. My friends and brothers have been tracking down these operations. The alphas in question, Uriel and Bruiser, they have been helping with the efforts. I agreed that it would make their story more believable by including some of real life in there.”
Emre glanced at Abbie, who was tumbling across the floorboards. Suddenly, he couldn’t remember if her biological alpha father was anything but a plain human. Some species hid their existences really well.
He bit his lip. Abbie was just a normal wolf pup, right?
Right.
He only realized he had been quiet for too long when Zenith cleared his throat.
“Anyhow, I’ll get back to writing. Thanks for your help.”
“Anytime,” Emre said. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to be.”
Zenith didn’t reply, but Emre didn’t have anything to say, either. He didn’t want to distract the alpha from his work.
“Wa wa,” Abbie said, grabbing the balled-up cookie wrapper from this morning and handing it to Emre.
Emre’s heart swelled. With some difficulty, he scooped Abbie into his arms and swung her into the air. She squealed and giggled, little feet kicking.
“You’re amazing,” Emre said fervently, blowing a raspberry against her belly. Abbie laughed infectiously.
She was kind of loud. Emre paused, glancing in the direction where Zenith’s voice had come from. Was Abbie making too much noise? Was she going to annoy Zenith like she had with Ronald?
Panic shot through his stomach like ice.
But Zenith did not yell, or even mutter under his breath. He was still typing. Emre made himself remember: Zenith liked looking at baby photos. He wasn’t going to be mad if Abbie giggled and shrieked.
Well, he might get mad if Abbie cried inconsolably, but Emre would cross that bridge when they got there.
He carried Abbie over to the window and peered out, making sure there were no suspicious persons lurking around the building. When he decided it was safe, Emre wriggled out of his clothes and shifted into a wolf.
He liked being in this shape more when he was pregnant—he was closer to the ground, more stable on four paws instead of two legs.
As a wolf, Emre could hear and smell better; all the easier to detect threats.
It didn’t hurt that his thoughts were simpler.
No complicated human worries, no money problems to think about.
There were just his instincts: to protect his pup and keep his territory safe.
He lost track of time for a while, nosing at Abbie and watching her tumble over his tail.
Zenith spoke some hours later. “Emre?”
Emre cocked his head and gave a yip. Abbie yipped back.
He could still speak with human words because of magic, but he didn’t want to right now.
“... Oh,” Zenith said. “I wondered why you stopped talking.” He huffed. “I didn’t realize you had shifted. If it’s okay... I’d like to thank you for your help by making you dinner.”
Dinner. Free food. Good food.
Emre thumped his tail against the mattress and yipped again.
“I’m guessing that’s a yes?”
Another yip.
“Steak and potatoes sound good to you?”
Emre wriggled and yipped three times.
Zenith laughed. “All right. I’ll come over in a bit, when it’s ready.”
Abbie fell off the mattress. Emre nudged her back onto it and watched as she clambered all over him, tugging on his ears with her tiny wolf teeth. She wriggled under his paws too, and pounced on a squeaky toy hiding under the pillow. Emre could watch her forever and not tire of it.
He looked up when someone knocked on the door. With his sharper senses, he caught Zenith’s smoke-and-musk scent. The smell of delicious food accompanied the alpha.
Emre trotted over excitedly, before remembering how difficult it was to unbolt the latches with his paws. He shifted back into a human and opened the door, staring yet again at Zenith’s sheer size.
He was so huge. Broad shoulders, big hands, big cock.
After way too much time, Emre realized he was staring at Zenith’s bulge again.
He dragged his gaze back up, only to be distracted by Zenith’s clothes.
This evening, the alpha wore tight jeans and a button-down shirt, with his sleeves pushed up past his elbows.
Zenith carried a stack of boxes and plates, and he was even more handsome somehow.
Inexplicably, Zenith’s entire body tensed and relaxed. It was only when Emre met his gaze, that he realized Zenith was looking at his body.
His naked body.
“This is some welcome,” Zenith said, his voice rough.