“He might,” Simon said with a thoughtful expression. “But he hasn’t forbidden it. In fact, I’ve been instructed to give you anything you ask for.”
“Oh.” He sat in silence, Simon’s eyes on him intensely. Finally, he said,
“Will he be angry if I look at them?”
“Have you ever seen Heath angry?”
Adrien thought back to when he’d first met Heath, being ordered to show his hole, kneeling in the dirt to suck his cock, and then being fucked in the entry of the heat cabin as he felt the first real swells of the heat. He’d been hard, rough, perfunctory, but never angry. Never cruel or outright mean.
“No,” he said softly.
“It’s a rare event, but it does happen. I can’t tell you how he’d feel about you looking at the photos or what his reaction will be, but I can say that if you ask for them, I’ll bring them to you before I leave for the night.” Simon fanned himself more vigorously. Adrien tried to determine if it was due to nerves or heat.
“I’d like to look at the photos, please.” What harm could it do? He couldn’t imagine there would be anything in a family photo album that would be embarrassing or shameful. And if there was, then Adrien would just have to find the box of his things from his dorm where he’d shoved the photo albums he’d salvaged from his father’s house after his death. There were a good number of silly photos of him as a kid in there. Tit for tat.
“I’ll have the albums to you by nightfall. I’ll send Jonas with them.”
“Jonas?” Adrien said, uncrossing his legs and enjoying the wind fluttering
through his hair.
“He’s a young servant here. An alpha, actually. Heath is going to train him up to work in the business, but for now he keeps the files in Heath’s office.”
“Oh, Heath has an office…” Adrien trailed off. “I assumed his office was in the city.”
“He works from home most of the time.”
All day long while Adrien lolled about in the nest and the garden, Heath was on the same property? Somehow, he felt snubbed that he didn’t know this information before now. “Oh. What does he do in his office here?”
“He takes appointments, there’s always someone wanting to meet with him, and phone calls. Everyone wants to talk with him about investing in their schemes.”
“Does he? Invest in people’s ‘schemes’?”
“Sometimes. And sometimes not.” Simon heaved himself up. “Now, I’ll tell Jonas to put the books in your bedroom. If you stay out here for another half hour or so, Adrien, you won’t have to worry about putting on the robe.
He’ll be down and gone again.”
Adrien cradled his stomach, holding his hand over a spot where the baby was kicking in little flutters. He saw Simon hesitate, watching curiously.
“He’s kicking,” he explained.
Simon tilted his head. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” Adrien looked up at Simon and saw the bare curiosity on his face.
“Have you ever felt a baby move?”
Simon shook his head.
“Come here,” Adrien said, reaching out for Simon’s hand. It was soft but starting to get arthritis in some of the joints. He placed the old man’s hand on his stomach and hoped the baby wouldn’t get shy now.
“Oh!” Simon said, jerking his hand back when the baby gave a good kick.
“That’s strong!”
“Yeah,” Adrien said, grinning helplessly. He stroked his stomach again.
“He’s busy today.”
“Enjoying the fresh air, as he should,” Simon said, straightening up and lifting his wobbly chin. “Good evening, lovey. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Adrien lingered in the garden until the sun started to set, and he did grow chilly. He went inside and ate the dinner Simon had prepared for him: cold
salad and a delicious cheese-and-meat plate. He made himself walk around the living area, pretending that he might read a book or sit down on the sofa, but eventually he eagerly raced back to his bedroom.
The window screens were drawn, probably Simon’s doing. He knew that it unnerved Adrien to walk into the room at night and made him feel exposed to the forest. On the center of his bed were four thick photo albums, and he heaved them up into his arms, resting them on his stomach as he walked back into the cozy living room to take his time looking at them.
Each album was navy-blue leather with a white label card on the front.
The first card displayed dates that, if Adrien had guessed Heath’s age correctly, probably started right before or after his birth and went through the years of his childhood. The next two labels displayed dates in a different hand and seemed to correspond with high school, college, and young manhood. The fourth label, though, held a name and no dates. It simply said Nathan.
Adrien started on the first album. Some of the photos there were black-and-white but clearly post-War. Everyone wore the waist-high trousers that were common and the striped button-up shirts that had been all the rage then.
His own father had had some similar-looking pictures from his youth.
Baby Heath was a chubby little thing. His omega parent held him in most of the pictures; there was one of him still chestfeeding at what appeared to be almost three years old. That was a devoted omega. That was love.
Adrien felt an odd pang for the man who’d given birth to him and then left before the year was up. What would it have been like to be cherished like Heath so clearly had been? Would he be a different sort of man now? He rubbed his own stomach and felt a vow growing in his heart, but he kept it back, a lingering fear keeping him from voicing it aloud even to himself.
Not yet.
Little boy Heath was wild, it seemed. Shaggy dark hair and eyes that gleamed with mischief. There was a string of photos of him racing around the grounds, just a blur of a boy holding a sharp stick and wearing sturdy boots.
And there was a young Simon! Rushing after him, looking dapper in his nurse uniform, while Heath’s omega parent looked on laughing.
Adrien smiled fondly. How devoted Simon must be. Heath must be like his son.
He cracked open the next book, amused to find that puberty didn’t treat
Heath well at all. His nose was too big, his face marred by pimples, and yet he stared unflinchingly, confidently into the camera, and even over the distance of years that expression made Adrien melt inside. “Yes, sir,” he whispered, saluting the man who’d so easily mastered him. He had no doubt he could have done the very same in his youth.
The photos from the college years were a bit horrifying. Adrien had heard rumors that parties like these took place at his school, but he’d kept his head down and ignored it all. Heath, apparently, hadn’t.
“Wow.” Adrien hummed, flipping past the pages of Heath-behaving-badly until he reached some pages near the middle of the third book of Heath traveling the world.
He ran his fingers over the photos of Heath in a bathing suit on white sand with a blue sea in the background. Heath with a backpack at a mountain peak, grinning like a hopeless fool at whoever was taking the photo and spreading his arms wide, as if he was saying, “I’m giving you this whole wide world.”
Adrien felt a tug of jealousy for whoever Heath had looked at like that.
Then he started to notice that every second or third picture was missing from the album. Just a blank spot where a picture should have been. He frowned, wondering what—or who—had been removed.