The rest of the write-up was similar:
Adrien is an intelligent omega with a beautiful body, a focused mind, and a pleasant personality. An excellent student with a near-perfect GPA, his goal is to become a professor here at our very own university. Needless to say, a good return on his first heat would go a long way toward making that possible for him.
Adrien’s is a special kind of beauty. Notice the fine hairs on his buttocks.
Though blond, they shimmer beautifully in the light. His fleshy ass begs to be gripped and one can easily imagine how nicely it will bounce with an alpha’s deep thrusts. His skin is pale, yes, but will flush attractively in the throes of heat.
“Painting a picture, creating a fantasy is an important aspect of my work,”
Ron had said while he took picture after picture. “And I know just what I’ll say about you.”
Adrien tucked his lower lip into his mouth, chewing it anxiously, and read on. His eyes flew wide at the next words.
Adrien is untouched. A virgin in every way. Oh, lucky alpha, you’ll be winning more than just his first heat.
How had Ron known that? Did he have access to Adrien’s health files?
He must. The only person Adrien had confessed his virginity to was the nurse he’d seen for his regular checkup, and only because it was part of the questionnaire he’d been asked to fill out for his heat risk assessment.
Shaking, he allowed himself to scroll down, heart in his throat and fingers trembling. The number at the bottom indicated the current highest bid was greater than he’d feared but far less than he’d hoped. What if he did this and didn’t even get enough to pay for his school, much less the government’s fee to become a certified professor? He buried his head in his hands.
He shouldn’t have looked.
After a few long minutes, he lifted his head, noted the highest bid had gone up, but just barely, and closed down the site. Then he clicked open his research files on Hontu dyes and fabrics instead. He had work to do and continuing to fret about something he couldn’t control wasn’t going to change that.
What choice did he have? His first season was coming, and he had a heat to sell. There was no shame in it. Every omega faced these kinds of choices.
As he began to reorganize some of his most recent research notes, he scoffed under his breath. “Tell that to my ears.” They continued to burn hot every time he remembered the way his eyes had met Ron’s camera lens and the resulting image he’d glimpsed online. In it, he’d looked scared, exposed, and vulnerable.
Probably because that was exactly what he was.
Chapter Three
HEATH STARED AT the photo of the boy on the auction page. He didn’t usually look for heats to bid on, but his friend, Felix, had been bragging about holding the top bid on the newest boy offered by their shared alma mater’s matcher. When Felix had described the boy’s looks as being very like Heath’s own beloved Nathan’s, his curiosity had gotten the better of him.
And now he was hooked.
The ripe, slightly open mouth combined with the blond hair, almond-brown eyes, and high cheekbones did remind him rather intensely of Nathan, the only omega he’d ever made the mistake of loving. And losing. In the darkest hours of the night, he still tried to convince himself that Nathan had loved him in return. He’d only had five years with his beloved before he’d died from a previously undiagnosed fatal flaw in his heart, but they had been years of such intensity that Heath was still reeling from them. Memories of Nathan, along with pain, rose up in him again, raw and aching.
Shattering grin. Mischievous eyes. A penchant for trouble.
Good God, Nathan had brought Heath to his knees again and again, and then died there in his arms. Tragic, in every damn way. But alongside the pain came a beating pulse of desire for the boy in the photograph. Certainly, though, the lust had little to nothing to do with the boy himself and everything to do with Heath’s memories of Nathan squirming beneath him in the throes of ecstatic heat.
Felix had been right. The resemblance was so strong, so fantastic, that Heath lost his breath counting the similarities. As he continued to study the photos of Adrien, his mind slowly unraveled.
A tangle of feelings and memories, half-formed plans, and calculations possessed him. If the boy in the photos was twenty, as stated in the auction ad, then that would correspond with what Heath remembered of Nathan’s recounting of his first breeding. The one he’d auctioned off when he was still in school. Nathan had been won by an older alpha with kind eyes—that was how he always described him—and he’d given the child up to the alpha
father as agreed in advance so that he could continue his schooling. After graduating with a degree in dance and theater, Nathan had used the bonus pregnancy money he’d earned to travel the world. It was only two years after that he and Heath had met at a party in the artsy city of Waterston in the Northern Province, both of them young and intoxicated. Nathan had flashed that charming smile, and Heath had been quick to fall in love.
Heath tilted his head and examined the photos of Adrien, wondering what the boy looked like when he smiled. The resemblance was too great and the timing much too uncanny. Quick calculations told Heath that Nathan would have been just barely twenty-one when this omega, Adrien, was born.
He clicked through to the private, bidders-only pedigree page, with details of parentage kept secret even from the omegas themselves, to look into Adrien’s ancestry. His pulse thundered wildly. This boy who stared at him from the screen with fear and trepidation, and with such beautiful tears glistening in his eyes, was Nathan’s son. His entire legal name was given as birth omega with absolute certainty, and if there had been any doubt, Heath recognized Nathan’s signature on all of the contracts and forms. Not to mention the birth certificate was stamped as PRIVATE SEALED FOR ALPHA USE
ONLY, as Nathan had assured him whenever Heath had asked about the likelihood of his child ever finding him.
“Darling, he’s never going to find me, even if he looks. The files are sealed from the world until his heat begins, assuming he’s even an omega.
And then only his potential alphas will have the right to the information. If they choose to tell him, well…” Nathan had shrugged. “It’s not as though I’ll be under any obligation to meet him. I did my duty.”
Heath stared at Adrien’s picture again. He was beautiful.
A living, breathing piece of Nathan…
Just how similar was he exactly? Would he sound like Nathan? Would he cry out the same way, or beg, or glance over his shoulder while being fucked with the same smug gaze? Would he tease and withhold and torment Heath as Nathan always had?
Or would he let Heath breed him like Nathan never allowed? Could Heath fill him with a child? A thrill shuddered through him. That child would be a genetic piece of Nathan to hold onto, to cherish. He could breed this Adrien omega and have everything he ever wanted. Or almost.