Page 65 of Scheme
“Pregnancy is a lot more taxing on alpha females than omega females,” I volunteered hesitantly when Kit fell silent again. “Maybe that’s why they didn’t have more? I can see now why you didn’t even blink at Asher being a male omega.”
Kit’s lips tilted up in a quick, wry smile for a moment before his expression turned sombre again. “I think they would have had at least one more, but my dad died unexpectedly when I was two.” His gaze was firmly trained on the crashing waves. “We lived in Cornwall. That’s where I was born, where my dad was born. He was a fisherman, practically raised at sea. But even the most experienced sailors have bad days, and the ocean is an unforgiving teacher.”
I gave Kit’s arm a tight squeeze, and he gently returned the gesture. From the look on his face, it seemed as though his grief wasn’t fresh and sharp but an old ache that seemed to have long since settled into his bones, making up the fabric of what made him who he was.
Selfishly, I wondered how long it would take me to get to that point with my tangled emotions about Calum. When would that sharp knife edge of grief dull?
“When did you move to London?” I asked, clearing my throat.
“Almost right away, apparently. I don’t remember it, but I’m told we lived in council flats and barely scraped by for a few years—Mum never wanted anything to do with Dad’s family in Cornwall, and her own family in Singapore disapproved of her mating him in the first place, so it was just the two of us. She’d always done bookkeeping jobs, and eventually, a kindly employer took a chance on her, and she was able to work her way up. She does pretty well for herself these days.”
He sounded ambivalent rather than bitter, which tracked. Alpha children often had a slightly strained relationship with their alpha parent as they came into their own dominance. Usually, it was up to the omega parent to soothe the tensions between them, but Kit didn’t have that buffer.
“Why don’t you stay with her when you come home? Because of the whole… setting-you-up thing?”
“She doesn’t have the space. I went to an alpha-only boarding school from age twelve—that’s where I met Nico and theothers—” Oof, there was a heavy dose of bitterness in that one word, “—and Mum bought herself a one-bedroom flat in a nice part of London right after I went into the dorms. I wonder sometimes if that was why I wanted a job where I got to travel. It meant that the living arrangements never really came up after that.”
He shrugged as though that confession had been nothing. As if it didn’t explain so much about him.
“What about you? When did you move to London?”
“Right after my first heat.” I exhaled heavily. “Like I said, the alpha I’d been courting changed his mind. I went through my heat alone and didn’t want to hang around after that, so I applied for university in the city, and I’ve been there ever since. It really did work out for the best.”
“You say it like it’s easy, but it must have been awful.” The intensity in Kit’s voice took me by surprise. Then again, we were friends of sorts, and perhaps he didn’t like the idea of me suffering.
“Well, heat is always painful, and the first one is the worst. Mentally, I was in a terrible place already, and then the physical pain started, and it was excruciating. But at the end of those five days…”
The emotions I’d felt back then were locked away in an indestructible box in my mind, and I quickly verified that they were still safely there, unable to touch me.
“What happened at the end of those five days?” Kit rasped, staring at me intently, pulling me to a stop.
I looked up at him, drawing more comfort from those dark eyes than I had any right to.It’s not real. This isn’t real.
“I woke up.” It was dangerous to look at him for so long—too easy and too tempting to get lost in whatever this tangle of emotions was—and yet I couldn’t look away. “My heat ended, and I woke up and got out of my nest. I took a shower, got dressed, did my hair and makeup. I’d just experienced the most painful moment of my life, and Isurvived.
“Maybe it’s denial or an overabundance of confidence, but there was something quite empowering in that for me. I figured that if I could survive that, I could survive anything, and so I carried on. Applied for university, moved away from the town I’d grown up in, learned that there was a life for omegas outside of being someone’s mate.” I blew out a long breath. “That’s why I’m doing all this to get Asher into the Sutton-Harris School. Why I’m willing to stand up and lie in front of my entire family and face whatever fallout and humiliation comes from it. There was no one in my corner when I needed it, and I won’t let Asher be in that same position.”
Kit’s eyes were flaming with emotion, though I didn’t have the first clue what that emotion was. I wasn’t sure he knew either. For the briefest moment, his hand came up to cup my jaw, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone like I was something precious.
“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, Margot.”
He pulled his hand away, a faint blush staining his cheeks as he resumed walking, gently pulling me along beside him.It’s not real.
“I don’t know that anyone else would describe me that way,” I laughed, trying to navigate us back to safer waters. “Most people in my life think that true bravery would be trying again. That, for an omega, most people think being alone is a fate worse than death. Nico and Violet are really the only friends I have who have never tried to push that line of thinking on me.”
Kit nodded in understanding. “For two people who are so happy together, they’ve never been pushy about the idea of mating. Then again, neither of them was looking for a mate when they met each other.”
“Yeah?” I smiled. “I’m guessing you knew Nico back then.”
“I was there when they met,” Kit replied drily. “It was a forerunner to Bryce and Kane’s parties, hosted by some other friends. Nico clocked Violet’s degradation kink instantly—I turned around, and he had his fingers in this prim, polished omega’s mouth in the middle of the kitchen. Suffice to say, I didn’t expect it to lead to a mating and I don’t think they did either.”
I snort-laughed at the visual, having seen those two in plenty of similar and far more compromising positions since. They really were Couple Goals.
“You don’t have to answer this,” Kit began slowly. “But isn’t heat painful on your own? Maybe that’s why everyone thinks you must be miserable without alpha.”
“It is painful, but I’m pretty good at managing it now.” I hesitated, torn between mortification at talking about something so intimate but also feeling the need to educate Kit because I doubted he knew anything about heats, based on his track record. He was probably at a disadvantage, having attended an alpha-only boarding school. Most of them framed omegas as accessories to alphas, rather than individuals with wants and needs of their own.
“Because I’m unmated, every heat is like my first,” I explained. “It builds over the course of a year or so, and then I take to my nest for a week or so. If I was mated, my heats would be shorter and more frequent.”
