Page 64 of Scheme
I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening.
“Omega nonsense,” I replied cautiously, giving a half-hearted shrug. “Instinct drives us to be pleasing and compliant, so you’ll deign to notice us. An alpha’s instinct—that niggling urge to care for and coddle and satisfy—becomes more pronounced after mating.”
“Is that so?” he asked, not sounding particularly convinced.
“I’m not talking out of my ass,” I laughed. “I’ve been a courting omega before, I know how this dance goes. How instincts can drive our actions, can drive us to do things that we wouldn’t necessarily do in our right minds.”
Kit’s muscles tensed beneath my arm.
“When was this?”
I startled at the sharpness of the question, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. “Years ago. Over a decade now. In the lead-up to my first heat.”
“And you changed your mind?”
I snorted. “No. He changed his.”
“You tricked me.”
I shot Kit what I hoped passed for a breezy smile. It wasn’t as though I was heartbroken about what had transpired, not anymore. Not this many years on, seeing who Fraser had become and who’d I’d become. Who Iwouldhave become if he hadn’t called it off.
However, the burn of humiliation hadn’t necessarily eased. Strange, how the heartbreak that had felt so soul-crushing at the time was now a distant memory, but the embarrassment of rejection was a living, breathing beast beneath my skin that I’d never been able to vanquish.
“It was distressing at the time, of course. With the benefit of hindsight, I see that he made the right call. He would have made me miserable, and I’m certain I would have made him miserable.”
Not that he’d been thinking so altruistically at the time, I added in my head.
“I find that impossible to believe.”
The vehemence in Kit’s voice took me off-guard. Maybe he thought that because I was obliging, I would therefore, also make a good mate, but no one wanted to be saddled with an unhappy omega, and the life Fraser wanted, the life he had now, would have made me incredibly unhappy.
“Well, perhapshewould have been happy enough,” I mused. “I wouldn’t be the Margot I am now if I’d mated Fraser. I’d have been moulded by his vision of what the ideal mate should do and be. His mate is very content to be at home, surrounded by extended family, with six kids and probably another on the way.”
“And you wouldn’t be happy with that life,” Kit said—a statement, not a question.
“I’d have made the best of it,” I hedged. “I mean, I wouldn’t have known any different. I was eighteen and fresh out of school. The Margot I amnowwouldn’t want that, but there’s no way of objectively looking back in hindsight, is there? I’m coloured by the experiences I’ve had since, the life I’ve lived, the opportunities I’ve missed out on, which are probably just as formative as the ones I’ve taken.”
I shrugged, wondering if there was some alternate timeline where I’d never gone swimming that day. Where Fraser had never seen me less than all done up untilafterwe were mated. If there’d been a bond in place already, undoubtedly, he wouldn’t have found my appearance so jarring. My scent would have already been blended with his, my ties to him unbreakable.
At eighteen, that had been all I wanted. To bind us together in all ways before he looked too closely at me.
At thirty-two, the idea was horrifying.
“Do you want kids someday?” Kit asked after a long pause.
I’d accepted now that I probably wouldn’t have children of my own, but back when I’d envisioned that future for myself…
“I always liked the idea of one. One kid that I could give all my attention to, that their dad could give all their attention to. We’d be a little unit of three, cosy and content in a two-bedroom flat, going on holidays easily when we wanted to, driving around in a little hatchback...”
Perhaps growing up with five younger siblings had affected me more than I thought.
“When I was growing up, I hated being an only child,” Kit admitted quietly. “But maybe I just wanted what I didn’t have. I don’t mind it so much as an adult.”
I hesitated, wanting to ask Kit about his dad but not wanting to make him uncomfortable either.
“My dad was an omega,” Kit continued, unprompted.
Was.
