Heat for sale

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 unca

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.

Heath licked his lips and adjusted his cock.

The offer for breeding wasn’t on the table yet. But given the write-up about Nathan’s son—intelligent, ambitious, with the goal to be an art history professor—the breeding would be offered up soon. Heath knew how much it cost to pay the government fee for an omega to be named a professor. He’d paid it himself once upon a time, though he’d only paid the lower cost of an alpha certification. Omegas were charged much more.

That had been a long time ago, and the price had only gone up. After giving up his professorial title to take his inherited place in the peerage, Heath had retired to his house in the city to read books, entertain other peers, manage his familial estates, handle his useless brother and nephew, fuck Nathan, and drink. After Nathan’s death, he’d added more of the other five to make up for his loss.

Heath cleared his throat and glanced down at the highest bid still held by his friend Felix. The number was so small for such a beautiful man it made him see red. Heath felt Nathan himself was slighted by his son’s low bids, and that played a role, no doubt, in his sudden decision to type in a number of his own—a big number, the kind of number to give other bidders pause—and then hit enter.

Certainty surged through him. He could do this, handle the heat of Nathan’s son and, with any luck, walk out of it with a child that was at least partially made up of the man he’d adored against all reason. Oh, Nathan…

Brilliant, charming, sadistic Nathan. How he’d loved the demon and the man, both.

He wouldn’t make that same mistake with Adrien, though. He’d keep it clean. Unemotional. A transaction and nothing more. He’d promised himself after everything he’d endured that no omega would hold sway over him again. Not the way Nathan had. Losing him had hurt too much, wounded Heath too deeply.

Besides, no omega could ever hold a candle to Nathan, his beauty or his intellect, and definitely never his skill in the bedroom. There would be no risk to his heart.

Heath squeezed his cock and gazed again at the photo of the boy’s asshole. It was a lovely swirl nestled between two sweet cheeks. Colored a gentle pinkish-brown, a bit darker than Nathan’s had been, it was hairless and clearly untouched.

He stood, unbuckled his pants, and scrolled the page so he could see all four pictures of the boy at once. He tugged his thick cock free and groaned as he palmed it, squeezing as he massaged the length. Narrowing his eyes to slits, he stared at the screen and remembered Nathan in ecstasy. He jerked himself off fast and hard, hips pumping, as he gazed at his dead lover’s son and imagined him as Nathan—on his knees, ass up, begging to be filled with babies and Heath’s knot.

Grunting, he came, pulse after pulse of pleasure spurting out across the screen over the images of Adrien’s face, body, ass, and hole. Shaken by the sharpness of his lust, Heath collapsed in his desk chair and glared at the screen as his bid was downgraded and the total number ticked up.

Wiping the screen clean, he leaned forward, cock still hard and sticking out from his open pants. Typing in a new set of numbers, he leaned back in satisfaction. Let someone try to take this boy from him. Just let them.

Taking hold of his cock again, he refreshed the page, making sure his bid stayed the highest. He’d have Nathan’s grown son beneath him, and he’d breed the last remaining piece of the lover he’d lost, if it took ransoming his entire estate to do it.

ADRIEN GAPED AT the latest number associated with his auction. He couldn’t believe the astronomical amounts that were still ever-so-slowly creeping higher. He’d be able to fund the rest of his studies easily, and even have more than enough to pay for the fee to be named a professor. There’d been a big jump on the third day of the auction for no reason he could discern, but once he’d allowed Ron to add breeding to his listing, the bids had gone gangbusters. He’d never imagined that breeding would be so valuable.

He just wished the idea of it didn’t scare him so much.

Adrien knew very little about pregnancy outside of the elementary information he’d gleaned during his only human biology class at the begi

Segregated human biology classes were the norm for all but the most liberal of universities—curriculum divided between alphas, omegas, and betas, with extra information for alphas or betas on the medical school track.

It was considered a well-worn truth that omegas were better off knowing

as little as possible about the experiences they would face, or else they might resist their heats. Alphas were to assume responsibility for guiding omegas through the trials and tribulations of their biology, and their classes were rumored to be more thorough. Most omegas learned about the joys and terrors of their biology from older omegas in their lives, but Adrien knew few of those, and none he was close enough with to ask questions regarding heat, pregnancy, and birth. It struck him as absurd that omegas were kept so in the dark and that the omega’s physical, emotional, and spiritual state during the various stages of heat, pregnancy, and birth were more thoroughly covered in the classes for alphas.