"It’s all right now, child, if you ever need someone to talk to, you can call me, I’ll give you my number."
"I’ll try not to abuse that," I say, swallowing hard.
"You know, if I were still with Rhys, your existence would be proof of my infidelity and could mess up my life, but Darius came into my life later, so it doesn’t concern him, and I think there might come a moment when I introduce you to my children. They’re your half brothers after all."
Blue folds his arms across his chest. "Alex’s existence is a general proof of your infidelity either way, Sebastien," he says dryly.
A faint flush colors Sebastien’s face. "I know. But not toward Darius. And as True Mates we cannot cheat on each other, so he won’t feel threatened by it."
Blue’s skeptical expression says exactly what he thinks of that.
Sebastien huffs. "You’re not a gamma, Blue! Gammas react to the scent of a heat. Staying with an omega in heat in a closed room…" He cuts himself off as if realizing he probably shouldn’t go into details about his intimate behaviors in front of me.
Feeling embarrassed, I turn to a different topic. "Does it really work that way with cheating on a True Mate? You feel repulsion toward other people, and it practically makes sex with them impossible?"
"Yes. Every sexual touch feels unpleasant, and you literally can’t get aroused. It’s like permanent erectile dysfunction."
There is a stretch of silence. I scrub my chin, my thoughts scattered and chaotic. Blue stands with his finger resting on his lips, tapping it lightly from time to time, but he’s deep in thought. Sebastien’s cheeks are slightly rosy, so I decide to let the topic go as well.
Finally, I mutter quickly, "I just want to assure you, I’m not going to be a source of chaos in your life. I would rather stay in the background for now."
"Well, it’s possible that my sons with Rhys will have a harder time accepting it, but I’ll work on them… Everybody knows that my relationship with Rhys was bad, no one in the Lowen family likes him," he sighs with a wink, "they think he’s a snob, a spoiled heir of the Red family, so I don’t think the fact that I wasn’t always faithful to him would break their hearts," Sebastien adds with a sarcastic smile, "especially considering he was never faithful to me."
Blue nods. "Well, all of that is true. Rhys is the villain of the family, and he never lifted a finger to help Sebastien build the agency." Blue makes a small, vague gesture toward Sebastien, though it comes off more like a tap with a hidden message of "all right, you got away with it this time."
For a moment I have no idea what to say.
"It’s kind of incredible that I’m the son of two omegas," I whisper. "It’s such a rare phenomenon…" I still can’t believe that revelation. "I truly suspected Thor or Victor before, or even the family patriarch, and the truth turned out to be so much more surprising."
"It’s rare, but not at all rare in our family. My brother Jacob is also a gamma. One of my sons as well, and two of my nephews. And maybe there are more, not everyone in the family has been tested."
"That’s amazing…" I murmur. "And those unusual hair colors, they’re so distinctive for your family."
"For our family," Sebastien corrects gently and brushes a strand of my hair that has fallen around my face.
"Yes, for our family," I correct myself, "funny, I always thought of myself as a Strada, but in fact I am a Lowen, as children usually share the surnames with their fathers and sires. But of course I intend to stay low key!"
Blue approaches me from the other side and says, "Back to the point, Alex. We will soon begin the research you’re so interested in, and I won’t hide it, we’re going to need more blood samples from you and a whole series of tests. The results may not come quickly, so you will have to arm yourself with patience."
I nod, my expression serious.
"It would also be ideal if you could obtain a blood sample from… Bay."
As I walk away from Malden Pharmaceutical I am in a way a new man. Full of hope, with a clear purpose in me.
The first thing I do is write an email to Bay, asking him if he would be so kind as to do me a favor, by giving me a few vials of his blood, or sending them to the address I will point out. I do not explain anything, but he does not ask.
He just does it for me.
Bay
Present day
I watch everything through the feed and through my own optics, the city stretching out beneath us as a low blur, a wide dark ribbon broken by scattered lights.
Ennio lies two feet to my left on the rooftop, prone behind the bulkhead with his rifle steady on a sandbag rest. He’s dressed in black like I am, soft ballistic plates under a cutaway vest, a thin mask covering half his face.
Our visors are live, so whatever he sees through his scope flashes across my HUD, and whatever I see bleeds into his. We share the same picture, the same crosshair, the same range and wind vector, the same ballistic solution, and the same time of flight readout pulsing in the corner.
