Only when it came time to pay did Elijah allow Silas’ hand to slip away. Silas dug into his pocket for his wallet, slid a card through the payment processor, and signed the receipt the barista presented to him. As he put ink to paper, the barista slid a stainless steel card holder across the table to Elijah. The number three was clipped to it.
“We’ll bring your order over as soon as it’s ready. Why don’t you two get comfy?”
“Thank you.” Silas gestured with his chin toward a table in a deserted back corner of the cafe, and Elijah obeyed without hesitation.
When they sat, Elijah folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. “So?” Elijah asked, grinning. “How’s that for confidence?”
“I think you might be getting a little too confident for your own good,” Silas shot back, careful to make sure it sounded like a joke. Right now, Elijah needed encouragement, but as far as Silas understood, he wasn’t the type of person who accepted praise at face value. “Boyfriend?”
“This is field testing or whatever, right?” Elijah reached forward and toyed with the card holder, twisting it back and forth between his fingers. “I told you that I’m interested in starting a family. If I’m going to start a family, I need to date someone. So, since this is a field test, you’re my boyfriend. It’s important that you see how I do. All you need to do is go along with it and act like I’m the hottest thing you’ve ever seen.”
It wasn’t hard to pretend. Elijah had a stubborn, challenging personality Silas wanted to crack, a body any alpha would be proud to mark as his own, and full, kissable lips Silas couldn’t keep his eyes from. A growing urge begged him to reach across the table and take Elijah’s hand in his own.
Before it won, Silas had to get back on task.
“When we came in through the doors and you stopped and waited for me, what was that?” It was best to leave the boyfriend comment alone. Silas didn’t want to spend more time on it than he needed to—not for Elijah’s sake, but his own. Keeping a clear mind was hard enough without imagining the what-ifs.
“Oh.” Elijah let the card holder go and dodged Silas’ gaze. “I don’t know. I didn’t feel like myself.”
“Why?”
Elijah narrowed his eyes and sat back heavily in his seat. “Does everything I do have to have a reason? I just felt a little unsettled and a little timid. I snapped back from it. You should be happy I’m so outgoing in public. Have youseensome of the omegas I came in with?”
Some resistance was fine. It was foolish to think that Elijah would open up right away. They’d made progress, but a lifetime of suppression wasn’t going to be solved in one outing. That Elijah had opened up at all was a victory, and Silas wasn’t going to let a little regression bother him.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Elijah looked pleased.
Their order arrived. The barista behind the counter laid a small white plate before Elijah, a vanilla scone placed upon it. Elijah’s cappuccino and Silas’ tea followed next. Beside the teacup, the barista placed a small dish to hold Silas’ teabag.
“Thanks so much,” Elijah chirped, putting on a show of how comfortable he was. Silas sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, an amused look on his face. “It looks great.”
“You boys enjoy.” She winked at them and headed back to the counter. As she went, Elijah settled down and poked at his scone.
“When I was little, I had this weird obsession with scones,” Elijah said softly. “My mom used to make them sometimes from scratch, and I remember that waiting for them to cool so she could glaze them was always the worst. It seemed to stretch into forever. You know, like how Christmas Eve feels, when you’re young and you still believe?”
Silas remained silent. He wrapped his hands around his cup and listened. The hot porcelain threatened to burn his palms, and he loosened his grip quickly.
“It’s so hard to think that there was a time that wasdifferentthan this, that once, I had a home, and a family, and someone to take care of me. They kicked me out when I was sixteen, the day after I recovered from my first heat. I hated them for it, but I understood. Omegas are a financial and emotional drain on everyone—family, friends, and society at large. My dad couldn’t even look at me anymore, he was so disappointed.”
“Two people’s opinions shouldn’t invalidate who you are,” Silas replied softly.
Elijah’s gaze did not leave his scone. A small fork was set on the plate, and he picked it up and poked at the pastry with its prongs instead of his finger. “They were my parents.”
“And who are they now?” Silas watched.
“Nobodies, I guess.” Elijah’s voice carried no further than Silas’ ears. “But here I am, a nobody, too. There’s no coming back from what I am. I’mwrongat the genetic level. That’s something I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life.”
“You are who you are, and you make yourself into what you want to make yourself.” Silas’ hands left the cup, and he reached out across the table to still Elijah’s hand. As their hands met, dizzying want wove its way through his chest and into his stomach. “You’re an omega, but that’s only a small part of your identity. I’m an alpha, but I’m also a brother, a son, a counselor, a friend… those are the traits that matter the most to me. What can we make of you? There’s so much out there for you to explore and associate yourself with, and none of it needs to be based on the genes you inherited any more than it needs to be based on your hair color.”
The fork clattered on the plate, and Elijah turned his hand around so that their palms were touching. Silas knew that he should have taken his hand away, but he didn’t.
“I want to be a lover. A husband. A father.” Elijah’s fingers stroked the meat of his palm and along his wrist, and the want inside of Silas ignited with primal yearning. “Do you think we can make that happen?”
The lines between what was right and what was wrong were blurring. A frantic part of Silas’ brain—professional, responsible, and self-preserving—told him that the words Elijah used were too deeply rooted in the personal. Elijah was anchoring attachment in them, drawing Silas in. A primal, far more vocal, part of Silas’ brain insisted that he indulge and care for the pretty omega sitting across from him.
Silas’ condo wasn’t far. It would be a short walk to bring Elijah home, take him to bed, and claim him as he deserved to be claimed. To knot him. Eventually, to work him through his heat until he was pregnant.
It was so wrong.
Silas pulled his hand away and used it to lift his cup of tea to his lips. It was still too hot, but he sipped anyway. The pain was a welcome distraction from the dangerous thoughts he was having.
“We’ll see what we can do,” Silas replied as he set the cup down.
As soon as their daily session was over and Elijah returned to his room, Silas would file the paperwork to transfer Elijah’s case. His attachment had grown beyond what was appropriate, and Silas needed to end things before his attraction to Elijah interfered with his treatment.
More than anything, Elijah deserved to be saved—even if Silas couldn’t be the one to do it.
