Fritz sat beside me. Hastings stood by the window, staring out at nothing.
"I wanted to make her ours before this," I said. The words came easier with alcohol. "You know that,don't you? This isn't about scent matching to me. This is bigger than that. I want her. I've wanted her since the moment I heard her rambling on the phone."
"I know," Hastings said quietly. "I think we all did."
Fritz raised his glass. "You did."
"She's perfect." Hastings turned from the window, his gray eyes catching the light. "She's funny and brave and so damn stubborn. She doesn't care about our money. She doesn't care about our status. She just—" He stopped, his jaw working. "She's perfect."
I couldn't believe it.
Henry Hastings, the man who'd sworn off omegas after Greta, the man who'd built walls so high I'd thought they were permanent, was standing in our lounge admitting he wanted Presley.
Fritz laughed, the sound sharp and disbelieving. "You’re finally admitting you're not immune?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Fritz gestured at him with his glass, whiskey sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "You would never cancel a meeting for an omega. Never. And yet you canceled the New York meeting to turn a plane around mid-flight."
"I canceled the meeting so we could finally have a baby."
"Scheisse, Henry. That's all?"
"Stop it." Hastings drained his glass in one swallow. "You want her too. Don't pretend you don't."
"I'm not pretending anything." Fritz leaned back, his arm draping over the back of the sofa. "I've wanted hersince she made that joke about the helicopter being a spaceship. I just didn't thinkyou'dever admit you wanted her."
"I'm admitting it now."
"Because you can smell her. Because she might be your match."
"No." Hastings set down his glass with more force than necessary. "Because she makes me laugh. Because she looks at me like I'm a person, not a bank account. Because when I told her she could buy a house with that credit card, she said she only wanted enough money for books and a cat."
My chest tightened.
He was right. She was perfect.
And she was upstairs, sleeping in a nest in our house, about to go into heat with three alphas who were all falling for her in different ways.
"What do we do?" Fritz asked quietly.
"We take care of her," I said. "We help her through the heat. And then—"
"And then what?" Hastings turned to face us. "We tell her we want to keep her? That this stopped being about a surrogate the moment she showed up?"
"Yes."
"She won't believe us. She'll think it's the scent match talking."
"Then we’ll prove to her that she is more than that." I stood, crossing to the window to standbeside him. "We show her that this is real. That we want her, scent match or not."
"How?"
I didn't have an answer.
But before I could figure one out, a sound from the doorway made all three of us turn.
Presley stood there.
