Chapter Text
Abbot had never been a conventional alpha. At twelve, he lost a foot when his father’s saw fell on him. So when his ruts began at eighteen, even with all the charm of taking alphas, betas, and omegas to bed, going through it with someone felt more humiliating… with only one foot, he was vulnerable to the gaze of a fully conscious person for three days. So, emitting a melancholic scent throughout the house, his omega father taught him how to build a nest. For protection, he said. Even now, at fifty-four, he still builds his nest.
And only one omega had ever seen it, aside from grumpy Robby.
It was all Robby’s fault. No, if he was going to blame someone, he should direct his anger properly; frustrations were easier to handle when rage had the right target. So the blame was really on the parents of medicine. On that stupid conference in another state.
Abbot wouldn’t be fearing a look so full of betrayal if it weren’t for those curious beasts obsessed with dissecting human bodies. The omega now emanated a scent of discomfort, sandalwood corroding the atmosphere of affection. Mohan looked at him as if he had slapped her. And just the idea of hurting an omega made a bitter taste spread in his mouth, a melancholy colonizing his scent glands.
“I can explain,” he tries to hold her hand, but Mohan dodges him as if he were a scalding pan.
“How do you explain the smell of an omega in heat soaked into you?” she says, snorting in disbelief at the end. He opens his mouth, but she’s faster. “If it were at work, I’d know, but today you didn’t even have a shift. I know you’re a good Samaritan who helps omegas on the street, but the smell wouldn’t be this stuck to you.”
She grabs her backpack from the armchair, the one near his nest, taking her scent away in those worn clothes.
The end of his impaired leg starts itching, and he really wants to sit down and remove the silicone prosthesis. But that would take too long, and by then she would already be gone and had blocked his number. The only way they’d see each other again would be on a shared shift, and making a scene at work would be terrible for her career.
“You smell like a satisfied omega, Abbot!” Her chest rises and falls, and you could tell by the way she held her words that she didn’t want to believe the origin of that scent. “How could you do this to me?” A pause. “With Dr. Robby?”
“I didn’t sleep with him.” He tries to walk, but his leg throbs for rest. “Please, let’s talk sitting down.” He points to the bed with both arms, flooding his voice with desperation.
It seems to work. She throws the backpack to the floor, crosses her arms, and in a display of power walks to the edge of the bed.
“I expect you to explain this properly, you stiff alpha,” she says in a tone like a mother scolding her child for lighting a fire and throwing burning paper in the sink. “Because I swear, if you’re lying, I won’t have mercy on either of you for this filth.”
He hides his relief at her softening and turning concerned. He limps toward the bed.
As he removes the prosthesis, he begins.
“Robby asked me…” He looks at her as she gasps in horror. “To take care of Dennis while he was away. You know they’re inseparable; he’d never leave the state if he knew Dennis’s heat was coming early.” His back hits the bed; he hides his face with his wrist when she wrinkles her nose. The scent of another omega was in his nest, in theirs.
“And what did you have to do? Touch him? For God’s sake, Robby is my boss, not yours. And even if he weren’t, Jack, you shouldn’t do things just because he asks, even if you’ve been friends for decades.”
He looks at her as if she’d grown a second head, holding back a laugh at the way she sounded, like he was ten and his friend had told him to throw stones at the neighbor’s window.
He likes the way she talks to him. That deep concern for him as her alpha, not just as a man with one foot, yet she still sees his disability and beyond it.
“No, no! You know I’m not a conventional alpha, but I’d never do that… Jesus! I’d only touch an omega to please her, and she has a name and a surname!” Her eyebrows rise in surprise, then she blinks and returns to a scornful expression. “I’d never touch Dennis like that, never! I just stocked him with healthy food. He tends not to eat properly when he goes through it alone. And he already wasn’t eating because he caught a cold. Robby was afraid he’d faint or worse.”
She covers her mouth, her scent shifting to anguish, slowly understanding.
“When I got there, he could barely get up to take care of his heat. Honey,” he moves closer, still lying down. “I’d never touch him like that. Please, believe me.”
She wrinkles her nose again and reluctantly lies on the thick, fluffy covers. He watches the debate inside her, whether to cuddle him or send him to bathe in bleach with the nest clothes.
“I gave him a bath. He didn’t just smell like heat, he smelled like a sick omega. I made a strong lunch. Fed him. Then he started getting his strength back. Every hour I checked on him. Gave him dinner and prepared the rest of his meals.” He holds back the urge to rub his own gland, to drown in her satisfied omega scent. “That’s all I did.”
His eyebrows almost touch in a plea. She touches the knot between them, that’s as far as she goes.
“Take a shower first,” she says. “Protective, respectful alphas are hot.” She shrugs as she gets up. “I’ll fill the tub. While you scrub yourself red, I’ll throw these blankets in the washer. And we’ll sleep in the living room.”
He laughs, agreeing with everything she says.
…
24 hours earlier.
“Man, you know I’d only ask this of you.” No noise could hide the anxiety in Robby’s voice.
“Yeah, yeah.” Abbot yawns for the fourth time in the seven-minute call. His eyes burn from the phone’s light.
4:10 a.m. is not a good time for one alpha to call another to keep company for his omega in heat. Too many ifs Abbot didn’t want to think about.
“You owe me for this,” Abbot warns, annoyed. Robby spills gratitude. “Breakfast, medicine, ordering meals from his favorite food truck, that’s it?”
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll handle it in the morning.” He throws himself back into the nest, Mohan’s bra once again covering his flared nostrils. “You could’ve called me in the morning. Now you just ruined my sleep after a double shift.”
“No, no.” He hears doors opening and closing, Robby apologizing to someone. “He was really sick when I left, Jack! He said he couldn’t eat well, which for Dennis basically means he didn’t eat all day. He needs to eat something. And that idiot farmer prefers pretending he’s made of steel instead of taking syrup or medicine. He asked his mom for a natural remedy that hasn’t arrived yet.” Concern was an understatement for Robby’s voice. Abbot was fully awake after that depressing monologue about the grown-ass doctor boyfriend. “And now in heat, he never eats unless you force him. You have to make him take medicine and eat.”
Abbot was absolutely not considering changing clothes and going out in the snow to see a sick omega in heat and probably starving to death. No, he wasn’t. Robby was just exaggerating, like the worried boyfriend he always was.
“Please, Jack.”
That puppy voice in an old man shouldn’t move him… Abbot throws the covers aside.
“I’m going.”