Instrumental versions of popular Christmas carols drifted softly through the house, a light snowfall coated the world in white outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the three of us at the dining room table picked at our food in an uncomfortable silence.

So, really, it was a fairly normal day.

Note to self: next year, figure out a way to avoid coming home, I thought to myself as I drained the remainder of my wine and tried not to make a face at the strong melon taste.  This was one of my mother’s lunchtime favorites, but I’d never been a fan of white wines, especially this one.  Today, though, I needed the extra fortification to deal with my family.

Possible excuses for failing to appear next year: a sudden and very important meeting that I couldn’t possibly miss, preferably on the other side of the planet; China had to be nice around Christmas, right?  Or… I could “accidentally” step in front of a taxi.  The drivers in New York were notorious for being unpredictable, and it wasn’t like any of them would be going that fast since there was too much traffic in the city.  Besides, I didn’t need to die, just be conveniently incapacitated for a few weeks around the holidays.  Or I could pull a repeat of that alpha from HR who stood up out of the blue one day, threw her phone and computer into the trash, and ran off to live in the woods.  I couldn’t say that I had the first clue how to do nature-y things like feed myself and not freeze to death, but the look on my father’s face when he heard would so be worth it.  One of the sons of Preston Denholm flitting off to eat berries and shit in the woods?  He’d never live it down.

Ridiculous plots aside, I supposed things hadn’t been that bad so far.  My mother had wrapped me in a huge hug the moment she saw me, the first such greeting I’d received from her in a long time, faintly smelling of whiskey.  Then she’d immediately chastised me for not coming home more often when the plane ride was only an hour from NYC to Boston, but she was smiling so brightly that I’d stopped myself from pointing out that planes ran in both directions and she came to the city at least once a month to shop anyway.  That had been two days ago, while my father was off in Paris with business associates of his, and it had been nice to spend time with my mother after so long apart.  But then I’d wandered downstairs this morning to discover that my father had returned, along with a non-optional invitation for a family lunch.

Setting the empty wine glass down, I eyeballed my father and wondered if he would even notice if I got up and left the table.  A solid twenty minutes into the meal and he had barely looked at me once, too engrossed in whatever was on his iPad.  Work, no doubt; it was always work.

Unfortunately, the answer to my idle thoughts was a resounding yes.  

“Stephen tells me you’re failing,” my father said, abruptly pulling his eyes up from the screen to pin me in place with his steely green gaze.

Forget light lunch wine; I could have used something much stronger right now, and a very large bottle of it at that.

Endeavoring to keep my immediate irritation from showing, I frowned at him down the length of the overlarge dining room table and bit back a sigh.  “I’m not failing.”

Preston raised a single disbelieving eyebrow at me.  “Oh?  So, the intern didn’t outperform you, then?”

Right… what was that about getting hit by a car, again?  Surely it couldn’t be that expensive to pay someone to ram their car through the floor-to-ceiling dining room windows, although getting over the hedges would be tricky…

“It was one campaign, Dad,” I said with a sigh.  “And it didn’t fail, it just underperformed slightly.  He happened to hit on a combination of keywords for that market that worked a little better than mine.”

“Clearly, it did poorly enough that Stephen felt the need to contact me,” my father said coolly.  

I sighed again and stuffed another bite of fish into my mouth, mostly so that I wouldn’t have to answer him right away.  As the marketing director for Apex’s New York branch, my boss was ever eager to kowtow to my father and the rest of the board.  I was utterly unsurprised to hear that Stephen had run directly to my father with news of my “failed” marketing campaign… though if he was looking for a pat on the head, Stephen had seriously misjudged the sort of Alpha my father was.  I could come home with a Nobel prize and I’ll I’d probably get would be a pleased nod.

“Nothing to say?” my father challenged.

“Nope,” I replied, striving to keep my tone as bland as humanly possible.  Arguing with him would only make it worse, and it really wasn’t a big deal—or wouldn’t have been if Stephen hadn’t tried to make it one.  The campaign hadn’t performed as well as I wanted, sure, but we’d made costs back and then some.  That was how marketing worked; not everything had million-dollar returns.

Displeasure writ in the lines of his face, my father set his iPad aside fully and propped his elbows on the table to either side of his plate, lacing his fingers together.  I stared blithely right back at him, taking another bite of my meal.  This was the sort of look my father gave his inferiors all the time, a negotiating tactic wherein he stared at them in silence until they grew uncomfortable enough to admit to whatever they had done wrong.  I’d gotten it many times when I was younger, whenever I got a “low” mark on an exam or my team lost a game.  Now, though, I wasn’t about to let it work on me.

Knowing just how much it would irritate him, I deliberately turned to my mother and smiled.  “Thanks for lunch, Mom.  I’ve missed your cooking.”

Pleased, my mother beamed at me.  “Oh, it’s nothing,” she protested modestly, refilling her wine.

“Well, it’s nice.  It’s not often I get to enjoy a home-cooked meal.”  An instant later, I regretted those words. I kept the smile on my face, though inside, I was kicking myself.  All I’d meant to imply was that I worked long enough hours that it was usually far easier to opt for take-out rather than come home and have to spend another hour cooking in what precious little downtime I had before bed.  But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew exactly what my mother was going to say.

Sure enough, she perked up instantly, smoothing a hand over her carefully dyed blonde hair.  “Well, that’s because you don’t have an omega to cook for you.  I do wish you’d let me fix you up with Martha’s daughter.  Martha and Frederick Welles, you remember them?  The girl has great breeding and is quite pretty—”

“Not interested,” I interrupted my mother, biting back a sigh.  

“You could do much worse than the Welles girl,” my father said.  “I know Frederick from the club; old money, not one of those nouveau riche types flocking to the area.  They have two children, don’t they?”  

“Yes, they do,” my mother replied brightly.  “I haven’t met the alpha son yet, but Martha simply won’t stop talking about him during book club.  He’s down in South Africa currently, working for Borderless Doctors.  And the girl is studying law in Cambridge, I believe.  Martha would be thrilled if I asked for an introduction for the two of you!”  My mother had started off facing my father, but she turned back to me at the end, no doubt ready to press the issue further.

“Not interested,” I repeated, blunter this time.  “We’ve been over this.  I don’t need you parading an endless stream of unmarked omegas in front of me.  I can find one on my own, thank you.”

“So you say,” my mother replied, her smile turning a touch brittle, “but we’ve yet to see any proof of that.”

“It’s high time you settled down.  This family needs heirs,” my father chimed in.  

I managed not to roll my eyes at my father, but it was close.  We’d been over this a thousand times before, my parents and I.  I’d barely been out of high school when my parents started trying to match me with acceptable omegas.  I hadn’t even realized that was what was going on at first, when my mother started asking me to have lunch with her at her favorite restaurant in town and her friends—and their children—kept just happening to be there.  It took me about five solid times of that happening for me to realize what was going on, and I put a stop to it right after that.  My mother had protested that she was just trying to help me, but I had the feeling that the only reason she wasn’t pulling Queen Matchmaker with my brother was that he had the good fortune of living 1,500 miles away.

Second note to self: propose a new branch of the company somewhere far, far away from Boston.  San Diego, maybe.  Who didn’t like sunshine and beaches?

“Ethan’s the older one; pester him,” I said before I could stop myself.

My father raised an eyebrow at me.  “The duty falls on both of you,” he replied coolly.  

I pursed my lips but declined to continue arguing.  It would just devolve into me and my father snapping at each other while my mother tried and failed to be neutral like always.  My one consolation was that my older brother hadn’t settled down yet either, which was just as irritating to our parents as my own lack of omega was.  It wasn’t like we were old; Ethan was a whopping 27, and me all of 26 years old.  But my parents expected grandchildren—with omegas they approved of, of course—and they had made that extremely clear as soon as my brother and I had graduated college.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to find an omega of my own and start a family; on the contrary, I very much looked forward to the day that I’d have children of my own.  It was just that I didn’t want my parents to be the ones to decide who it was “appropriate” for me to settle down with.  I’d tried introducing them to someone I was dating.  Once.  I’d warned Nick of what he’d be walking into with my family, but the knowledge that my parents would never accept him had still torpedoed our relationship in the end.  That was a hard lesson to learn and a mistake I wouldn’t make again… if I ever stopped working long enough to actually try and date.

“I thought you wanted me to work on my career,” I said to my father, injecting a purposeful and obviously fake sweetness into my voice.

My father shot me a flat look and I could practically see him winding up to his big speech about how it reflected far better on a career-focused alpha to be married and settled down and how it spoke to my ability to handle responsibility and blah blah blah, I’d heard it a hundred times before.  I opened my own mouth to cut him off before he could get going as my mother frowned and shot me a look that clearly said to stop arguing with my father.

Never in my life had “saved by the bell” been so accurate.  The doorbell echoed through the house, forestalling my father’s lecture.  I shot to my feet immediately, thrilled to have an excuse to step away from the table for a little while.  I didn’t want to argue with my parents; all I wanted was to have a couple of nice weeks as a family during my favorite time of year.  But it seemed like the moment I stepped foot into this house, all the old arguments and frustrations seemed to bubble up to the surface.

“Oh, the maid will get it,” my mother said airily, holding out her empty wine glass for a refill to the very person she expected to be answering the door.

“It’s fine.”  I turned and headed out of the dining room before my mother could protest further or their maid could beat me to it, shaking my head at myself.  I’d done this to myself; all I should have agreed to was a couple of days here with my parents, not two whole weeks.  It was only going to get worse once my brother arrived because then our family conversations would devolve into the inevitable comparisons between the two of us.  And when you had a brother who could seemingly do no wrong, well…  Not fun.

The doorbell rang again right as I was reaching for the handle.  I scowled at the blurry figure through the frosted glass for just a moment, then opened the door.

Tall and broad with muscle that took an awful lot of time in the gym to maintain, my brother perked up as soon as he saw me.  “Thank fuck!  Took you long enough!  It’s cold out here and I forgot my key.”  He inched a bit closer, clearly trying to get me to move so he could come inside.

“That’s because you’re too used to winter in Miami.  Seventy degrees must seem like a hard freeze to you,” I replied, raising an eyebrow at him.  Perhaps it was petty, but I didn’t stand aside right away.  Not that Ethan and I disliked each other, though my brother could definitely be an asshole when it suited him.  Which was more often than not, honestly.  But it had been a while since we’d seen each other, and I couldn’t help but tease him a little.  

Besides, there was something different about the way he smelled when the breeze brushed his scent toward me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Whatever it was, it made my heart start beating faster, which was extremely confusing.  My brother and I had grown up together; I knew his scent nearly as well as my own, and I’d never reacted to him like this.  This wasn’t a typical alpha scent, and far too strong for a lingering scent if he’d been with an omega recently.

“Hey, hey—it drops to sixty at night, I’ll have you know.  That’s practically zero.  I have to put on a sweater,” Ethan laughed, interrupting my train of thought. 

“As long as it’s not socks with flip flops…”

Ethan made a little harrumph of mock irritation since I’d teased him about this in the past, then grinned at me.  After just a moment, though, he sobered.  “Mom and Dad home?”

“Yeah.  We were having lunch.”

“Okay.  Good.  I… ah… need to talk to them.”  Wincing slightly, Ethan stepped aside.

My heart nearly fell out of my chest.

Behind my brother, previously hidden by his bulk, was an omega.

A very, very pregnant omega.

He glanced up from his phone at me, and the moment our eyes met, only two words sprang to my mind.

Oh shit.