If I wasn’t intimidated before, I absolutely was now.

I leaned forward as much as the seat belt and my belly would allow to peer out the windshield as we drove up the driveway of the fanciest house I had ever seen in person. I’d known that Ethan’s family was well-off; it was an open secret that his father was on the board of Apex, the company Ethan worked for and filled more floors in our building than any other. Ethan didn’t live like a billionaire, but it had been clear from the beginning that he didn’t have to worry about money.

But realizing it and seeing it in person were two totally different beasts. Driving by multimillion-dollar homes on our way here certainly hadn’t done anything to calm my nerves, and I swallowed hard as Ethan stopped the car in front of a short set of stairs leading up to the mansion’s double doors.

In a small town outside Boston, Ethan’s parent’s house was perfectly picturesque, the sort you’d see on TV or in magazines. Made of old reddish brick with white accents and a slate-colored roof, it was clearly an old family home that had been well maintained over the years. The gravel driveway was every bit as immaculate as the hedges and garden in front of the house, and the light dusting of snow made everything seem like a fairy tale.

Though I wasn’t sure which fairy tales featured heavily pregnant omegas meeting their boyfriend’s parents for the very first time with no prior warning.

Ethan kept changing the subject or giving me non-answers when I asked him if his parents were expecting me to show up with him, which really meant that the answer was a resounding “no”. Well, it was too late to back out now, and they were in for one hell of a Christmas surprise.

“This is… pretty,” I observed, still peering through the window.

“Yep,” Ethan answered.

Trying not to sigh, I straightened in my seat and turned to him. “Did you grow up here?”

“Yep.  Family house.”

Giving up on trying to get more than short, clipped replies out of him, I unfastened my seat belt and set about getting out of the car—no easy task when I was what felt like a thousand months pregnant and also stiff from sitting so long on the drive. It had taken a solid three days of driving to get here, and our already-frayed tempers had gotten even worse after so long in the car together. Ethan had not been thrilled to realize that I wouldn’t be able to fly this far into my pregnancy, and even less thrilled when he realized that I also couldn’t drive such a long distance. Driving myself around Miami when I was eight months pregnant was one thing; crossing the country on a multi-day journey alone was another, which meant that we had to take a road trip together.

There had been a tiny, foolish hope inside me that being forced to spend this much time together would help.  You couldn’t get away from someone when you were trapped in a car for eight hours a day—well, for far longer than that after all the meal stops and never-ending bathroom breaks.  We had to eat together, we had to sleep together, and we had to talk to each other; there was no other option.  Well, no option other than sitting in silence for mile after interminable mile…

This was the most time we’d spent together in months, but it hadn’t helped anything at all.  Talking turned to arguing on a normal day, and it only made it worse that we were stuck in a car together.  It was a relief to be here at last, though it was a little like escaping a mouse trap only to look up and find a hungry cat staring you down.  Surprising them with the fact that I was about to give birth to their son’s child was not the best way to meet a partner’s parents, yet here we were.

Coming to Boston for Christmas, meeting Ethan’s family… this was it.  This was the make or break moment for us.  The baby was going to be here in just a few weeks and I couldn’t go on like this, hardly seeing him, not spending time together, and always arguing when we did.  It wasn’t just the way Ethan never seemed to want to come home. It wasn’t even the omegas I smelled on him sometimes when he wasn’t careful about using scent suppressants to hide it from me. If there wasn’t a child in the picture, Ethan and I would have been over months ago and both of us knew it… but for the sake of my child—for the sake of our child—we had to try.

Ethan hadn’t brought me here out of love, he’d done it out of obligation; I didn’t need him to tell me those precise words to know the truth of all this. 

Blinking back unexpected, frustrated tears, I managed to push myself to my feet and get out of the car without toppling over.  I winced and stretched my stiff legs, holding onto the car for support.  All I wanted was a nice, warm bath and a nap, though it would be an even worse first impression if I wandered inside and collapsed into the first bed I saw—although, judging by the number of windows I could see, it looked like Ethan’s parents had bedrooms to spare.

“You all right?” Ethan asked, reemerging from the car after ducking inside to grab a jacket from the back seat.  

Well, at least he wasn’t ignoring me completely, I supposed.  “I’m fine, just stiff,” I answered softly. Ethan turned away a moment later and I sighed, my breath coming out in a puff of steam in the cold air.

New England in December was certainly a far cry from Miami in the winter, but I couldn’t even enjoy the fact that this was the first time in my life I’d seen snow because the butterflies in my stomach were the only things I could think about.  None of this was anything like I expected it would be.  Meeting a partner’s parents was probably always nerve-wracking, but add in a baby on the way and a relationship that was hanging on by a thread…  

I’d have asked myself how I’d gotten here, but I knew: flirting with the super hot alpha who bought coffee from the coffee shop I worked managed on the first floor of the office building with Apex’s offices.  Going on a couple dates with him.  Having sex.  Getting pregnant by accident.  Hearing Ethan swear in the beginning that he would do right by me—and for a while, he had.  For a while, things had been fine.  But then the reality of having a child on the way set in and everything started to fall apart, and now here I was, meeting the parents of the man I didn’t love but was about to have a baby girl with anyway.

The cold of the air after the warmth of the car’s heater made me shiver as I followed Ethan up to the front door and stood behind him, trying to tell myself not to throw up from nerves.  Given how grandiose the house was, I half expected a gaggle of servants to throw open the door and welcome the young master home or something of the sort; instead, Ethan fumbled in his pocket, cursed when he realized he didn’t have the key with him, and punched the doorbell instead.  Someone answered it just after Ethan got impatient and rang the doorbell a second time, and a warm voice drifted out of whoever it was—Ethan’s brother, I gathered, since the voice sounded too young to belong to his father.

“Thank fuck!  Took you long enough!  It’s cold out here and I forgot my key,” Ethan exclaimed.

“That’s because you’re too used to winter in Miami.  Seventy degrees must seem like a hard freeze to you,” the person replied in a warm baritone.

“Hey, hey!” Ethan laughed.  “It drops to sixty at night, I’ll have you know.  That’s practically zero.  I have to put on a sweater.”

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

Unable to see around Ethan’s wide shoulders—the shoulders that had drawn me to him in the first place—I kept quiet and pulled my phone out of my pocket when I felt it vibrate.  It was nothing exciting, unfortunately, just an email from an expecting omegas website.  I skimmed it quickly, trying not to be bitter that Ethan had already said more to his brother in thirty seconds than he’d said to me all day, though I was tempted to smile at the socks and flip flops comment.  I was no fashionista, but everyone knew that socks with flip flops was sacrilege—everyone except certain New Englanders-turned-Floridians, apparently.

“Mom and Dad home?”

“Yeah.  We’re having lunch.”

“Okay.  Good.  I… ah… need to talk to them.”

There was a curious note in Ethan’s voice as he said those words, and I looked up from my phone just in time to meet the eyes of the man who answered the door when Ethan stepped aside to reveal me.

Oh.

I quickly closed my mouth, acutely aware that I was staring.  Had the way my heart skipped a beat when I met the man’s eyes been my imagination?  It must have been, because my heart didn’t do that.

The man standing in the doorway was indeed Ethan’s brother; he could be no one else.  The two of them looked similar enough at a glance that you could tell they were related, yet this man was more… refined in his appearance, somehow.  Just as tall as Ethan, though narrower of build—comparatively, anyway, because Ethan was built like a linebacker.  His brow was just a bit thinner than Ethan’s, his jaw just a bit narrower, his nose straighter.  If Ethan was the first draft, then his brother was the final product.  But there were differences between them, too.  Where Ethan’s hair was a straight medium brown, his brother’s was lighter and had a distinct auburn tinge to it.  And his eyes weren’t the green of Ethan’s, which I could tell immediately because his eyes were wide as saucers as he stared at me. No, they were a hazel that made me want to get right in his face so I could see what was going on in his irises more clearly.

And his scent…

Ethan hadn’t moved aside entirely, but enough that the warm air from inside the house wafted out to me and I could easily pick it out around his brother’s.  All alphas shared a similarity in their overall scents, especially family members, but there were touches of uniqueness to each and every person.  I leaned forward without even realizing it, breathing deeply, trying to get more of the scent of this man into my lungs.  As I did, I let my eyes drift downward, from the man’s simple grey v-cut t-shirt to his chocolate brown jeans.  Ethan’s brother couldn’t have filled them out more perfectly if he tried, and as my gaze lingered on his crotch I couldn’t help but wonder if the hair under there would have that auburn touch to it, too.

“Uh… this is Chris,” Ethan said, snapping me out of my daze like a bucket of cold water to the face.

Horrified that I’d been standing there ogling Ethan’s brother like a complete moron, I felt my cheeks flush, and I was pretty sure that Ethan’s brother had noticed.

Maybe he’d think it was just the cold.

“Riley,” Ethan’s brother said, reaching past Ethan to hold out his hand to shake.  His voice was warm and he smiled at me, but it was obvious he was shocked to see me—and confirmation of my suspicions that Ethan hadn’t told his family about me.

“H-hi,” I stammered.  I reached out and shook Riley’s hand automatically, though I almost regretted it as soon as I did.  Riley’s hand was warm and his grip firm and my heart started pounding wildly in my chest as I looked at him.  This close, his scent was even stronger—and all the more alluring.  I could count on one hand the number of alphas I’d ever reacted to like this, and none so strongly as Riley.  Even Ethan hadn’t done this to me, and I felt a telltale heat pooling in my groin that meant this was about to get even more awkward than it already was.

Riley’s touch lingered a couple of seconds longer than was strictly necessary, and I had to remind myself to let him go.

Fuck me.

Literally.

Desire for this alpha washed over me, but guilt followed on its heels.  I deliberately stepped back to put a bit more space between us, swallowing hard.  Wanting to bang Riley thirty seconds after meeting him was bad enough, but I was here to try and salvage whatever remained of the sinking ship that was my relationship with Ethan—and Riley wasn’t some random alpha off the street, he was Ethan’s brother. His gorgeous, delicious, you-don’t-even-need-to-buy-me-dinner-first brother.  

And oh yeah, I was pregnant with Ethan’s child.

Minor detail.

Calm your ass down, I told myself sternly. It’s just… the pregnancy hormones. Right. The baby juice and nerves are making you crazy. Definitely not the way his eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles at you, or the way his scent seems to settle in your belly with every breath. Just the hormones.

“Just the hormones,” I said under my breath.

Riley blinked at me.  “What?”

I blushed harder when I realized that I’d repeated myself out loud.  “Nothing,” I said quickly.  “Can we go inside?  It’s cold.”

“It is,” Riley agreed.

“Ugh, yes, let’s get this over with,” Ethan said at the same time.

Heart pounding like mad in my chest, I nodded and half turned back to the car.  “I just need to grab my bag—”

“It’s all right.  Unless you need something right now, Maria—our family’s maid—will be out to get your stuff shortly,” Riley said.

I turned back to him, swallowing.  Right.  Of course Ethan’s family would have maids or servants of some sort; there would be no way to keep this place as immaculate as it seemed otherwise.

“Um.  Okay,” I said, glancing at Ethan, who was already vanishing inside.  I followed, murmuring thanks to Riley as he held the door for me.  Of course, passing so close to him only sent another heady whiff of his scent dancing in my lungs.  With stern mental orders that would have put any drill sergeant to shame, I ordered myself to put one foot in front of the other and keep marching—well, waddling—forward… instead of turning around and burying my face in the crook of Riley’s neck like my irrational desires wanted me to—and that was the least embarrassing of the thoughts running through my mind.

Meeting the parents of the father of my child when I was the size of the moon and our relationship was falling apart?  That was trying enough…

And things had just gotten a lot more complicated.