“Chase!”

Carla’s heels clacked as she ran down the wet, shimmering sidewalk. The glowing city lights around us made my best friend look like an angelic savior, her arms outstretched to me.

“Carla. Thank heavens.” I pulled her close and kissed her made-up cheek. Her familiar scent was home more than home was, and as usual, it had been far too long since we’d last seen each other.

She laughed and threw her arms around my neck, pulling me down to her height. Carla was petite, nearly a foot shorter than me, at my too-tall 6’4, even in her heels, but she never let me get out of a hug. She squeezed tight and so did I, even more grateful for her presence than I normally would be.

“God, it’s good to see you,” she admitted as she pulled away from me, fixing her perfectly-styled hair. Her curls were in a battle with the humidity in the air, still moist from the recent summer rain. She was a mixed-race beta wolf, a natural brunette, but her balayage highlights made her seem blonder than the last time I’d seen her.

Carla had a tinkling laugh, like a Disney fairy. I adored her. She had dated the vice president of my company for a few years, and as we became closer, the relationship between them had fallen apart.

She ran a high-end spa business with her two older sisters, and was almost as busy as I was, but when my rich, amoral family became too much, she always managed to arrive just in time to bring me back to earth.

“My sisters have been driving me crazy,” she informed me.

She wasn’t the only one with family drama. “Just wait,” I warned her. “Dad has an omega he wants me to meet.”

“Oh?” she asked, arching a groomed brow at me. “And are you interested?”

I scoffed, glancing away toward the glistening street. Interested. I didn’t have time to be interested in much more than sex, but even if I were, I couldn’t imagine being interested in any omega my father had picked out.

“Hardly. It’s about money.”

Her clover-green eyes were appropriately horrified.

“Let’s go inside,” she suggested, nodding toward the Michelin-starred restaurant where we’d arranged to meet.

“I have reservations,” I promised, and wrapped my arm around her bare shoulders. She was in couture, as usual, a mini dress twice as tiny as she was. “Are you cold? You can have my suit jacket…”

She rolled her eyes playfully. “It’s mid-summer. I’m sure I’ll be fine for two feet, Chase.”

“If you’re sure,” I teased.

Together, we entered the restaurant and were greeted by the beaming maitre d', who recognized me the moment I smiled at him. I recognized him, too.

Was it a bad sign that I had struck up an acquaintance with restaurant staff? And that my dearest family member was my butler?

One day, I told myself, I would have to learn to cook. The restaurant wasn’t even as good as it was made out to be, but it was an acceptable place for dates and business meetings and the like, and I was too caught up in my old routines to find somewhere new.

“Mr. Cartwright, it’s our pleasure to have you this evening. This way.”

The Cartwright name came with many benefits, and a few terrible drawbacks. Exhibit A: my father, who had lost the Father of the Year competition fourteen years in a row and counting. David Cartwright was an asshole, and being called by his name always reminded me that I lived in his shadow, and that all I had, I only had because of him.

I pulled Carla’s chair out for her, and when we were both seated, I asked Gerald to bring us my usual bottle of wine, and turned to see Carla’s eyes fixed on me like a predatory cat about to pounce.

“So I want more details on this omega …spill,” she demanded.

I wasn’t ready for that. I was still processing it myself, trying to decide what I wanted to do about the whole situation. I was a grown man, twenty-six years old, and if I didn’t want to date the guy my dad picked out for me, I shouldn’t have to.

But I was still counting on my inheritance, and my business was so wrapped up in his influence, built on his contacts, that it would take only the removal of a few key interested parties to see my own young empire come crumbling down around me.

Like it or not, I was still under my father’s thumb, and I was too ashamed to admit it. “Shouldn’t you go first?”

She shook her head. “Not without a glass of wine in me.”

That was a fair point. Alcohol was a good idea in my situation, too. The less fucks I could give, the better.

“Maybe we should both wait for wine. How’s Lily?”

Lily was Carla’s five-month-old Pomeranian puppy, and she’d been born in the fires of hell. “Oh, shit,” Carla assured me casually. “As usual, she’s shit. I think she’s actually getting worse? I’m not sure how you get worse than chewing an earring off while it’s still attached to my ear, but she did it.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and it felt good. I hadn’t really laughed since … well, probably since the last time I’d seen Carla, and it had been too long.

“What did she do this time?”

“You know that really nice vanity I have?”

I could only imagine. “Wasn’t that your grandmother’s?”

“Dog piss. Just all over it. It’s trash now. It’s a fire hydrant in a public park. I nearly killed her.”

I groaned and shook my head in horror. I was a very clean person, and to put it simply, there were control issues. If anyone or anything ever damaged my personal belongings…

“She is never visiting my penthouse; I’m sorry. This is why I don’t do pets, Carla. You might think I’m coldhearted, but--”

“Sir?”

Gerald had returned with our wine, and he allowed me to sample its nose and poured our glasses for us.

“Thank you, Gerald.”

“Enjoy,” he said, taking his leave.

My father had told me, more times than I cared to remember, that it was low-class to thank your servants, so I did it every time. Whatever it took to not be him.

I was already a spitting image. I had his dark hair and eyes, his strong jawline, his tall, broad build. They were my birthright, and as an alpha and his heir, I refused to be like him in personality.

The restaurant allowed the selection of one of two set menus, and I already knew my options. For the appetizer, a king crab cake served with either heirloom tomatoes, or foie gras and winter greens. I chose the second option.

As Carla and I sipped our wine rather heavily, the first course arrived. Two glasses of wine in, I was finally ready to talk. I needed to talk. I had a problem, and thinking it over hadn’t helped me solve it.

“I’m flying to the summer house in two weeks for the summer get-together, and you know how that is.”

Carla nodded, sympathy in her eyes. My father’s annual party at our family summer home was billed as relaxed family fun, but in reality it was a weekend of intense business networking for my father, where appearances and the right connections were all that mattered.

Dad always invited the wealthiest and most important people he knew, and expected us to smile and pretend to be a perfect, happy, well-adjusted family all weekend long. Like that could ever be true. Like the possibility of that hadn’t died with my mother nearly a decade and a half ago.

It was always miserable, but this year, he’d found a way to make it worse for me. My father couldn’t stand that I hadn’t mated yet, but what he cared about even more was business. That must have been where he’d come up with his scheme.

“He wants me to hook up with some omega, some jumped-up son of a massively important businessman my dad is trying to get a business deal out of. He said I had to meet him, but Carla, you and I both know what he wants.

“He expects me to sweeten the deal. I’m just a bargaining chip for him. I can’t do it. I can’t date someone, I can’t mate, just because my Dad is trying to schmooze some investor.”

If this business deal took a while, that could mean dating some rich prick long-term. What was next, an arranged marriage? No. I had to draw a line somewhere.

“That’s … disgusting, Chase. I’m so sorry,” Carla said, looking at me thoughtfully. “Sometimes, I just want to have a talk with your father…”

I sighed, nodding. We’d had that discussion before. My father needed more than a talking to, but every time I tried, he shut me down.

It was hard enough to argue with a stubborn, bull-headed alpha (all right, maybe my father and I did have a few more things in common than I was willing to admit), but when that alpha was your dad, it became nearly impossible.

“There’s no point trying to stop him. He could make it happen. This is the guy who sent me to boarding school in England for ‘culture,’ Carla. He doesn’t give a shit about what I want or need.”

Dad had abandoned me for pretty much the entirety of my teenage years, not because I needed ‘culture,’ but because he’d rather ship me off than deal with my emerging, uncontrolled alpha tendencies. Despite being an alpha himself, he had no desire to take the time to help me learn how to manage my own alpha traits as they manifested through puberty.

I’d been alone, and surrounded by other boys. That had gone really well. At least, ever since, I’d known exactly where my father’s priorities lay.

Sometimes, I really missed my mom. She had been born rich like my father, but different. Grateful. Grounded.

She’d loved me, unconditionally. I always knew she cared about me more than money. And then, at the age of twelve, I’d lost her forever.

Neither my father or I had been the same since, and our relationship had suffered catastrophic damage in the aftermath.

“Do you have to go?” Carla asked me as our main courses were placed in front of us.

“There’s no way he’d let me bail on it. This is his one chance in a year to be the perfect, all-American dad. The kind who goes to soccer games and hosts cookouts.

“And, of course, boosted my respectable career. No, we all have to show up, and we have to be perfect. Me and his new wife.”

“Gloria?”

I couldn’t stand the woman. She was from a rich family, and she was half my father’s age. I was pretty sure she just wanted to make sure she’d be taken care of in the way she had become accustomed to.

My father had fallen right into it, of course. Since my mother, real love hadn’t seemed to matter to him. This was his third marriage-for-money.

“Gloria,” I agreed. “And they’re both going to pretend we actually enjoy each other’s company.”

Carla groaned in understanding. David Cartwright liked to pretend that he was actually a father, instead of the man who’d shipped me off and then refused to answer the phone for eight months. The rest of the world might believe that story, but at least Carla didn’t. What would I do without her?

As I ate my too-expensive dinner, which was just glorified roast beef, and a tad overcooked at that, I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t getting away from the summer house. In two weeks, my father was going to try to set me up.

“I need a plan. I have to go, but I need an excuse, something to avoid getting close to this random omega.”

“So bring your own omega,” Carla suggested, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Be unavailable already.”

“Carla, I don’t date omegas,” I reminded her.

I’d never even really entertained the idea of mating. Omegas, they were kinda intense when they felt a bond with an alpha. And mating—well, that was pretty much for life.

I’d heard, somewhere, that it was almost impossible to resist putting your knot in, that something happened when you fucked an omega you felt connected to—it took you over, pulled on something primal in your gut, and you had to knot, you had to, and knotting meant mating, and mating meant … yeah.

No. I was too young for that shit. I fucked humans. I’d fucked a beta once. I’d never, to date, fucked an omega.

Carla pulled out her phone, searching for something. “You don’t need to date one,” she explained, and turned the screen to me.

It showed a website with a picture of a hot young guy, with stunning blue eyes and chiseled abs. He was tanned and oiled for the photo, like some sort of sex god, but his dirty blond hair and adorable freckles drew me in.

Or maybe it was the eyes. Something about him shook me, in a way I could barely acknowledge to myself. I leaned in to get a better look, but it was just one image.

Below the picture, in big, bold text, was a tagline: Experience all the benefits of an omega, without the emotional commitment — guaranteed! The offer was unmistakable, shameless, and irresistible.

Carla’s big green eyes twinkled mischievously at me, all of her very white teeth showing behind a red-lipsticked smile. “Don’t date one. Hire one.”