Three years marked the time since John’s whole world had come to an abrupt end upon finding the Alpha he’d come to love against his better judgment in a four-star hotel room with an omega.

Of course it had been an omega. Wasn’t that exactly what everyone, from John’s mother and sister to the nosy neighbors upstairs from the apartment they’d once shared, had warned him about? Alphas fell for omegas. Alphas imprinted on omegas. Alphas loved omegas, had babies with omegas and started lives with omegas. Not betas.

Never betas.

John should have known what was coming from the moment Peter had shown up in that coffee shop looking like the the wrong guy in the right package. He’d tried to ignore the Alpha then. He’d been working a job, keeping tabs on another powerful jerk whose mate rightfully suspected him of cheating. Maybe he should have taken it as a sign from the universe, but like most of his clients, he’d wanted to believe that he was the exception.

That his story would end differently than all the others. Than his own parents’.

Now, he knew better.

Roughly thirty more cases of suspected infidelity, most of which had turned out to be true, had taught him what he wished he’d known then. No matter how unpredictable or different they seemed, and no matter how breathless they left you with their kisses, they always left you the same in the end. Unless you happened to be the treasured omega a specific alpha had imprinted on, you could count on disappointment. Betrayal. Heartbreak.

He knew better than to think Peter had given him a second thought over the years, and he wasn’t naive enough to hope anything had changed just because the man had texted him and asked to meet that night out of the blue. Unfortunately, he wasn’t strong enough to say no, either.

John told himself he just needed the chance to get closure. To say everything he wished he’d said that night in the hotel lobby when all he’d had the strength to do was run away.

As he sat at the bar of another hotel not far outside of Buffalo and a few blocks away from his apartment, he found himself wondering if he had the strength now. He’d always taken pride in his work, in being able to make the connections that eluded other people. In the end, Peter had shown him that he wasn’t any cleverer or stronger. He was the beta’s weakness in every way, and John didn’t have much hope that three years was long enough to change that.

When the door opened, bringing the crisp January wind into the front room of the hotel restaurant, he knew it wasn’t. Peter stood in the doorway, his black hair slicked back and his rakishly handsome face set into the permanent scowl that made John’s heart ache more than anyone else’s smile. He still wore that iconic black leather jacket that had to be at least half as old as his thirty-three years, a plain white T-shirt stretched across his broad, muscular chest. Always unapologetically underdressed, even though he outclassed every other man at the bar, including John.

He knew it, too. It wasn’t just his class that was average, it was everything about him, from his unkempt brown hair and solidly average face to his lean but decidedly less-than-built frame. He lived in a shitty little apartment and worked across the hall, and the only case he’d taken lately that he actually felt good about had been resolved largely by another Alpha.

Hell, he wasn’t even a real detective.

From the moment Peter locked those stormy blue eyes on him, John knew the Alpha had to be as underwhelmed as the beta was with himself.

Peter was the only person who’d ever made him feel less than, merely by existing. Maybe it was just because he was also the only person who’d ever made him want more.

Before he’d fully regained mastery of his own breathing, the Alpha was just there in front of him and John was on his feet. For a few torturous seconds, they both just stared and then Peter finally extended his hand.

John wanted to laugh, but he shook it. A handshake. The last words he’d ever spoken to the man were “fuck you,” so it figured that they’d meet again on such civil terms.

“Hey,” Peter said, his gravelly voice still as low and seductive as John remembered it being. Less so when he was offering a no-frills confession to an affair with no explanation or apology. There was still just a hint of his Russian accent, too. His eyes traveled over John, softening in a way that seemed designed to lower the beta’s guard. It was all the more reason for him to button that shit down. “You look good.”

John let out a dry laugh and pulled his hand from Peter’s, since the Alpha seemed to have no plan of letting go. “If we’re going to do this, I’m gonna need a drink.” Or five.

Peter nodded, pulling out the same stool John had been sitting on a minute earlier. The beta set his jaw, hesitating a moment before he sat, too wound up and already too emotionally exhausted to argue. One of the points of contention in their otherwise deceptively peaceful relationship had always been Peter’s insistence on treating John like an omega.

If he was being honest with himself, it wasn’t the chivalry or the doting and protectiveness he minded so much as he feared enabling the delusion that he was anything other than a beta. That one day, Peter would come to realize that no matter how he treated John, the man was still a beta and no substitute for the kind of mate he would surely start to crave eventually if he didn’t already. The kind he might well imprint on, rendering the year and a half they’d shared together and all the promises they’d made in the interim null and void.

The truth that John now understood was that it hadn’t taken anything as grand as imprinting to help Peter come to his senses. For all he knew, it wasn’t even the only affair that had taken place while they were together.

Whatever Peter’s reasons for wanting to meet were, John knew he’d made a mistake. He never should have come there. He should have responded to that text the same way he wished he’d responded the first time the Alpha had asked him out, by saying no and never looking back.

Peter himself was certainly good at that.