Both Aeron and Branson were down for their naps when Morris returned three hours later, his arms laden with shopping bags. Kell and Jaysan helped him unload the car of various boxes and bags, and they stowed items where asked. Some things Morris asked them to leave by the stairs, while others went in either a downstairs closet, or into the kitchen.

Kell carefully observed the interactions between Morris and Jaysan as Morris showed him around the kitchen. What was in which drawer, which food items went into what cabinet. Jaysan still seemed wary, but less openly suspicious than when they’d first arrived, so Kell tried to stay out of things. To simply be there for his friend as he got more comfortable in his new surroundings.

The burst of utter joy Kell had felt once he realized who Aeron was had nearly had him in tears of his own. For Jaysan to stumble into a beautiful, random act from the universe and be witness to him finding his son? It was truly a moment Kell would never forget. With each new positive memory a member of their group made, it took a little bit of power from the agony of the past and its hold over them. They’d never forget, but they could heal and live and be happy.

And this lovely sight was Jaysan happy. In the year-plus Kell had known Jaysan, he had never actually seen the younger omega smiling and happy. It truly was a beautiful sight.

Morris had bought all kinds of canned soup and lunchmeat, plus three different kinds of bread, and the whole thing left Jaysan looking a bit mystified. But Kell understood it as an alpha’s instinct to care for his omega, and while neither of them had said anything, Kell got the funny feeling the pair felt something for each other. He didn’t dare hope it was the mating bond, but maybe? Morris was a good man, and Jaysan deserved a good mate.

They both did.

They ate lunch together at the kitchen island, on comfortable counter-stools. The house was in a good neighborhood, the kitchen state-of-the-art, and the furnishings name brands, so the late Danvers’ must have had decent-paying jobs. Kell didn’t want to remind Morris of his loss again by asking, so he kept the observation to himself.

Then again, Morris had mentioned his brother had a good head for investments, and Kell believed it if he was able to pay Jaysan for his time. Jaysan would have done it for free, but it established on the outset that his relationship with Morris was strictly professional.

Both babies needed fresh diapers when they woke from their naps, Aeron’s high-pitched squall blasting over the baby monitor first, followed by Branson’s deeper cry. Kell volunteered to take care of them, so Morris and Jaysan could clean up the kitchen.

Together.

Branson quieted a bit when he spotted his omegin; he’d probably screamed so loudly because he was in a strange crib, in a strange house. He was used to waking up at Braun or Jax’s place by now, but nowhere else. Kell kissed his forehead, then picked up Aeron to shush and change him. Aeron stared up with eyes that seemed to say, “You aren’t my omegin,” but the fresh diaper quieted him down.

He sat unhappily in the crib while Kell changed his own baby. Branson was eager to toddle down the hallway holding Kell’s hand, while Kell balanced Aeron on his hip. Morris and Jaysan met them at the top of the stairs, and neither seemed immediately sure who should take Aeron.

“Go ahead,” Morris said. “I’ll have him to myself all night.”

Jaysan’s bright smile was tempered with knowing yeah, eventually he’d have to leave his boy behind, and Kell ached for that future separation. He handed Aeron over, then played a bit with Branson while Morris showed Jaysan around the upstairs. Aeron’s room, the guest room Morris slept in, and finally the master. Kell lingered outside, because this wasn’t about him; he was moral support only.

Their trio—or quintet, if you included the munchkins—spent the afternoon talking, playing cards, and playing with the babies, until it was closing in on four o’clock. “I hate to say this,” Kell said, “but I have to go soon. I have to help Braun with dinner.”

“Oh, okay,” Jaysan replied. To Morris, he said, “Kell’s my ride home.”

Morris nodded, not quite able to hide his disappointment. “I understand. If you want to stay longer, I can take you home.”

Jaysan opened and closed his mouth several times, his gaze on Aeron where he stood on his feet, edging along the coffee table with both hands. “No, I think I’d better go. I have so much to process, and Alec will be wondering where I am.”

“Alec?”

“One of my beta guardians. Alec and Orrin Jensen.”

“They’re good to you?”

“They’re amazing to me. For all the problems I caused and the stress I put them through, they deserve a medal.”

“Good. Would you like to come back tomorrow? You can keep getting to know Aeron and the house while I’m here, before you’re alone with him next week.”

Jaysan gave Kell a curious, “Will you come with me?” look, and Kell nodded. He was available to hang out again, too. If having him at the house made Jaysan more comfortable right now, Kell would be here. Hell, once he told Braun about today, he’d probably want to come over, too. All their friends would be desperate to meet Jaysan’s son.

Kell needed to curb that crazy before it stressed Morris or Jaysan out even more.

“I’d love to come back tomorrow,” Jaysan said. “Kell, too?”

Morris grinned. “Of course. Kell is always welcome here.”

Jaysan hugged Aeron for a long time at the door, before handing the squirming boy over to Morris. Kell wouldn’t have been shocked if Jaysan burst into tears once they got into the car, but Jaysan calmly put on his seatbelt. He didn’t say a word during the drive to the Jensen house. Not until Kell pulled into the driveway.

“Thank you,” Jaysan said. “Today was…beyond. And thank you for tomorrow, too.”

“You don’t have to thank me for helping my friend. I cannot overstate how incredibly happy I am for you. Dreams don’t always come true but on the rare occasion they do, it’s truly a beautiful sight to behold.”

Jaysan flung his arms around Kell in a rare hug, before getting out of the car.

Kell’s mobile rang before he could pull out of the driveway.

“Where are you?” Braun asked. “You didn’t say this was an all-day interview.”

“I’m fine. I just dropped Jaysan off, and I’ve got an amazing story to tell you, little brother.”

“Is this amazing story why you aren’t home yet?”

“Yup.”

“Then I can’t wait to hear it. I’ve got a chicken in the oven, but I can’t decide between baked potatoes or smashed.”

“Smashed. And use that dill I bought the other day.”

“Perfect. See you soon.”

Kell grinned as he hung up. He couldn’t wait to tell Braun about his day and the wonderful miracle he’d witnessed. His own life had changed so much in less than two years, and he was excited to see what new, wonderful thing he got to experience next.

Jaysan floated into the house on so much joy he could barely contain it. Alec was awake and in the living room reading a newspaper, and he put it down the instant he saw Jaysan.

“The interview went well?” Alec asked.

“I got the governor job.” Understatement of the freaking year, but Jaysasn wasn’t sure how to explain the myriad feelings inside him, or exactly how he felt about today.

“Congratulations.” Alec stood and hugged him. Just a gentle arm around one shoulder, quick chest bump. His guardians knew Jaysan didn’t like much physical contact. With anyone. Until today, when he hadn’t wanted to let go of Aeron for an instant. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like this. Maybe a job is what you’ve been missing all this time.”

It is definitely not the job I’ve been missing.

“I’m excited for the job, but…Alec, the most amazing thing happened today.”

“Yeah?” Alec’s eyes widened. “Did you smell your bondmate?”

So not answering that question.

“Better,” Jaysan said. “I don’t know how or why the universe gave me this gift, but the baby I’m going to be watching? He’s mine.”

Alec stared. “What do you mean, he’s yours? Yours as in your new charge?”

“No, he’s mine. The baby I gave up last year.” Joy bubbled up and nearly strangled Jaysan, and he started bouncing on his toes. “The instant I saw him, I knew, and he knew me, and it was so incredibly overwhelming, but Morris was actually really great about it, and he’s going to let me take care of my baby.”

“Okay, back up a second.” Alec led him to the couch to sit. “What do you mean he’s the baby you gave up last year?”

“He’s my son, Alec, my baby. He looks exactly like I did when I was his age, I remember the pictures. And he knew me, just like I knew him. I don’t know how or why this happened, but letting him go is my truest regret, and I’ve been given a second chance.”

“You’re serious.”

“Completely. I’d never lie about something this huge. Morris and Kell believe me, and I will take any DNA test necessary for everyone else to believe it, too.”

Alec gaped at him a beat before finding his voice. “How does Morris feel about this?”

“He’s been amazing. I mean, he has sole legal custody of Aeron, and he could tell me to take a hike and get out of his life, but he didn’t. He hired me to take care of Aeron. He’s letting me be part of Aeron’s life.”

Alec’s eyes narrowed. “And what does he expect from you in return? He’s unmated, right?”

Jaysan loved Alec for his protectiveness, but every cell in Jaysan’s body said Morris would not hurt him. “He is unmated, but we talked a bit about that, and he is less interested in a mate than I am. My friend Kell and his mate Ronin vouch for his character, and Morris doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d…force someone. He’s kind. Honestly, I’d probably mistake him for beta if I couldn’t smell he’s alpha.”

“Hmm.” Alec didn’t seem convinced. “When do you start?”

“Technically, I start next week, but Kell and I are going over again tomorrow so I can get comfortable being in the house. I’m not entirely sure Morris is comfortable there, yet, because we’re living in the house he inherited from his brother.”

“We’re?”

“Huh?”

Alec squinted. “You said we’re living in the house.”

Had he? “I mean, Morris and Aeron live there, and I’ll be spending my days there soon. That’s all I meant. I live here.” For now.

It hadn’t been lost on Jaysan that Morris had offered him the master bedroom as a kind of home base, so Jaysan felt more at home there. The gesture was generous and sweet, but it also suggested Morris expected Jaysan to be there long-term—which Jaysan absolutely wanted to be. His child was in that home, and Jaysan didn’t want to be anywhere else, so it hadn’t been a wrong assumption on Morris’s part. He wouldn’t turn down being Morris’s roommate, if it came to that.

The assumption, though, did scare him on a more personal level that had nothing to do with Aeron, and everything to do with that freaking mating bond.

“I’m amazed you found your child again,” Alec said. “And I’m so happy for you. Orrin will be too, when he comes home. You deserve joy, Jaysan, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this happy.”

“I haven’t had anything to be this happy about in a long time.”

“Can you see yourself having a future with this alpha?”

“As a couple? I have no idea, and I’m not really interested. But as co-parents? I believe we can make it work, because we both love Aeron. We both want what’s best for him, and there’s no competition over him. No animosity between us that could turn Aeron into a pawn in some legal game. I know I don’t have any legal claim to Aeron anymore, and it’s only because Morris is a genuinely kind man that he’s allowing me to create my own relationship with my son. He doesn’t have to do that, but he is.”

An odd flutter of affection behind his breastbone surprised Jaysan, and it shouldn’t have. If Morris had been beta or omega, he was the sort of man Jaysan would want as a friend. Want in his life. Just because he was alpha, that didn’t make him the enemy right away. Morris was everything an omega should want in an alpha—too bad neither of them was interested in a relationship.

“This is going to sound overprotective,” Alec said, “but I’d like it if Orrin and I could meet Morris before you start working for him. You’re still our charge, and you’ll be spending forty-plus hours in his home.”

His heart squeezed with gratitude. “I can arrange something. It’s overprotective, but it’s only because you guys care. I see that now.” And while Jaysan wanted to make sure Morris understood he was unworthy as an omega partner, he was done making his beta guardians worry. Done with late-night ER visits because of his bad choices. Done hurting them to hurt himself. Done being so selfish.

He had a child to care for now, and Aeron was his priority. Everything else was details.

After he put Aeron down for the night, Morris usually went into his room to read, so he was close to the nursery—it was silly, since there were multiple baby monitors in the house, but this was his first kid. He overdid stuff.

Instead, he went downstairs to the living room and settled on the couch to read. A couch that still smelled pleasantly of Jaysan’s faint rose petal scent. A scent that had permeated the home today during Jaysan’s visit, and it had clung to Aeron until Morris broke down and gave him his bath. But even though Aeron lost Jaysan’s scent, Aeron’s own scent was very similar to Jaysan’s. He’d never paid attention to the scent similarities between omegins and their children before, and even without a DNA test, their scents didn’t lie.

A tiny part of Morris wanted to demand a DNA test to prove, once and for all, that Jaysan truly had a claim to Aeron. But the part of him that recognized Jaysan as his bondmate trusted Jaysan’s truth. And when omegin and son were together? Their relationship to each other was obvious to anyone who looked at them.

No, he didn’t need a test. Aeron was Jaysan’s. Jaysan was Morris’s.

But Jaysan didn’t want Morris any more than Morris wanted him.

So why was he downstairs in the dim light of a single table lamp, luxuriating in Jaysan’s rose petal fragrance? He wasn’t even reading, he simply sat where he’d held Jaysan hours ago after that strange, frightening fit, remembering how perfect his slender body had felt in his arms. How wonderful it had been to hold Jaysan and comfort him, and to know Jaysan trusted him enough to be held. Comforted. Cared for.

Loved?

No, he didn’t love Jaysan. Not yet. But Morris did love Aeron, and Aeron was a part of Jaysan. And Jaysan had made it clear he didn’t want a mate. He wanted a job and he wanted to be near his son, so Morris could give him both of those things. He’d be Jaysan’s boss and friend, and probably his co-parent, but not his mate or lover.

Neither of them wanted a mate.

Morris wouldn’t turn down a strings-free lover, but that couldn’t happen with Jaysan, even if the younger omegin was interested. Not with the mating bond between them. Anything physical would only strengthen the bond, make it harder to ignore. Right now, Aeron was their joint priority.

Still…he loved roses.

He closed his eyes and leaned against the cushions, allowing the faint traces of Jaysan’s scent to curl around him in a wonderful, calming way—except not all parts of him were relaxed. Blood rushed into his dick, and it took Morris a moment to realize he was rubbing himself through his jeans.

Jerking off to the scent of his nephew’s new governor was not cool, damn it.

And yet…Jaysan’s image floated into his mind. Jaysan had what he could only describe as a haunted beauty. Wide, dark eyes that flashed with open suspicion most of the time, but had also shown tender feelings when his guard went down. A thick mop of dark, almost-black hair that curled a bit like Aeron’s, but more loosely. A slender body with taut muscles hidden beneath his long-sleeved shirt.

Muscles he’d been forced to develop and use against other pregnant omegas.

Rage blasted through Morris and killed his erection. Yes, he’d been angry when the story broke in the media. Omega orphans sold into slavery, forced to bulk up, forced to fight each other. Auctioned off to rich alphas for the night.

Other men touched my omega.

Morris curled his hands around the edge of the couch cushion as his temper blazed. They’d caught and prosecuted the alphas who’d gambled on the fights and paid to rape the loser, but not the alpha who’d impregnated Jaysan. Or who’d impregnated any of the other fight participants, like Brogan, Reid, and the omegas who’d died in Dent and Udall’s unholy custody. Several Jack Does in the morgue had been linked to the ring, identified, and put to rest over the past couple of months. Their internments were solemn ceremonies. Morris hadn’t gone, but he knew through Ronin that Kell and the other omegas had.

But Jaysan’s rapist—Aeron’s sire—was still out there, and Morris raged against the man for getting away with the crime. It worried him a bit, too. Last summer, Liam Haley Higgs—another fight ring omega and friend of Jaysan’s—had been confronted by his rapist and sued in court for custody of Liam’s baby Layne. The alpha, Hank Mancini, had lost the suit due to the suspicious deaths of two previous, undisclosed omega mates—Morris had dug up that particular piece of dirt, thank you very much—and he’d been given supervised visits with Layne.

Apparently, that hadn’t been enough, because Mancini tried to kidnap Liam and Layne a few weeks later. Both omega and child were fine now, and Mancini was dead, but it had been a harrowing ordeal for the Higgs family.

Morris seriously doubted that Aeron’s sire would come out of the woodwork and sue for custody, especially after Ronin destroyed the previous case, but the man was still out there. Maybe he no longer lived in Sansbury, Morris didn’t know. The fact that the monster was roaming free infuriated Morris. If the universe ever saw fit to cross their paths, Morris would delight in cutting the man’s balls off for hurting his mate.

I have got to stop thinking of Jaysan as mine.

But he couldn’t. He’d been so focused on his errands earlier that he hadn’t allowed himself to think, and now that he was alone, his mind was spinning out. Connecting dots. Highlighting exactly how horribly unfair life had been to Jaysan these past two years. Everything he’d suffered and lost to the whims of cruel men.

Cruel alphas.

No wonder Jaysan didn’t want a mate. He was probably terrified of men in general, so Morris didn’t take Jaysan’s suspicion and hesitation personally. He understood all too well how violent alphas could scar your spirit and soul, just as easily as your body.

The house creaked as it settled, and Morris looked up, idiotically hoping to see Morgan at the bottom of the stairs with a board game to play. Or Brody standing in the kitchen archway with a tray of snacks and a six-pack of beer. But they were gone, and Morris was alone. He didn’t have any tears left, so he wallowed in his misery for a while, with the comforting scent of his omega swirling around his senses.

Helping him drift to sleep...

…only to snap awake a while later with a crick in his neck and an insistent wailing coming from the baby monitor. He rolled his shoulders as he stood, then headed for the stairs.

The joys of life as a single parent.

But maybe…not for much longer?