Moments Vincent barely remembered brought them from the street corner back to the secluded parking lot tucked behind Bistro Chatelaine. There, concealed from the main streets by storefronts, Vincent pushed Mal against the door of his car and rekindled their kiss. Mal’s arms tightened around his neck while his lips claimed Vincent’s greedily. The night blanketed them in its shadows, working alongside the location of the parking lot to keep their passion private. The sounds of passing traffic were muffled and distant, nothing more than an afterthought. No one would see them. No one would stare, or judge, or click their tongues in disapproval.

And even if they did, Vincent wouldn’t care. He wanted Mal, and nothing was going to keep them apart.

When was the last time he’d felt so authentically himself?

“Vincent,” Mal moaned against his lips as the kiss broke. “God, Vincent…”

Hearing his name from Mal’s lips ignited need inside of Vincent, and he kissed him fiercely, silencing them both for a long moment. Mal moaned into his mouth and kissed back, his fingers gripping the collar of Vincent’s shirt tightly. His hips pushed forward, and Vincent felt how hard he’d become.

Mal wasn’t the only one. Vincent pushed back, letting Mal feel that he was hard, too.

“Vincent,” Mal whispered when the kiss tapered into nothing. The sound of his voice was charmingly flustered, like there was something on his mind he didn’t know how to get out without embarrassing himself. “Come home with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Mal kissed the corner of his mouth, unleashing a flurry of short, burning kisses over Vincent’s jawline. “If you’re going to be getting me pregnant in the clinic anyway, then… then maybe we can just…”

Mal trailed off, but Vincent wasn’t yet addle-minded enough to mistake his meaning. Mal was inviting him over to breed him—to knock him up the traditional way. The thought, while flattering, struck a note of discord inside Vincent, and the stitching that had so long kept his heart in one piece tore open. He’d wanted to tell Mal tonight, anyway, and after Mal had opened up to him about his past to let him know his struggles, Vincent owed him the same courtesy. “Mal, I’m flattered, but… I can’t.”

The response earned him more trailing kisses, like Mal believed that if only he tempted Vincent enough, he could see his plan through to fruition. If only.

“When I told you before that I was infertile, I meant it,” Vincent continued. The words pained him to say, but they needed to be said. Mal deserved to know the truth. “I wasn’t lying to try to worm my way out of using a condom, or using it as a ploy to trick you into feeling safe to have sex with me. I will never impregnate anyone, no matter how hard I try, or how much I wish otherwise.”

“You have a daughter,” Mal replied. The way he spoke told Vincent that he was still perched firmly in arousal—he wasn’t thinking things through. “It must not be impossible.”

Vincent had come to Aurora to start fresh—to live the truth as he saw it in his heart. But if he was going to involve himself with someone else, he needed to be honest.

He closed his eyes, braced himself for what was about to come, and confessed. “I have a daughter because I was the one who carried her to term. Genetically, I’m an omega, Mal. I don’t produce viable sperm, and I can’t knot. I’m sorry.”

Silence stretched for a painfully long time, but the electric feeling in the air didn’t dwindle into nothing. Vincent’s heart raced—from fear, from uncertainty, and from the adrenaline now rushing through him. It had been years since he’d transitioned, and these days, he passed flawlessly for an alpha, but the fear was still there. The apprehension. Compared to most alphas, he was a little more slender, and maybe a little on the short side, but the signature of his scent had changed, and the heats that had always left him feeling dirty and wrong had stopped long ago. The omega that he’d never been was gone, replaced by the alpha who’d lived in his soul since his earliest childhood memories. The only parts of him that remained were the parts that Vincent couldn’t strip from himself—no level of hormone replacement therapy could convince his body to produce the sperm it was physically unable to produce, and no amount of begging, pleading, or bargaining could force it to do away with his now-defunct ovaries and uterus in exchange for the supplementary penile tissue that would allow him to knot.

Here in Aurora, away from the people who’d known him pre-transition, he was able to lead the life he’d always wanted. He could exist without enduring the knowing looks and the quirked, smug grins that followed him wherever he went, and he was able to escape the curious looks, the questions, the prodding.

But Vincent wanted Mal for more than just a night. He deserved to know, no matter how badly Vincent wished to forget.

To Vincent, it was simple: he was an alpha. Full stop. Melissa hadn’t thought the same, and it had torn apart their marriage. He couldn’t risk the same with Mal.

“An… omega?” Mal asked. His lips tightened while his grip on Vincent weakened. Vincent braced himself for the worst. “Are you serious?”

“I am.” Vincent kept his tone even, doing his best to raise his defenses in anticipation of rejection. “I’m on hormone replacement therapy. I needed to tell you before we get too involved—I won’t lead you on. You deserve to know the truth.”

“I never would have known,” Mal whispered in awe. “The way you smell, the way you feel, the way you behave…”

“I am an alpha.” Vincent took a breath in, but it pinched his lungs. He let it out more quickly than he would have liked, losing the stability it would have given him. “In everything but what parts I have on the inside, it’s who I am. But I have to let you know, because it means that I will never knock you up. I’ll never be able to knot you with my cock alone.”

Mal paused. He blinked. Then he met Vincent’s gaze, his head tilted to the side just slightly. “… So?”

Stunned silence. Vincent’s mind tried, and failed, to find an answer.

In the same way that Vincent had brushed aside their age difference when Mal had been insecure, Mal now undid Vincent’s doubts with a single word. Two letters. A single inflection.

So?

It had always been a big deal before—the kind of news that made people think twice. Vincent wasn’t prepared for acceptance.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Shook his head. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“Are you going to come home with me tonight?” Mal asked. His grip readjusted, allowing his arms to lock around Vincent’s neck again. He pushed himself back into place, rubbing his bulge against Vincent’s thigh.

Vincent slid his hands around Mal’s waist by instinct alone—his thoughts were so muddled and confused that he was barely able to piece together what was going on. “Yes.”

“Then you’re not going to disappoint me.” Mal kissed him then, a simple, sweet kiss that, when paired with his words, made Vincent’s cock twitch. “Come home with me, baby. I don’t care who you were born as—all I care about is that you’re Vincent. I want you whether you can knot me or not.”

The bottom of Vincent’s stomach dropped out, not in fear or dread, but in staggering disbelief. He wanted to say something—anything—to tell Mal how much what he’d said had meant to him, but words were insufficient.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Mal tangled his fingers in Vincent’s hair and tugged him in for a kiss that stole the breath from Vincent’s lungs and filled the now bottomless space in his stomach with its sweetness and its passion. He kissed back hungrily, desperate to know that he was accepted—that, despite his physical incongruities, he was wanted.

When the kiss broke, Mal stayed near his lips. To a nearly hypnotic rhythm, he moved his hips and pushed his erection against Vincent again and again. The primal, possessive part of Vincent’s mind urged him to take, to claim, to make his, and he pushed Mal against his car with more force than he had before, wanting him.

“I know that you can’t get me pregnant from sex,” Mal whispered, filling the small space between them with his words. “But over the next few days, you’re going to be pushing my body to the peak of fertility, and I’m going to need some help to get through it. Do you think that you can help give my body what it wants, baby? Convince it that we’re doing our best to get pregnant?”

Vincent’s cock throbbed, and he responded not by words, but by action. What thoughts did fire were basic, and they all said the same thing.

Take him. Mate him. Breed him.

He’d do his best to get Mal pregnant, both in the lab, and out of it.