Page 7 of Omega’s Forward

I’m professional and I don’t take shit. I also make sure I have the full width of my father’s desk between me and the door.

I bury myself in boring sports paperwork, trying to assess which of my father’s outstanding tasks are important enough that I need to deal with them now.

Before long I hear heavy footsteps in the corridor, followed by a knock which surprises me.

“Come in.”

The door opens and the doorway fills.

He’s enormous. I knew that. I watched him fight. I’ve also seen the roster page. Six foot six is big.

He has dark blond hair, still damp from a shower. The split on his eyebrow has mostly healed but the scar is still red and angry.

His hand, the one that he used to beat Cade Dorn into the ice, is still taped.

He comes through the doorway at a slight angle, a big man’s habit.

He’s big enough that he’s clearly made a habit of trying deliberately to be unthreatening. It doesn’t work. There is nothing unthreatening about the size of him in this room.

“Mr. Rourke.” His voice is lower than I expected. “Brody Callahan. I’m so sorry for—”

That’s as far as he gets. It’s as far as either of us gets.

His scent reaches me mid-sentence. It goes through the room and then it goes through me. It goes past my nose entirely, straight down my spine, into other deeper parts of me.

My mouth floods. Heat rolls up my back and settles low in my body, and I have to put a hand on the desk.

Slick pools suddenly between my legs. The want is unmistakable. My body is preparing itself with a frankness that makes me want to walk into the sea. I lock my knees and breathe through my mouth, which helps with nothing, because now I can taste him.

Across the room, the big man has gone completely still. His pupils are blown black. His nostrils flare, once, twice, and his chest is rising. Underneath it all he is making a low sound, almost like a growl.

I know what this is. I’ve had scent matches before. Every omega has. This is something else. It’s deeper. It’s insane.

I grew up on the public-service ads, the glossy Bureau brochures, the one-in-a-hundred-thousand statistics.

Prime match.

No.

He takes a step toward me. I don’t think he decides to. I think it’s as involuntary a movement as the step I take toward him in response.

My hands are shaking.

But underneath the panic, something in me is pleased.

Some ancient, biological thing is taking him in: the size, the taped eyebrow, the split knuckles — and it feels deeply satisfied.

“Mr. Rourke,” he says again, rough now, wondering, and my name in that voice does something unforgivable to me.

“Get out,” I say. It comes out in a whisper.

He doesn’t move. He’s looking at me with his ruined face wide open and his scent is getting stronger. It’s almost as if there is an actual gravitational physical pull.

I make myself let go of the desk. I am not doing this. I am not mating with a fucking hockey player. “I said get out.” The words take every ounce of self-control that I have left.

“I—” He stops, swallows. He’s fighting it too and he is losing ground exactly as fast as I am. That is so much worse. I can’t take on a rampaging alpha. He is maybe three times my weight, head and shoulders on me. I’ve seen what the brute is capable of. I cannot win this.

I draw in a deep breath, taking him in with it and scream. “GET THE FUCK OUT.”