Chapter Four - TL
He didn’t speak often about wanting a family, but the ache had always been there. Quiet, steady, buried beneath work and duty. For one fleeting moment, he’d thought fate had cracked that door open. Just enough for him to feel what it might be like to have someone who was his. Someone to love. Someone who would love him back and never betray him.
Not like before.
He had given his heart once, trusted someone enough to imagine a future. But that trust had been shattered, leaving behind scars he rarely let anyone see. Since then, he had learned to want in silence. To dream quietly, without hope.
And yet, this child, this moment, had pulled that dream into the light, if only for a second.
But now he was watching someone else live it.
"Daddy, I'm fine. And guess what? I found Papa!" IcXander said excitedly.
Chapter Three- TL
The strange thing was that the doctors did an excellent job of mending him because, as he matured, the scars seemed to fade away, as if everything that had happened to him during childhood and his teenage years existed solely in his mind. He believed it was because he was an unbound omega, but he knew he had not been born with the healing abilities that most had. His older brother, Ian, had followed in their mother’s footsteps, becoming a scientist. A researcher, to be exact. His sister, Willa, had done the same with their father, and worked for the same law firm, pursuing law as if it had been embedded in her DNA. They were business lawyers and known as the toughest father and daughter litigators winning their clients millions of dollars even if they are in the wrong. Jason wouldn’t deny that out of his two siblings his sister was the most spoiled and annoying. From childhood, she would cause trouble and blame it on Jason, smirking whenever his parents scolded him or his brother beat him until he was bloody. She’d whine and bully her way to get what she wanted and no one would question things. Her ploys didn’t just work on his parents, it included everyone in his family. It was as if she had cast a spell on them.
Chapter Two- TL
Leo sat up, pinching the bridge of his nose as hazy fragments of last night crashed into him. A sharp exhale escaped his lips, his chest rising and falling beneath the weight of memories. A lightly muscled, writhing body pressed against his breathless, broken moans—a sweet voice, raw with need, calling for him as if he were a god.
Heat flowed across his skin, so intense it sent a shiver down his spine.
It all started so simply. Leo had spent the evening finalizing a lucrative business deal with foreign dignitaries at the Luxe Horizon Hotel. The negotiations had been exhausting, extending late into the night, but the reward had been worth it. On his way out, he’d run into his friends Julien Ellis, the sharp-minded owner of Onyx Sentinel Cybersecurity, and Avery Shaw, the mastermind behind the Luxe Horizon Hotel and several of Valleywood’s most elite restaurants. Both men were at the bar, celebrating their successes, with drinks flowing as freely as their laughter. They had coaxed him into staying, insisting one drink wouldn’t kill him.
Chapter One - TL
It’s just one night. What could it hurt?
Jason shuffled through the dimly lit corridor, squinting as he tried to make out the numbers on the room doors. Had Tracy said 609 or 906? He couldn’t remember. Although he was tempted, knocking on every door to ask if they were the escort his friends had paid for was out of the question. That would be utterly humiliating. Just as he turned the corner, he collided face-first into something solid and unyielding, like a wall.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his eyes stinging as tears blurred his already unsteady vision. Sharp pain radiated from his nose, the unfortunate casualty of the collision. Instinctively, he pressed his hands against the solid surface, trying to regain his balance, but his knees buckled the moment he stepped back. There was no stopping it; he was about to become very well acquainted with the floor.