Daniel

“So what’s the verdict, Doc? Am I dying?” I asked with a smirk that instantly caused both my best friend and family doctor—Eric Chandelier—to pinch his lips in obvious disgust.

“No, but I wouldn’t be remiss in saying you’re damn close.”

I snorted, doing up the last button on my shirt before rolling my wrists with a shrug. “Well, what else is new.”

Eric tore off his glasses and tossed them on his desk, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Your labs suck. Your resting heart rate is far too high, even for an Apex. Your diet’s terrible. Like, do you listen to any advice I give you or am I just screaming into the void?”

“Hmm.” I thinned my lips and chuckled. “Look, you and I both know I only come see you because of the terms of my trust.”

“Daniel,” Eric growled, and I held up my hand, no longer smiling. Growing calm and dropping the loveable goofball act that’d become second nature to me, I stared at him unflinchingly.

“Stop. Okay. Just stop. We both know I’ve tried it all. I took my pills. I frequented clubs with only the highest quality Omegas available. I went to a million meet and greets. I did what you and every other Dr. Tom, Dick, and Harry told me to do, and nothing got better. Only worse.”

Eric’s hands spasmed on the desk before he clenched them. “You’re an Apex, okay. You’re pretty much a scientific anomaly, we’re all learning as we go with you. But what I can say is that what you are doing now is accelerating your deterioration. My friend, you’re shaving years, hell, maybe even decades off your life if you keep this up. At least get back on the pill.”

I sighed, feeling my heartbeat like a jackhammer in my chest. Eric wasn’t exaggerating. I felt awful. Nearly every day. Dizzy. Nauseous. Exhausted. Burnt out. And all because of something completely out of my control.

“Those pills make me feel like shit. No, worse than shit. I’d rather just stick to the whiskey. At least it dulls the symptoms.”

Eric’s fingers covered his lips and there was a glint in his eyes that looked a lot like anger with a tinge of fear laced behind it before he said, “Daniel, I don’t want to threaten you, but I will. Get off the booze. Sleep with whoever, I guess. If it takes some of the edge off, whatever helps.” He shrugged as though he were willing to lose the battle so long as he won the war. “But make sure they’re clean. For fucks sake. Don’t just pick up anything you spy on the streets—”

“No glove, no love. That’s my motto.” I smirked, but his disappointed face didn’t budge.

I inhaled and the cocksure grin faded from my lips. “Fine. Fine. Look, I’m careful with my partners. The last thing I want is to give anyone something.”

“Yeah, but you swap them out, one night after another. You’re not gonna always be so lucky, you know.”

“What else do you want me to do, huh?” My words came out in an aggrieved huff.

Eric’s blue eyes grew wide with concern. “Daniel, I—"

“I need an Omega’s pheromones to keep me sane. But just sleeping with them once desensitizes me to their pheromones, making them completely useless for my condition. So, I hit it and quit it, right?!” I said with a hint of desperate laughter that wasn’t funny at all. “You think I’m not sick of being me! I’d give anything to be a Recessive like you, so if you’re just gonna preach at me, don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before.”

Eric’s eyes squeezed shut before flashing open. They were full of desperation. “You’re an Apex, you’re the king of the jungle. This is just a bump in the road. All you have to do is find your fated mate and your ruts will stabilize.”

“Oh yeah,” I laughed, “because it’s just that easy.” I snapped my fingers.

“Look,” he sighed heavily, “I debated whether to tell you this or not, but what the hell do we have to lose at this point, huh? There’s an app called Fate. It claims to average a sixty percent match rate for fated pairs. That’s hella high, all things considered. I mean, it’s worth a shot. Who knows, maybe your Omega is already on there just waiting for you to find them.”

I glanced at the gilded gold picture frame on Eric’s desk. It held a picture of him in hiking gear standing beside a petite, but beautiful, Omega also dressed in hiking gear. Eric was resting his arms over his mate’s—also coincidentally named Eric—shoulders. His mate had his eyes closed and wore a look of contentment. It made my heart constrict with an ugly emotion I didn’t want to name.

I was too damn young to settle down, and yet the irony was, if I didn’t find my mate, I may not have many more birthdays left. I was the envy of most Alphas and yet, I had a fatal flaw that could see me dead before I hit thirty-five.

“You know, maybe it's better this way. I don’t want to force someone to settle down with me just to save my life. That smacks of egotism, not to mention I don’t want to be in a committed relationship right now myself. I just…” I thought of my parents. “I don’t.”

“Dammit, Daniel. It’s not like that, okay. Once you guys realize who you are to each other, it’s not a burden. You're complete. I can’t describe it as anything other than that.”

I snorted. “Okay, well anyway, I gotta run. I’ve already blown past my lunch hour, and I have a big project looming. So if we’re done here—”

Eric shrugged and I turned for the door, not giving him a chance to say anything else. I knew he meant well, but as a recessive, he had no damn idea what I went through daily just to feign normalcy. No one did.

“Fated! Look it up, seriously! It’s how I found Eric!”

I didn’t acknowledge him or turn around, I walked out and headed back toward the office. My heart was racing even as I jogged down the hall and out of the clinic back toward work. Which, thankfully, was only five blocks away.

~*~

Finn

“You got it!”

I could only mumble a yes around the bagel I had crammed in my mouth as my fingers flew wildly across the keyboard. I was on autopilot, not thinking. Just doing. Tweaking a graphic that we thought had been good to go, mainly because Brandy had said it was.

That was until thirty minutes ago when we all realized that she’d never actually done the rework the client had asked for yesterday afternoon. Instead, she’d called out sick this morning, and the execs were in the conference room already watching the start of the presentation.

Reimage. Resize.

Click. Click.

Done.

I compressed the file onto a USB. But it was a big one and needed more than a second.

“Three,” Molly the intern began the countdown. “Two.”

“One!” she cried just as ‘File Saved’, flashed across my screen. I yanked out the USB which she promptly snatched out of my hands before her four-foot-ten-inch-self twirled and ran toward the conference room like she was racing for gold.

Ben, a tall gangly man wearing docs, ratted jeans, and pulled back dreadlocks said, “Like hell, we’re winning this proposal.”

“Positivity, Ben! Positivity!” Shaquita said, using her thumb and pointer finger to mimic a smile. She was dressed all in orange, right down to her omega choker collar, and she was hard to miss. But more than the fact that she always dressed in blocked colors it was her fierce positivity about literally everything that made her larger than life.

Legs going wobbly, I collapsed against my desk, breathing like I’d just run a marathon. The bagel was now soggy, but I chewed on it anyway. My stomach had nearly gnawed its way through to my spine, I’d not eaten a single thing all day. Today had been one series of misadventures after another.

First, it’d been my coffee shop that’d unexpectedly closed due to a leaking pipe. Then our team manager Daniel—aka Spawn of Satan—suddenly decided he was going to take a two-hour lunch break, forcing Enrique to give the presentation alone. Enrique had only been hired two months ago and was nowhere near ready to take on a task of that magnitude, but it was literally him or the janitor. Everyone else had been on Zoom meetings all morning—myself included.

“Fire him…” I grumbled.

“Fire who?” At the sound of that deep, masculine voice I’d come to hate I instantly froze before slowly peeking up from between my lashes. First, I saw the familiar brown leather lace-up boots. The almost too-tight gray slacks hugging a perfect pair of thighs, and light blue button-up with an eye-popping crimson tie that he had neatly tucked into his nerd pocket.

Wearing a shit-eating grin, there was Mr. Unreliable himself in all his cocky, handsome glory.

“You. Fire. You.” I said without flinching, sitting up and shoving the last bit of the soggy bagel into my mouth.

For a second, he looked too stunned to speak, before he laughed deeply and said, “Anyone ever tell you, you look like a cute chipmunk when you eat?”

I glowered at him. “Cute! Cute! I’ll give you cute.” I rose to my feet, staring up at his far-too-tall self. Even if I got on tiptoe, I doubted I’d be able to reach his chin.

“Aw, are you upset cuz I took a two-hour lunch?” He snorted, before ruffling my hair that I’d taken great pains with trying to tame this morning.

Smacking his hand away, I bared my teeth at him.

“You knew you had that presentation today and instead you forced Enrique to handle it all by himself! Poor excuse for a Team Manager if you ask me.” I snarled, balling my hands into fists.

For a brief moment, Daniel appeared taken aback and a look, not of shame but maybe something similar crossed his face before it quickly vanished. “I’ll have you know I left Enrique with all the tools needed to get the job done. I have complete faith in him. I do apologize to you,” he looked up, “and everyone else, for the long lunch. I had an unexpected emergency pop up.”

“Oh no,” Shaquita said, covering her mouth, “you okay?”

His shit-eating grin was firmly in place as he said, “False alarm after all. No biggie. But, I know Enrique is going to secure the client because I trained him. So don’t worry, my little Finny, this company is in good hands.”

Finny?

Did he just… but all I had to do was see that insufferable grin of his and I knew he had and that was it.

I. Lost. It.