ALPHA HEAT
(Heat of Love, Book 2)
Leta Blake
An Original Publication from Leta Blake Books
Alpha Heat (Heat of Love #2)
Written and published by Leta Blake
Cover by Dar Albert
Formatted by BB eBooks
Copyright © 2018 by Leta Blake Books
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are either a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental or inspirational. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written consent from the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
First Digital Edition, 2018
Kindle Edition
ISBN: 9781626227750
Other Books by Leta Blake
The River Leith
Smoky Mountain Dreams
Angel Undone
’90s Coming of Age Series
Pictures of You
You Are Not Me
The Training Season Series
Training Season
Training Complex
Heat of Love Series
Slow Heat
Co-Authored with Indra Vaughn
Vespertine
Co-Authored with Alice Griffiths
The Wake Up Married serial
Will & Patrick’s Endless Honeymoon
Gay Fairy Tales
Co-Authored with Keira Andrews
Flight
Levity
Rise
Leta Blake writing as Blake Moreno
The Difference Between
Audiobooks
Leta Blake at Audible
Free Read
Stalking Dreams
Discover more about the author online:
Leta Blake
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to the following people:
Mom & Dad, without whom I couldn’t be following this dream. B & C, my lights to travel home to after visiting made up worlds. My patron John McDonald, and all the wonderful members of my Patreon who inspire, support, and advise me. Keira Andrews for the amazing editing work. Anna for the help and insight into the aro/ace representation. Mia, Jessica, and Sadie for beta reading. Leigh Barduga who wrote Six of Crows and inspired me in ways she never intended. A.M. Arthur for loving Slow Heat so much that she made up her own Omegaverse books (look for Breaking Free)!
And thank you to my readers who make all the blood, sweat, and tears worthwhile.
A desperate young alpha. An older alpha with a hero complex. A forbidden love that can’t be denied.
Young Xan Heelies knows he can never have what he truly wants: a passionate romance and happy-ever-after with another alpha. It’s not only forbidden by the prevailing faith of the land, but such acts are illegal. Resigned to his miserable future, Xan contracts with Caleb, an asexual, aromantic omega with special requirements of his own. Their friendship is a comfort, but Xan craves the love and sexual dominance of another alpha.
Urho Chase is a middle-aged alpha with a heartbreaking past. Careful, controlled, and steadfast, his friends dub him old-fashioned and staid. When Urho discovers a dangerous side to Xan’s life that he never imagined, his world is rocked and he’s consumed by desire. The carefully sewn seams that held him together after the loss of his omega and son come apart—and so does he.
But to love each other and make a life together, Xan and Urho risk utter ruin. With Caleb’s acceptance and support, they must find the strength to embrace danger and build the family they deserve.
This gay romance novel by Leta Blake is the second in the Slow Heat universe. It’s 130,000 words, with a strong happy ending and a well-crafted, non-shifter Omegaverse. It features alphas, betas, omegas, male pregnancy, heat, and knotting. No cheating. Content warning for brief sexual violence.
For Keira Andrews, for being a true friend
CONTENT WARNING: Brief sexual violence depicted.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books by Leta Blake
Gay Romance Newsletter
Leta Blake on Patreon
Acknowledgements
About the Book
Dedication
Content Warning
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Two
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Part Three
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Other Books by Leta Blake
Letter from Leta
Gay Romance Newsletter
Leta Blake on Patreon
About the Author
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
His stomach twisting in a giant knot, Xan climbed out of his car in front of Jason and Vale’s blue clapboard house on Oak Avenue. He gazed at the home, noting the fresh coat of paint, the impeccable front lawn and gardens, and the little rocking chairs on the front porch, complete with cheerful cushions. Jason and Vale had nested hard since they’d collided with each other as Erosgapé in the library of Mont Nessadare University four years ago.
Xan forced away the dull, familiar pang that was part jealousy and part longing for a love like that. He’d been about to leave his symbolic corner office within the largest division of his father’s business on High Street to head home for the day, but after hearing Jason’s shaking voice and urgent plea, he’d driven over to his best friend’s house directly.
All three of their lives were so different now from those pre-imprint halcyon days. Sometimes Xan barely recognized himself in the mirror. But one thing never changed: he was Jason’s best friend, and he would be there for him through thick and thin.
Frighteningly, things seemed to have gone thin again, because Jason had sounded panicked when Xan picked up the phone an hour earlier. He’d requested Xan come by as soon as possible, refusing to give further details.
Approaching the front door, he stepped back in surprise as it swung open before he’d even had a chance to knock. Jason ushered him inside. His blond hair was messy, and his face very pale. Worse, his long, lanky frame trembled beneath his wrinkled suit. He obviously hadn’t changed since returning from his new job at his father’s shipping business, having set aside his passion for science to fulfill family duty, the same way Xan had when the time came for him to step up.
Xan straightned his own bow tie anxiously as he followed Jason down the hall toward Vale’s study with a sinking feeling in his gut. He hadn’t seen Jason this d
istraught in years, not since he’d settled things with his older Erosgapé omega, Vale Aman, and settled into domestic bliss. The knot in his gut tightened.
The sun shone through the wide back windows of Vale’s dusty, brick-floored study, but the profusion of colorful, autumnal leaves in the well-tended garden didn’t soften the tense atmosphere at all.
“Glad you could join us,” Vale said softly. His green eyes were red-rimmed and his lips, set in his handsomely trimmed dark beard, appeared dry.
Xan’s throat closed up as he took in Jason and Vale’s other assembled guests—Rosen, Yosef, and—shit—Urho. All held places of high esteem in the couple’s life, and all looked as shaky as Xan felt.
“Sorry if I kept everyone waiting,” Xan said, swallowing thickly. “But I came as soon as I got Jason’s call.”
“And how’s Caleb?” Vale asked, like the entire room wasn’t about to explode with anxiety around them.
“Caleb’s good.” Nervously, he babbled on, “Well, he wasn’t feeling well this morning, so I had to run to the drug store for a tonic for him, which made me late to work, and so it was harder to escape this afternoon.”
“It’s all right,” Vale said with eerie calm from his perch on the leather wingback chair he preferred. “Tell Caleb we hope he gets well soon.” His face was even paler than usual, and his lips drew into a tight, false smile.
Jason took his place rigidly behind Vale, his blond hair flopping onto his forehead and his blue eyes bright with some wild emotion.
Vale nodded toward the sofa. “Rosen just arrived too.”
Xan cast a glance toward Rosen, the ridiculously dark and handsome half of Vale’s best friends, a beta couple sitting closely together on the leather sofa. Rosen’s lover, Yosef, sat at his side with their hands intertwined, a miserable expression on his face. Yosef’s impeccably sculpted white hair and beard gave away that he was quite a few years older than Rosen, but they were still an unfailingly attractive couple. Vale had been close with them for years.
Xan ran a sweaty palm over his own limp hair. If they were in attendance looking so worried, the news he’d been summoned to hear must be that Vale or Jason was very sick.
“So what’s going on?” Xan asked, unable to keep quiet a moment longer. “What the hell’s happening?”
Urho stepped out of the shadows. Xan gulped. Urho was tall, muscled, and full of that strong, alpha energy that Xan craved like a kind of air he was denied the right to breathe. The flames in the fireplace played on Urho’s dark skin and highlighted his salt-and-pepper hair, making Xan’s squirmy gut twist with highly inappropriate lust.
“I’ve been asked to impart the news,” Urho said, solemnly. “It’s both an honor and a burden, but one Jason and Vale have asked me to bear—”
“Just tell us,” Xan interrupted, a bolt of surprise going through him. He normally danced around Urho, tongue-tied and anxious, saying all the wrong things, but tonight he wasn’t going to even try keeping his mouth shut. He had to know why his best friend looked like he’d just been handed a death sentence.
Urho’s chin came up, and he gazed at Xan for a long, calm moment before nodding. “All right. As it turns out, Vale, against all odds, and despite Jason’s best efforts, is pregnant.”
“Excuse me?” Xan said, blinking between Vale and Jason. “Did you say that Vale is pregnant?”
“I did.” Urho’s strong mouth drew into a straight line and he regarded Xan seriously. “This is obviously a problem, one that is both private and communal, in that we all love and admire Jason and Vale, and will—”
“What in wolf’s own hell, Jason?” Xan snapped, interrupting Urho without a thought. “You know he can’t have children. Why would you knock him up?”
Jason didn’t lift his head, and Xan almost didn’t make out his muffled response. “It was an accident.”
“An accident?” Xan scoffed.
Vale raised his palm. “What’s done is done. Now all that’s left is to deal with what’s happened.”
“You’ll have an abortion, obviously,” Xan said, nodding firmly and casting an approving glance toward Urho.
He’d been there when Urho had performed the surgery on Jason’s pater that had saved the man’s life four years earlier. He also knew that Urho was the doctor responsible for performing an abortion on Vale when he was a young unmatched omega.
There was no doubt what should happen now. Given Vale’s physical scars from that first abortion, he couldn’t sustain a pregnancy, nor survive one himself. Everyone knew that. It was part of what had nearly cost Jason and Vale their contract despite their Erosgapé bond. Jason’s parents had wanted him to take on a surrogate omega instead so that he might have a child, since Vale had no hope of giving him one.
“No,” Vale whispered. “That’s not going to happen this time.”
“Excuse me?” Yosef asked, his white eyebrows shooting to his hairline. “What are you saying, Vale?”
Rosen straightened where he sat, gripping Yosef’s hand until his knuckles went white. Xan wished he’d taken a seat when he first entered. He felt a little woozy where he stood with Vale’s denial echoing in his ears.
“Please,” Jason whispered. “Please reconsider.”
Vale shook his head. “Urho’s examined me and he thinks—”
“I don’t care what he thinks!” Jason exclaimed, coming around to kneel at Vale’s feet. “I only want you. I don’t need this from you. I don’t even want a ch—”
Vale put a hand over his mouth. “Shush, before you say something you’ll regret.”
Jason’s blue eyes went wet and he ducked his head, resting his forehead on Vale’s knee. He shuddered as Vale ran his fingers through his blond hair soothingly, and Xan felt the echo of Jason’s trembling in his own knees.
“I don’t understand,” Yosef said again. “Vale can’t survive pregnancy. We all know that.”
“Historically, that was true,” Urho said. “Before Jason.”
“So you’re saying things have changed?” Rosen murmured, lifting his chin, dark with late afternoon stubble flecked with some blue paint he hadn’t entirely scrubbed free. In all likelihood, he’d been pulled away from his oil painting by a phone call similar to the one Xan received.
Urho said, “For reasons that are best kept private, it does seem that there is a new elasticity to Vale’s scar tissue and passage that wasn’t there before. I have several theories as to why that is, but the fact remains that it is, unexpectedly, true.”
“I can’t carry to full term, most likely,” Vale said so calmly that Xan wanted to punch him. Jason scooted closer, burying his face further in Vale’s lap, his body shaking as Vale went on. “So Urho will induce the labor early and we’ll hope the child survives.”
“That’s sick,” Xan spat. “You can’t do that. Not to Jason.” He nodded at Jason where he was curled by his omega’s feet. “Look at him. Think of what losing you would do to him.”
Vale’s green eyes softened. “I think of almost nothing else.”
“Could have fooled me.”
Vale seemed to barely restrain a flare of temper, but he held it back. “It hasn’t been an easy decision, but I trust Urho. He wouldn’t put the odds on me surviving if he didn’t believe it with his whole heart.”
Jason lifted his head then, his face blotchy with tears and his mouth wobbly. “He doesn’t put odds on you surviving, he puts odds on you probably not dying, and that’s not at all the same thing.”
“Darling, you can’t ask me to give this up. Unplanned as it was, as terrified as we both are, this is our only hope. This one, beautiful mistake that we’d never, ever make again.”
“Don’t get poetic on me,” Jason whispered fiercely. “You’re willing to risk destroying y
ourself—us, me—for something that, according to Urho, is just a bundle of cells with a tiny little heartbeat.”
“But he’s ours,” Vale said dreamily. “Our bodies knit together to make a new life. How can we choose to end it?”
“You sound like Pater.”
“No, your pater admitted he had no hope of living through the birth. I plan to follow all of Urho’s prescriptions to the letter. I intend to live to see our child born, to hold him, and raise him into a fine young man. To see you reflected in him, and myself too. I won’t be giving up so easily.”
“So why are we here?” Yosef asked gently, his hands still twined with Rosen’s and his expression grave.
“Because we’ll need your support,” Vale said. “Jason, especially.”
“No, you, especially,” Jason whispered. “You must be cared for every moment of every day.”
“Ridiculous. I’m not an invalid.” He shrugged. “Later, as the months pass, yes, I will need to be careful, but right now I’m as fit as a fiddle. I can continue my work—”
“No!” Jason snarled. “I won’t have those idiot alphas at Mont Nessadare scenting you and knowing you’re pregnant. That you’re fragile.” He shook his head. “You’ll take another leave of absence.”
Xan sucked in a deep breath, and, yes, there beneath Vale’s usual scent was a new one, something that was a bit like damp earth, seaweed, and the iron scent of blood. The scent of Jason’s baby growing inside, tucked away, cells multiplying by the second, feeding on Vale’s life force to grow his own.
An urge to throttle Vale rushed through Xan, an irrational desire to hold him down and force him to concede that this pregnancy, this self-proclaimed mistake, needed to be terminated. But another part of him scented Jason’s genes in the child, and a tender protectiveness rose up in him, an urge to take care of his best friend’s omega and their tiny new babe.