Will Picking Up Men Get Me Killed? - Chapter 1

I’m a Beta with a medical condition. I’ve been cold to the bone since birth.

In the ABO world, running cold isn’t usually considered an illness, but my case was different.

It wasn’t that I felt a little chilly. It was as if something was missing inside me. Every winter, cold seeped out through the gaps in my bones. I could curl up under the covers with ten hot-water bottles and still not get warm.

The doctor said I had a defect that affected a fraction of a percent of Betas. What I lacked was the “fire” in an Alpha’s pheromones.

In plain language, I was born short on Alpha warmth. If I wanted to live, I had to sleep with one. Otherwise I wouldn’t make it to thirty.

But where was a Beta who sold pork supposed to find an Alpha?

Everyone doing business on our street—the fishmonger, the vegetable sellers, the cobbler—was a Beta. I’d never even seen a living Omega there.

Alphas were precious creatures. They wore suits in CBD office towers or shone on television. They didn’t visit a market with grease flying everywhere.

So I accepted my fate.

If I was cold, I’d wear a few more padded jackets.

But this winter was especially bitter, and the rain never seemed to stop. I closed my stall later than usual one evening. I’d just hung the last rack of pork ribs on a hook and pulled the shutter halfway down when rain came down in sheets.

I stood under the awning waiting it out, idly counting puddles beneath the streetlamp across the road.

That’s when I saw him.

He was lying beside a trash can, soaked through.

I hadn’t meant to interfere.

Plenty of drunks passed out on that street. They got up on their own when they sobered up the next day.

But when I walked over, I saw his face.

It was paper-white beneath the streetlamp, with features too beautiful to belong in this neighborhood: high brow bones, a straight nose, thin lips, and thick, long lashes resting against his eyelids.

So handsome. So gorgeous. He looked exactly like someone who could warm my bed and keep me alive.

And when I crouched beside him, I thought I caught a wonderful scent.

As a Beta, I shouldn’t have been able to smell pheromones.

Our scent glands had atrophied. Betas couldn’t detect the smells Alphas and Omegas gave off. Every textbook said so.

But there was something about this man. It wasn’t a scent. It was heat, as if a ball of fire burned beneath his skin. Even through his wet clothes, it reached the back of my hand and warmed my entire arm.

The chill that had imprisoned me for more than twenty years actually eased beside him.

I pressed my hand to his chest. That stream of warmth sank through my palm and into my bones.

He really could warm my bed. So I took Little Bitter Melon home.

I went wild that night.

Little Bitter Melon came out of the shower with damp hair plastered to his forehead. He wore my old, faded T-shirt, the one with a washed-out cartoon pig on the chest.

He stood in the bathroom doorway while water dripped from his chin and slid over his collarbone into the neck of the shirt.

He was an Alpha six foot two tall. His skin was pale and cool-toned, but he was all solid muscle.

He looked strong.

I’d already hidden something under my pillow.

“Come here.”

I patted the edge of the bed.

He obediently came over and sat down.

The mattress dipped. He kept his knees together and his hands on his thighs, sitting as neatly as a schoolchild.

I pulled the dog leash out from behind my back and waved it in front of him.

It was leather, with a shiny metal clasp and a little bell.

“Jingle, jingle, jingle—”

He froze. His gaze settled on the leash, and his Adam’s apple visibly bobbed.

“What’s that?” he asked, his voice husky and uncertain.

I didn’t answer. I simply reached out, slipped the leather loop over his head, and settled it gently around his neck.

The metal clasp clicked shut. His shoulders tensed.

He didn’t pull away.

I found a strip of cloth and tied his wrists together, fastening them to the bedframe. I made a loose bow. One tug would have freed him.

But he held out his hands and let me do it, staring at me without blinking like a dog rolling over to show me its belly.

I straddled his thighs, hooked a finger through the leash’s metal clasp, and gave it a light tug.

His head tipped forward. Tendons stood out on his neck as his Adam’s apple moved.

“Bark for me?” I asked with a grin.

His eyes turned red—not with tears, but with the strain of someone pushed to his limit. He pressed his lips together and swallowed again.

I thought he was about to refuse.

Instead, he opened his mouth. His voice was impossibly rough.

“Woof.”

Just once, so faint he seemed to have squeezed it out of his throat.

I laughed so hard I nearly fell off him.

“Good boy. Such a good boy.”

I bent to kiss his forehead, then the tip of his nose, then pecked the corner of his mouth. “Little Bitter Melon, do you know how useful you are? I’m going to keep you on a leash forever.”

He said nothing, but the corners of his mouth lifted.

I took that to mean he was happy.