Finn

I rushed out of her arms, hugging myself and still slightly annoyed. She came up behind me a second later.

“Um, I think I stepped in it, Finny. I’m sorry.” Her voice was soft and her words sincere.

“Why’d you kiss me like that?” I asked, not turning to look at her even as she opened the restaurant door from behind me. It wasn’t that I cared what Daniel thought of me, not like he wasn’t Mr. Get-Around-Town, but I just… I don’t… argh, whatever. Who cared what he thought?!

I scratched my forearm. Rough. Hard. Scoring my skin with my nails. The pain helped me refocus. Was I really mad? Or was this embarrassment masquerading as anger? I never got mad at Rory. Never.

That thought was like a deflating balloon. I rubbed my temple. Yeah, I wasn’t actually mad. Annoyed, maybe.

I wish she hadn’t done that. She knew how I felt about her once, and even sometimes still did. It hadd taken me a long time to get over my unrequited crush.

She walked beside me, frowning slightly. Rory was the kind of pretty that only came around once in a lifetime. So no matter what look she wore she was always breathtakingly beautiful.

And today remorse was a good look on her.

“I… honestly, I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.” She looked at me with eyes burning with sincerity and the last of my irritation fled. It was impossible to stay mad at her for long. “You didn’t deserve that.”

I blew out a heavy sigh. It had taken me over a year to get to the point with her where I was now. I’d accepted that we would only ever be friends because my monthly need for an Alpha, no matter how much I loved her, could never fully be quenched by a Beta. Maybe for some—Big maybe—But not for me.

At least I was honest enough with myself to know that, allowing us to preserve our friendship and not watch it burn as we both tried to cling to something with an eventual demise.

“If I’m being honest,” she said haltingly, “for a weird second, I had the strangest thought.”

Still frowning, but curious now, I glanced at her sidelong. “What thought?”

She was silent for a long moment before sighing and finally shaking her head. “Things are changing for us, Finneas. I had a dream.”

Being half Dominican, Rory came from a long line of witch doctors. Not something she talked about often, or publicly, mostly because of the stigma attached to something not rooted in science but in the supernatural.

“What dream?” I asked with my eyes narrowed and head cocked.

“You. Me. And our partners. Both of which would take us far away from each other. For good.”

Her thin brows dipped, and a frown marred her pretty face. I rubbed the one between her eyes away. “You know, not all your dreams come true.”

“Most of them do,” her big brown eyes looked at me thoughtfully. “You were so happy too. I woke up feeling a little jealous.” She laughed lightly, but I could hear a tinge of sadness in her tone

I sniffed. “Even if I found a lover. And that’s a huge if… because apparently, I’m good enough to lay, never quite good enough to commit to—”

“Aw, bebe,” a touch of her native accent slipped into that word, “you just haven’t found your fated mate yet, but they’re out there.”

Snorting, I ran my finger beneath my Omega choker and shook my head. I could almost feel the gland at the back of my neck flare with heat at the thought of exposing my most private part to an Alpha.

Who knows, maybe I had crossed paths with my Fated, but unless I was willing to let them gain total access to my gland we’d never actually know for sure. I’d had Alphas who’d sworn they were my Fate until another hot piece of Omega ass had walked past and well, those promises hadn’t amounted to much in the end.

“Sure,” I groused.

“You know what,” she said, as she steered us toward the convenience store to buy our beers, “that’s what we’re gonna do tonight. My friend told me about this really awesome app for Fates. She said it’s got a crazy success rate.”

I rolled my eyes and shoved my hands into my pockets. Toeing at a pebble on the dirty linoleum, I said, “Gimmicks. Seen it and heard it all before.”

She shrugged before yanking out a six-pack of beer from the rack. “Maybe, but it doesn’t hurt to try, right?”

Quickly paying we walked the last five blocks home, her arm was draped over my shoulder while I cradled the beers in my hands.

“I’ve protected you for far too long. In fact, I think I’ve hindered you. After what happened…” She trailed off with a soft tsk.

I frowned as we walked into our building and began climbing the seven flights up the stairs. Neither of us dared to further broach the elephant in the room. I was of the mind to let the past stay in the past. Forever.

Settling in for the evening, we had trash tv on blaring quietly in the background as we talked and drank.

But it wasn’t until we’d crawled into bed together that she opened up the app.

I grimaced, but the beers had me sufficiently tamed and adventurous.

I rubbed my socked feet together as I stared at the happy faces of “satisfied clients.” There were various images of “Fates” walking down the aisle, newspaper headlines splashing the radical success of their “scientific” method of finding one’s Fated Mate.

I chuckled as I scrolled through what seemed like the fiftieth testimonial.

“You still don’t buy it?” She side-eyed me.

“Fate. What a stupid name for an app. Honestly, a little on the nose there, amiright?” I giggled, pleasantly drunk and finding the whole thing ridiculously hilarious.

“But a 60 percent success rate, that’s pretty damn good, don’t you think? Considering how rare it is to find your fated mate naturally, I say we’ve got nothing to lose, right?”

Closing my eyes, I snuggled into her side becoming the little spoon like I always liked to do.

I liked listening to the sound of her heartbeat, it’d never failed to soothe me. My alarm would be going off in less than five hours. I was sleepy.

“Finny, are you gonna try it, yes or no?”

I was more there than here, but I vaguely recalled myself muttering a slow… “yeee…aaahhh.”

~*~

Rory

He’d said yes.

I’d not told Finn everything, I hadn’t had the heart to.

For so long I’d been his constant companion and protector. Finn knew a lot less than he thought he did. In fact—I stared at his peacefully sleeping face and my heart clenched—he’d not been alone in his crush.

From the moment I had laid eyes on the adorable, nerdy beauty I’d fallen fast, and I’d fallen hard. But not hard enough to forget the hell my own dad had gone through when he’d been an unfortunate Beta to fall in love with an Omega.

My mother had sworn that she would never love anyone other than my dad until the day she’d stumbled into the arms of her Amazonian Alpha, aka: Fated Mate. I’d been ten and had witnessed the demise of my parents’ marriage with my own eyes.

Chemistry was a hell of a thing. I didn’t doubt that my mother had loved my dad, but not enough to ignore millions of years of hardwired programming.

So as much as I’d loved Finny, and as much as I’d selfishly tried to keep any and all vultures away from him, I’d also known that I would be a fool to fall too far. My dad had never remarried and was now a bitter, old drunk. My mom, right or wrong, had done what she had to do.

I refused to let their story be my story.

That was why before I left the States for good, I would make sure that I handed Finn off to his Fated Mate. And only his mate. Almost a statistical improbability, I knew that. Some Alphas and Omegas never found their Fates.

But Finn would.

I knew it because I’d dreamt it.

I finished inputting all the information into Finn’s profile. Subgender. Blood type. Weight. Height. Likes. Dislikes. Even down to the health history of him and his family.

Finn might have thought I’d never really listened to him, but I had. I’d hung on every word he’d ever said to me.

Then I hit send and flipped the phone onto the edge of the mattress. A deep sigh spilled off my tongue as I stared at the ceiling fan, watching it rotate. Finny and I didn’t usually sleep together, I doubted either of us would have been able to maintain this precious friendship for long if we had.

I cuddled him into my arms, becoming his big spoon before kissing the top of his head. The ache that I’d not been born an Alpha gripped me hard tonight. Even now, it hurt. Knowing that I was doing everything I could to hand him over to someone else.

My treasure.

But I guess that was love.

I loved him enough to let him go to something, and someone, greater.

Nuzzling the top of his head I made peace with my decision. “I love you, Finny,” I whispered one last time, after tonight I would never again say those words to him. They belonged to someone else now.