His Secret Nest: Trapped by the Alpha Boss novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Contract

Noel refuses to be claimed and signs a deal for a room and a lab bench in Fletcher's house instead, then tests his own last pill and finds the stamp of Clay's plant.

Fenella stood in the doorway with her phone already out.

"I'm calling the police."

"And telling them what? Werewolves took my notebooks?"

"I'll say burglars. Very hairy burglars."

Noel sat down on his stripped mattress.

Three years of numbers, gone.

Without them it was Clay's tablet against Noel's word, and his word was on video in a stolen shirt.

Headlights swung across the window.

A black car stopped at the curb, and Fletcher got out.

He'd followed them.

He came up the stairs, looked at the lock hanging off the door, and his eyes went gold for one second.

Then he made them stop.

"Whoever did this had your address," he said. "They'll come back."

"Thank you," Noel said. "Very calming."

"I have a house in Sewickley Heights. Gates, cameras, eleven bedrooms. Stay there."

Fenella made a sound behind Noel.

He knew what it meant in pack terms.

An Alpha takes an unbonded omega into his house, and by Sunday the whole city calls it a claim.

"No," Noel said.

"Noel."

"You want to put me in your house in front of the whole pack. Everybody already thinks I trapped you. That's the end of my case."

"It's the end of your case if you're dead."

"I'm not your omega."

"I didn't say you were."

"Your house will say it for you."

Fletcher looked at him for a long moment.

Then he took a pen out of his inside pocket and held it out.

"Write the terms."

"What?"

"You don't want a claim. Fine. Make it a contract. Write whatever you need, and I'll sign it."

Fenella found the back of a pizza menu on the floor and handed it over.

Noel wrote it at the kitchen counter with Fletcher watching.

One. A room with a lock. I keep the key.

Two. A lab bench. Real equipment. My choice.

Three. Fenella and Maddie come and go whenever they want.

Four. No touching.

He underlined four.

Fletcher read it upside down.

"That's it?"

"Five. You tell people I'm staying as your chemist, not your anything."

Fletcher took the menu and signed under Noel's name.

F. Stavely, in neat black letters, right next to a coupon for wings.

"The bench goes in the basement," he said. "Tell me what to buy."

"An assay rig costs eighty thousand dollars."

"Then tell me which one."

Fenella leaned in toward Noel.

"I like him," she whispered. "I want that on the record. He bought a machine for a hospital."

"He's the Alpha."

"He's an Alpha who carries a pen."

They drove out at dawn.

Fletcher's house sat at the end of a long gravel drive, gray stone, too many chimneys.

A night guard was still in the gatehouse.

Fletcher rolled down his window and asked the guard about his daughter's knee surgery.

The guard grinned and said it went fine.

"Morning, sir," he said, and looked past Fletcher at Noel. "Morning, sir's friend."

The room Fletcher gave Noel had a lock with the key in it.

He put the key in Noel's hand, not on the dresser.

Then he stood in the hall, well outside the door.

"About my coat," he said.

Noel was still wearing it.

He had slept in it at the hospital, ridden in it, walked through his wrecked apartment in it.

He started to take it off.

"Keep it," Fletcher said.

"I'm not a coat thief."

"You're a shirt thief. You're a tie thief. You stole my gym hoodie in January."

"February."

"February," Fletcher said. "I looked for that hoodie for a week."

"It was on a bench."

"It was in my locker."

"The locker was open."

Fletcher breathed out through his nose, which Noel was learning was how he laughed.

"You can keep the shirt," he said. "I want the scarf back."

Noel put his hand in the coat's pocket.

The gray scarf was folded in there.

He'd grabbed it off the closet floor while Clay was talking to the phones.

"No," Noel said.

"No?"

"It's the warmest one."

"It's cashmere. It was my mother's gift."

"Then you should have kept it off chairs."

Fletcher looked at him.

Then he went downstairs.

The equipment came at four in the afternoon on two trucks.

Fletcher carried every box himself.

By ten that night Noel had a bench under a row of fluorescent lights next to the wine racks.

He had one thing left to test.

His own pills.

Hush is free for every registered omega in the city.

Noel wasn't registered, so for ten years he'd taken his from the stability bottles that came to QA after every lot was packed.

One tablet a day, out of a bottle nobody counted.

His last one was in a twist of foil in his wallet.

Lot 0917, the same as Maddie's.

He crushed it, ran it, and stood there while the rig hummed.

Fletcher sat on the basement stairs, three steps up, exactly where the contract would want him.

The number came up.

Eight point one percent.

"Same as hers," Fletcher said quietly.

"It's not enough."

"Eight percent of nothing is enough to convict you."

"I know what it convicts."

Noel held the foil under the bench light.

Every Hush tablet has letters pressed into the back by the punch that made it.

The punches he'd passed for lot 0917 were on the North Shore line.

Letters NS, and a number from one to four.

He'd signed every one of them by hand.

The letters on this pill said MR6.

McKees Rocks. Press six.

Clay's plant.

Noel had never tested a single tablet off that press in his life.

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