His Secret Nest: Trapped by the Alpha Boss novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Closet on Thirty-One
Fletcher finds Noel in heat in a nest of his stolen clothes and guards the door all night, but at dawn Clay outs Noel to the whole floor as the omega who signed the poisoned lot, and as Noel demands a public test, Fenella calls: Maddie has collapsed in heat on the T.
The Alpha found the nest at two in the morning, and Noel Arbogast was lying in the middle of it wearing the Alpha's shirt.
It was the shirt Fletcher Stavely lost in March.
Pale blue, French cuffs, a coffee stain on the left sleeve.
Noel had lifted it off a chair in Conference Room C and told himself he'd give it back.
He never gave anything back.
Two ties. A gray scarf. A gym hoodie that still smelled like cedar and rain after eight months.
All of it was piled around him on the floor of a supply closet on the thirty-first floor.
Nobody had opened that closet since they moved the printers.
Nobody but Noel.
His heat wasn't due for nine days.
He had taken his pill at six that morning, the same as every morning for ten years.
At eleven at night his hands started shaking over a test tube.
By midnight he couldn't read the numbers on his own screen.
So he rode the elevator up to the only place in the building that smelled like Fletcher.
The door opened.
Hall light cut across the floor and stopped at Noel's knees.
Fletcher stood in the doorway in his overcoat, car keys still in his hand.
Alpha of the Three Rivers pack. CEO of Stavely Pharmaceuticals.
In three years he had barely said a dozen words to Noel.
He breathed in once.
His eyes went gold.
"Arbogast," Fletcher said. "From the lab."
"Quality control." Noel's voice came out wrong. "Third floor."
"You're a beta."
"Yes."
Fletcher looked at the blue shirt hanging off Noel's shoulder.
"That's mine."
"It was on a chair."
"In March."
He knew which month.
He crouched down outside the ring of his own clothes.
The collar at the base of Noel's neck gave a small click.
Its red light had been steady for ten years.
Now it started to blink.
Noel had built that collar in his mother's kitchen at sixteen, out of a lab scent-scrubber and a watch battery.
It turned an omega into nothing. Into a beta. Into a man nobody looked at twice.
The battery was good until Friday.
The heat was burning straight through it.
Fletcher's nostrils flared.
"Who put that thing on you?"
"I did."
"Take it off."
"No."
The light blinked faster, then went dark.
Noel watched Fletcher smell the exact second it died.
Fletcher's hand hit the doorframe so hard the wood split.
He didn't come one inch closer.
"You're in heat," he said through his teeth.
"I'm aware."
"In my building."
"Also aware."
"On my scarf."
Noel laughed, and it came out as a sound he had never once made in front of another person.
Fletcher's eyes dropped to Noel's mouth and stayed there.
Noel wanted him inside that ring of clothes so badly his teeth hurt.
He reached out and caught the sleeve of Fletcher's coat.
He pulled.
Fletcher came down onto one knee at the edge of the nest.
Close enough that Noel felt his breath on his cheekbone.
Close enough to see the pulse jumping in his jaw.
Fletcher's hand came up and stopped a finger's width from Noel's face.
"Ask me," Noel whispered.
"No."
"I'm asking you."
"You're burning up and you can't count to ten." Fletcher's voice was rough. "Ask me when you can. Then see if I say no."
He stood up.
He took off his overcoat and dropped it on top of Noel.
It was warm from his body, and Noel made the sound again, and Fletcher shut his eyes.
"Nobody comes through this door tonight," Fletcher said. "That includes me."
He closed it.
Noel heard him slide down the outside of it and sit.
All night he heard Fletcher out there, breathing, every time he turned over in the coat.
At six a heat-break pen slid under the door.
Noel stabbed it into his thigh, and by seven he could think in full sentences.
At seven forty the door opened again.
It wasn't Fletcher.
It was Clay Stavely, his half-brother, the COO, in a gray suit and his camera smile.
Behind him stood two security guards and half the executive floor.
At least six phones were up and recording.
"There he is," Clay said. "Our little beta."
Somebody laughed.
Noel was on his knees in a dead collar and a stolen shirt, surrounded by Fletcher's ties.
Clay held up a white pill bottle so the phones could see it.
"Hush, lot 0917. The lot that's been throwing omegas all over this city into heat for a month." He turned the label. "Signed off by quality control. N. Arbogast."
He nudged the gray scarf with the toe of his shoe.
"And here he is. An unregistered omega, nesting in the Alpha's closet, in heat, on purpose. What was the plan, Noel? Trap him in a heat? Get bitten and get a seat at the table?"
A woman from Legal covered her mouth.
Somebody said, "That's disgusting."
Down the hall Noel saw Fletcher, gray in the face, standing with the board chair's hand on his arm.
"Clay," Fletcher said. "Enough."
"He lied to you for three years, brother. He lied to every omega who swallowed his pills."
Noel stood up.
His legs held.
He reached back, opened the clasp of his collar, and took it off.
The whole hallway smelled what he was.
He put the dead collar in Clay's palm and closed Clay's fingers over it.
"I hid what I am," Noel said. "That part's true."
He looked at the phones, not at Clay.
"I tested 0917 on August thirtieth. It passed at full strength. There's a retained sample of every lot in Cold Room B. Pull it. Test it in front of all of you."
Clay's smile got wider.
He turned his tablet around.
"Cold Room B was cleared at six this morning. Destruction order, quality control authorization."
The code on the screen was Noel's.
At six this morning he had been locked in a closet with the Alpha sitting outside the door.
His phone buzzed in the pocket of Fletcher's overcoat.
Fenella. Four missed calls.
He answered.
"Noel." She was shouting over a siren. "It's Maddie. She went down on the T at Steel Plaza. She's in heat, she's not answering me, and the bottle in her backpack says 0917."
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