That Telling MomentChapter 22
Stephen poured himself a third glass of wine, a cheap Merlot that had been on offer at Tesco, and settled back against his pillows. His dad had left for his night shift an hour ago, leaving Stephen alone in the flat with nothing but his misery and his mobile for company.
“To moving on,” he muttered, raising his glass in a mock toast to his reflection in the darkened window. “And the absolutely industrial quantities of shagging in my immediate future.”
He took a fortifying sip and unlocked his mobile, thumb hovering over the App Store icon. This was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. But the alternative was spending another night staring at the ceiling, mentally cataloguing all the ways he’d failed to impress David Ryland with his sexual prowess, and his ego couldn’t handle that particular exercise again.
The search bar blinked expectantly. Dating app. Dating app for alphas and omegas. Dating app for omegas who’ve been shagged and abandoned and need to build a sexual CV impressive enough to make the one that got away regret ever leaving.
God, he was pathetic.
“Alpha omega dating app,” he typed, watching the results populate with increasing horror.
Knotworthy – Where Alphas and Omegas Find Their Perfect Match Heat Seekers – For When You Need Someone Special Forever Knot – Finding Your Forever Mate BondMate – Where Designation Meets Destiny
“Jesus Christ,” Stephen muttered, scrolling through the options. Was there a single app that didn’t sound like it had been named by a marketing team high on pheromone supplements?
He tapped on Knotworthy, because why not embrace the mortification completely? The app’s logo featured a stylised knot that managed to be both anatomically suggestive and somehow corporate, like a particularly aggressive investment firm had rebranded with genitalia.
Create Your Profile – Show the World Your True Self!
“My true self is currently drowning in cheap wine and self-pity, but sure, let’s put that on the internet,” Stephen told his mobile, even as he began the registration process.
Name: Stephen H Age: 25 Designation: Omega Location: London Occupation: Legal Counsel
“And now for a profile picture where I don’t look like I’m being held hostage,” Stephen muttered, scrolling through his camera roll. The options were depressingly limited. Most photos featured either his father or Lysander, neither of whom he particularly wanted to showcase on what was essentially a digital meat market.
There was one decent photo from the Dabney gala, taken by the professional photographer. Stephen in his tuxedo, glass of champagne in hand, looking surprisingly sophisticated despite being absolutely terrified of spilling something on the rented formal wear.
The next step asked him to write a bio. The cursor blinked accusingly in the empty text field.
Tell potential matches what makes you special!
“Special how? ‘Professional disappointment in bed, guaranteed to make you flee the country rather than face me over breakfast’? ‘Barely used, only knotted once, previous owner left dissatisfied’?”
He took another sip of wine, then typed:
Junior Legal Counsel. Fan of good books, better wine, and people who don’t use text messages to break things off. Not looking for anything serious, just some fun. No alphas who think designation is a personality.
“There,” he said, hitting save. “Perfectly dignified. Not at all like I’m trying to get revenge-shagged to salvage my wounded pride and build up my sex CV.”
The app chirped cheerfully, informing him that his profile was now live and he could begin the exciting journey of finding his perfect match.
“Perfect match,” Stephen snorted, tapping to view available profiles. “As if such a thing exists.”
The first profile belonged to an alpha named Marcus, 32, whose main photo featured him shirtless in a gym bathroom mirror, biceps flexed to the point of medical concern, with the bio: Knot game strong. Looking for an omega who knows their place (preferably on their knees).
Stephen’s finger couldn’t hit the reject button fast enough.
Next was Daniel, 40, whose profile picture was actually decent, a normal-looking man in a nice suit, until Stephen read the bio: Successful businessman seeking young omega to spoil. Allowance provided for the right match. Must be willing to travel, no heat suppressants, eager to breed.
“Dear God,” Stephen muttered, swiping left with such force he nearly sent his mobile flying.
Jamie, 28, seemed promising until his bio: Alpha AF. Looking for my forever omega to cherish and protect. By cherish and protect I mean bend over the kitchen counter daily. No time wasters.
Stephen’s phone pinged with a notification. Someone had matched with him already? That was unexpected.
AlphaAdam88 has sent you a message!
Curious despite himself, Stephen opened the chat.
AlphaAdam88: Hey beautiful. Bet that arse’ll look even better bent over my desk. When can I see it?
“Charming,” Stephen muttered, closing the message without responding. Another notification pinged.
DomAlpha4U: You’re gorgeous. I can tell you need a proper alpha to put you in your place. I’d love to see more of you… here’s a preview of what you’d get.
The attached image loaded before Stephen could stop it, presenting him with the most aggressive-looking knot he’d ever seen outside of a textbook.
“Jesus!” Stephen yelped, nearly dropping his phone. “That’s not a knot, it’s a bloody weapon!” He deleted the message, wondering if there was any way to scrub the image from his retinas. Perhaps bleach would do it. Or a sharp stick.
By his second hour on the app, Stephen had received seventeen messages. Fourteen contained unsolicited pictures of alphas’ anatomy in various states of arousal. Two were invitations to heat hotels in Soho. One was a surprisingly polite request to worship his feet that he almost considered out of sheer contrast to the rest.
None of these were viable options for his sexual reinvention tour. Walking red flags with knots attached, the lot of them.
Maybe he was being too picky. Maybe he needed to expand his search parameters.
His fingers moved almost of their own accord, typing “scientist” into the search filter.
Three profiles. One was clearly using AI-generated images of a sexy professor stereotype. Another listed their scientific credentials as “School of Hard Knocks, University of Life,” which suggested a concerning confusion about what constituted actual science. The third was a legitimate scientist, but his profile picture featured him holding a taxidermied badger with an expression of such manic glee that Stephen feared for the safety of any small animals in his immediate vicinity.
He tried again. “Physicist.” One result, a woman who worked at CERN.
“Renewable energy.” Zero results.
“High IQ.” Seventeen results, all of whom looked like they’d corner you at a party to explain cryptocurrency.
Stephen closed the app and tossed his mobile onto the bed beside him. None of these alphas had Ryland’s precision, his intensity, his ability to turn a scientific explanation into foreplay.
None of them were Ryland.
The realisation hit him with the force of a particularly vindictive hangover. He didn’t want to move on. Didn’t want industrial quantities of shagging with random alphas who thought “knot game strong” was a compelling personality trait. He wanted Ryland, with all his brilliant, frustrating, meticulous glory.
Stephen drained his wine glass and stared at the ceiling, a hollow ache spreading through his chest. This was bad. This was catastrophically bad. Because if he couldn’t even bring himself to chat with another alpha, how the hell was he supposed to get over the one who’d shattered his heart?
## +++
Stephen dragged himself through Dabney’s glass doors with all the coordination of someone who’d spent the night pickling their brain in cheap Merlot. His head throbbed.
Sleep had eventually claimed him after he’d spent an embarrassing amount of time with his fingers buried inside himself, desperately trying to recreate the sensation of Ryland filling him. His own touch felt clinical and inadequate, like trying to satisfy hunger by looking at pictures of food. In a fit of wine-fuelled desperation, he’d ordered a silicone knot dildo for next-day delivery to a parcel pickup point near the office. The confirmation email had arrived just as he’d finally passed out, mobile still clutched in his hand.
“Good morning, Mr Huxley,” chirped the receptionist, whose relentless cheerfulness should really be classified as a form of psychological warfare. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
Stephen managed a grimace that might charitably be interpreted as a smile. “Absolutely stunning, Mary.”
He shuffled toward the lift, squinting against the fluorescent lighting. His reflection in the polished metal doors confirmed his worst fears: he looked exactly like someone who’d spent the night swiping left on alphas with usernames like KnotYourAvgAlpha and wanking pathetically to memories of the one person in the building he was desperately trying to avoid.
Janet from HR was holding court by the fancy coffee machine when he entered the break room, gesticulating with alarming enthusiasm to a small crowd of rapt listeners.
“…and then Ryland just looks at him and says, ‘Your understanding of basic molecular compounds appears to be on par with that of a particularly dim-witted sea cucumber.’ In front of the entire procurement team!”
“No,” gasped Priya from Contracts, eyes wide. “Not the sea cucumber comparison.”
“Oh yes,” Janet nodded solemnly. “Thompson said he’s never seen someone turn that particular shade of purple before. Three separate HR complaints from one meeting alone.”
“He’s been bloody vicious lately,” added Mick from IT, the same Mick who’d walked in on Ryland and Stephen in the server room all those weeks ago. His eyes flicked to Stephen as he entered, a knowing look that made Stephen want to crawl inside the coffee machine and drown himself in overpriced espresso. “Something’s got him proper wound up. Or maybe someone.”
Stephen kept his expression carefully neutral as he approached the group, pretending a fascination with the coffee machine’s settings that would suggest he was considering a career change to barista.
“Morning,” he mumbled, jabbing at buttons with more force than necessary, briefly fantasising that each one was taking out Ryland’s eye. Jab. Right eye. Jab. Left eye…
Those impossibly blue eyes that had looked at him with such intensity in Geneva, framed by stupidly long lashes that had no business being on a man who used spreadsheets to rank Swiss cheese varieties. Eyes that had darkened when he’d… No. Absolutely not. He was not going to stand in the Dabney break room having inappropriate flashbacks while Janet from HR dissected Ryland’s latest workplace atrocity.
“Stephen!” Janet’s voice had the pitch of someone about to deliver gossip they believed was juicy. “We were just talking about Dr Ryland. He made Jenkins’s new assistant cry yesterday after she ordered the wrong spectrometer. Apparently told her that a trained monkey with a Fisher-Price calculator could have managed the purchase more efficiently.”
“How unfortunate,” Stephen replied, watching coffee drip into his mug. “Perhaps she should have ordered the right spectrometer.”
The universe, determined to ensure Stephen’s day reached new heights of mortification, chose that exact moment to deliver a killing blow. The break room door swung open, and there he was.
Ryland looked like shit, if Stephen was being honest. But still charming, in that scruffy, absentminded professorial way of his. His hair stood up in unruly tufts, as if he’d been running his hands through it continuously. The circles under his eyes suggested he’d been getting about as much sleep as Stephen, though presumably with less wine and fewer dick pics from strangers. His usually immaculate shirt was rumpled, the top button undone.
Their eyes met across the room, a moment of electric connection that sent a jolt straight to Stephen’s core. He watched, with a mixture of hurt and vindication, as Ryland’s expression cycled rapidly from shock to something that looked alarmingly like longing, before settling on panic.
Then, with all the subtlety of someone who’d just spotted their ex at a speed dating event, Ryland executed a perfect 180-degree turn and walked straight back out without a word.
The silence that followed was so complete Stephen could hear the coffee machine’s internal mechanisms whirring. Five pairs of eyes swivelled toward him in unison, like meerkats spotting a predator.
“Well,” said Janet finally. “That wasn’t awkward at all.”
“Did he just…” Priya let the question hang in the air.
“Flee the room like Stephen was carrying a highly contagious disease?” Mick finished for her. “Yes, yes he did.”
Stephen busied himself with mopping up his coffee spill, hoping the flush creeping up his neck might be mistaken for embarrassment over the mess rather than what was actually causing it.
“I didn’t even know Ryland could move that fast,” observed Thompson from Compliance. “Usually takes him five minutes to walk down a corridor because he’s calculating the optimal path in his head or something.”
“Something’s definitely happened between you two,” Janet said, abandoning all pretence of tact. “Last month you were practically attached at the hip, and now he’s treating you like you’ve got the plague.”
“Nothing’s happened,” Stephen lied, with all the believability of a politician caught on camera with his pants down. “We’re just busy with different projects.”
“Right,” Mick drawled. “So busy he needs to literally run away rather than be in the same room as you for thirty seconds.”
“Maybe it’s a weird alpha scientist thing,” Priya suggested, taking pity on Stephen’s obvious discomfort. “My brother’s a physicist, and he once refused to speak to his lab partner for three weeks because they disagreed about quantum string theory.”
“I really don’t think it’s about quantum string theory,” Janet said, her eyebrows performing a suggestive dance.
“Speaking of scientists,” Thompson interjected, “my cousin’s a professor at Imperial. Bit of a Ryland type, actually. Brilliant, awkward. Breathes through his mouth. Single, too. Alpha. I could set you up?”
Stephen stared at him. “You want to set me up with your mouth-breathing cousin because he reminds you of the man who just fled the room rather than look at me?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Thompson had the grace to look slightly abashed.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on the discount Ryland experience,” Stephen said, gathering what remained of his dignity along with his sadly depleted coffee. “If you’ll excuse me, I have actual work to do.”
He escaped the break room with his head held high, waiting until he was safely around the corner before slumping against the wall with a silent groan. It wasn’t even ten, and already his day had achieved new depths of humiliation. Every corner potentially held the risk of another Ryland encounter. Or worse, more colleagues eager to discuss their theories on why the Director of Research was suddenly treating Stephen like an unexploded bomb.