Desire Me If You Can Novel - Chapter 7

Calm down. There’s no proof. A Dominant Omega? That was a being you might encounter once in a lifetime, if you were lucky.

Grayson tried to recall his thoughts as coolly as possible. He was fortunate enough to know two Dominant Omegas. One was Coy, who gave birth to him, and the other was Angel, who gave birth to his friend Keith Pittman. But literally, he only knew of their existence; they were merely beings unrelated to his own life.

And yet, out of the blue like this? Did that make any sense?

Continual doubts raised their heads, but emotion betrayed reason. This heart beating so violently couldn’t be lying. Until now, he had lived suppressing his instincts with reason. The only single exception was when he got the ‘feeling’ that he had found his destiny.

Every time, he fell for the same delusion and regretted it, yet here he was, shaken just as before. The partner Grayson had been searching for so desperately might actually be him.

‘Fire.’

Amidst his absurd conviction, the fortune teller’s words surfaced. What he had ridiculed as nonsense now felt like the single ray of light illuminating the path ahead. It was no longer a conjecture, but a certainty. That man was the real deal. The way to confirm it was simple. He just had to meet him again.

How?

Grayson moved his feet, which had paused for a moment, and began pacing again.

Should I set my house on fire? What if I set fire to this hospital right now? How would I find him among the dispatched firefighters? He might be off duty, right?

Unfortunately, his hazy memory offered no clues. He recalled the partner he had looked up at briefly in the final moment. But because the man was wearing a helmet and had approached from behind, Grayson didn’t know what he looked like. He thought he had heard a voice, but now he couldn’t recall what was said, let alone the tone or feeling of the voice. He didn’t even know if it was a woman or a man. No, it must be a woman. She said the chest was big.

But other than that, there were no clues. Because the voice had been close to a whisper, even if he heard it again, it would be hard to recognize.

Then do I set fires until I find out who it is? Too inefficient. Isn’t there a more effective way?

…Right.

It didn’t take long for him to come up with a brilliant idea. It was only a few hours later that Grayson headed east to meet his father, Ashley Miller.

The strongest contender for the next presidency. Former head of North America’s number one law firm, a former lawyer, and currently a senator. A man who had been the captain of his ice hockey team in high school and a VIP. A Dominant Alpha with breathtakingly gorgeous looks, standing over two meters tall with platinum blonde hair.

That was Ashley Miller.

The father of six children looked at his second son standing across the desk with his usual expressionless face. Even after hearing Grayson’s words, his expression didn’t change much as he slowly opened his mouth after a moment of silence.

“What did you just say?”

His low voice remained the same, but asking back to confirm what he had heard was uncharacteristic of him. Grayson smiled brightly as he looked at his father.

“I said I want to become a firefighter. But since it’s not the recruitment period right now, I want to get in through special admission. So I was hoping you could help me a little.”

He repeated what he had said earlier, adding a bit more explanation. Ashley stared at him, still expressionless, before moving his lips.

“What did you say just now?”

“I want to become a firefighter, Father. Since it isn’t recruitment season, I would appreciate it if you could pull some strings so I can enter through special admission.”

Repeating the same words for the third time would be enough to annoy anyone, but Grayson didn’t lose his smile. Ashley stared blankly at that fabricated smile he had seen on his son so often. After silence flowed again, only then did Ashley Miller seem to accept reality, sinking deep into the back of his chair.

“Your motive?”

“Because helping people is a noble act.”

It was an answer as if plucked straight from a textbook, but of course, it wasn’t the answer Ashley wanted at all. Because that wasn’t the kind of statement his son would make. Perhaps anticipating Ashley’s chilly reaction, Grayson added without flinching.

“I heard my fated lover is at a fire station. I want to go and check for myself.”

“Ah…”

Only then did Ashley narrow his eyes and let out a long exclamation. It was a lukewarm reaction, as if to say I knew it, but Grayson continued regardless.

“Of course, there is plenty of possibility that I’m wrong this time, too. But you never know until you try, right? You said I could do whatever I wanted, as long as it wasn’t a crime. Helping others isn’t a crime, after all.”

Ashley didn’t respond to the words that flowed out smoothly, as if Grayson had prepared them quite a bit. Staring blankly at his son, who became unusually passionate whenever the word ‘destiny’ was involved, Ashley twisted the corner of his mouth and asked.

“You do know how many fire stations there are in the country, right?”

Grayson paused for a moment but soon recalled his smile and answered.

“Of course. I checked.”

“With a fortune teller, I presume.”

“With tarot cards.”

Even knowing his Papa was being sarcastic, Grayson deftly parried the remark. The reason he didn’t bother explaining—There was a Dominant Omega among the firefighters who came to extinguish the fire at the pheromone party, and he is my destiny. I want to become a firefighter to find him—was because he had a firm belief that saying so would only invite more ridicule. With Ashley Miller, the absurd story of “I got my fortune told and they said so” would actually go down better. The latter could be passed off as him talking nonsense as usual, but the former would lead to suspicion that he had finally lost his mind due to pheromones.

Thinking this, Grayson waited for Ashley’s answer.

Ashley stared piercingly at the slick face of his son, who looked particularly like his own father, Dominic. He suppressed the disgust rising instinctively and tried somehow to find traces of his own mate in him, but unfortunately, it was a useless effort. Having repeated the same failure every time, Ashley accepted reality obediently this time as well.

“Having the will to do anything is a good thing.”

At the indifferent voice, Grayson’s eyes sparkled, and at the same time, his ears twitched briefly. Only then did Ashley’s heart soften somewhat. Fixing his gaze on Grayson’s ears, which shared the same habit as his one and only Omega, Ashley continued.

“Fine. I’ll pull some strings. But there is a condition.”

“Yes, anything.”

Grayson answered immediately without even listening. Ashley thought that this blind attitude of his always created bad situations, but he had no intention of warning him. Failure, too, provided important life lessons.

“You have to stick with it for at least a year. Without quitting.”

Once again, Grayson paused and stiffened. The reason the silence stretched longer than before was obvious. It was clearly because if he failed this time too, he would want to quit immediately. He would have to set out to find the next partner as soon as possible, after all.

Not a chance.

Watching his son delay his answer in deliberation, Ashley added one more thing.

“Jackson complained to me. Said you made a mess of his precious twins.”

“It was self-defense. They tried to rape me.”

At the name he had forgotten, Grayson paused but soon defended himself with a smile. Ashley’s eyes seemed to narrow, and he spat out in a tone more cynical than usual.

“Because you provoked them by spraying pheromones first.”

Grayson tried to refute again, but Ashley continued before he could.

“I’m telling you to take responsibility for that by serving the public instead. Your petty search for destiny is your own business, but you must take responsibility for what you’ve committed. Did you come to beg me, to ask me to use expedient methods to find that great destiny of yours, without even that much resolve?”

He deserved to hear such words. They were so undeniably correct that there was no room for excuses. Grayson hesitated to answer, struck by the ominous premonition that he might fail this time as well. Hadn’t he repeated countless errors until now, trusting only in his premonitions? Who could guarantee that this time would be different?

But what if it’s real this time?