Second Chance: M/M Mpreg Alpha Male Romance Read online

  Second Chance

  Aiden Bates

  © 2016

  Disclaimer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  BONUS CHAPTER: Chapter Eleven

  Books by Aiden

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Ty stretched out and inhaled the briny air. Moving to San Diego had been the best decision he'd ever made. He'd had his doubts, back when he'd been huddled all alone and tiny in that bus seat, but now here he was and life had never looked better. A giant cargo ship glided across the horizon in the dim light of morning and Ty grinned at it, mood buoyant.

  Then he ran. He couldn't describe himself as a health nut, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he liked to run in the morning. The exercise helped to settle his mind and let him focus on the day. He liked to think that he got to work out any excess angst from the night before, too, exorcising it through his pores as he jetted down the city streets. He couldn't help but smile widely as the runner's high took hold.

  He kept himself to five miles today, although he didn't want to. He could have run another five if he'd had the time, or maybe even further. Time was the one thing that Ty would say was lacking in his life right now, and considering that his life was filled with good things, that was a pretty good problem to have.

  His feet pounded the pavement for the full five miles, though, and he pushed himself for every inch. When he circled back to his own building, he noticed the moving van parked outside. Right — Linda, the woman in the next apartment, had moved in with her boyfriend last week. The landlord had found another tenant right away, which was kind of disappointing. Linda had stayed over at her boyfriend's place more often than not, and Ty had gotten used to the virtual silence on their floor.

  Oh well. It wasn't like Ty was around all that often, and he could just as easily go ahead and use noise-cancelling headphones if New Neighbor turned out to be really noisy.

  He took a fast shower — the only kind to take these days, thanks to the drought — and headed out to class. He left a little bit of extra time just in case of traffic, which turned out to be an excellent idea because the ride was pretty clogged today. That was okay. It gave him time to savor his first cup of coffee of the day, and he still had time to stop by the little coffee place in the student union to refill his travel mug before his first class. Planning ahead paid off yet again.

  Ty had two lectures today, from eight until noon. It was a good thing that he liked his classes, because otherwise it would make for a dry start to the day. Fortunately, not only were his professors for Community Development and for Gerontology engaging, they didn't just read from the handout and call it a day. Ty felt energized instead of drained when he left class, and didn't mind wolfing down a sandwich as he drove the short distance from the university over to his office. He picked up more coffee, too, because no one could have enough coffee in their life. It was a scientific impossibility.

  Penny sniffed when he walked in. "Look what the cat dragged in."

  He set down a cup of coffee on her desk. "Good afternoon to you, Miss Penny. How's it been this morning?"

  "Well most of the kids are in school, so it hasn't been that terrible." She wrinkled her nose. "I had a meeting with Marco's therapist—that went swell. You'd think that she'd just excuse herself and ask for a new, Spanish-speaking therapist to be assigned to his case but no, apparently, 'He won't get anywhere if we coddle the boy, Penelope. He has to learn to speak English, damn it.'" Penny took on the therapist's grating smokers' rasp as she spoke, specifically to mock the older woman. "I mean really. What a tool."

  Ty grimaced. "I mean, yeah, sure, immersion is the best way to learn a language, but the kid's been trafficked and traumatized. He's struggling enough with trying to adjust to a new country and just learning how to ask for water and where the bathroom is, never mind dealing with therapy and all of the vocabulary that goes along with it in a whole new language." He ran his tongue ring against the back of his teeth as he considered. "You want to transfer him over to me? I don't qualify to be a medical translator, but I do okay. I double majored in Spanish, actually, in undergrad."

  Penny bit her lip and looked up at him. "Are you sure you're up for that? I mean his case is pretty intense, and so's your workload. Then you've got school on top of that."

  Ty tilted his head to the side, giving it some more real thought. Penny wasn't kidding about his workload, and he knew enough about Marco's case to know that he wasn't going to be some easy ride. At the same time, the only other Spanish speaker that Gray House had on staff was out on maternity leave, and if Marco got to be too frustrated by therapy then none of the services that Gray House or the City of San Diego had to offer would be of any use to him. "It should be okay. I mean you're still here in a supervisory role, and it all counts as part of my practicum anyway." He grinned.

  "That's the spirit." Penny opened a drawer and pulled out a thick file folder. "Go and enjoy. I'll do all of the paperwork to make the transfer happen. How did you leave things with Kaycee last night?"

  Ty sat in the chair beside Penny's desk and caught her up on all of his active cases. It didn't feel like a review. This felt like he was simply going through his workload with a friend, possibly because he was. Penny was technically his supervisor, but she was also his emergency contact if he ever wound up in the hospital and he knew that he was hers. The "supervisor" designation was mostly for show, and they both knew it.

  Once they'd finished going through his caseload, he retreated to his own desk to start his workday. He only had a couple of hours to get through phone calls and emails before the kids started coming in. He'd be able to catch up on more of those later, maybe, once most of the kids went home, but he'd rather get through as many as he could while people were still in their offices. Of course, with sixteen voice mails and
one hundred thirty-seven emails in his in box, that might be a distant dream.

  Oh well. All he could do was get through what he could, right? He refilled his coffee cup, grabbed the phone and called the first number back.

  He only got through the voice mails by the time the first bus unloaded five middle-school boys at the entrance to Gray House. He'd deal with email later, when he got a chance, but already today was shaping up to be a less than stellar day for the kids. The bus had dropped off five middle-schoolers, but it was supposed to have dropped off seven. "Dante," Ty said, picking one of the boys out at random. "Where are Juan and Elijah?"

  "Dunno." Dante kicked the floor.

  The tallest boy, Jorge, rolled his eyes and elbowed Dante. "Dante, shut up. Juan wasn't in school today. Elijah went home sick, and he wasn't faking it, neither." He snickered. "He puked in music class. Right down Missy Holland's white dress." The other boys grinned and nodded, giggling. If they hadn't been there, they'd heard about it. Ty was inclined to believe them.

  "Okay, how about if you guys go ahead and get started on your homework while I go call the school, okay?" Ty wasn't sure why the information about Elijah hadn't made it across his desk yet, but at least there was a reason for the absence. Juan was another matter. A call to the school showed that Juan had indeed never shown up to school, making his fifteenth unexcused absence this year. If they couldn't find a way to make up missed work, Juan ran the risk of getting held back.

  Ty snapped his fingers as a hunch hit him. He got Penny's attention and closed the door to the office as she went to keep an eye on the wide open program space. He needed quiet for this, quiet and privacy. Deep inside the locked drawer in his desk, he had a little file of phone numbers that no one else could see. He pulled that file out now and looked up Juan S. now.

  There were four pages under Juan S., but he had a blue flag next to the section with the Juan S. on his current caseload. He called numbers until he got one that someone answered. "Hello?"

  "Hello." The person answered in English, so Ty spoke in English too. "My name is Ty Ostry, I'm calling from Gray House. Juan wasn't in school today, and I'm just calling to check and make sure he's okay. Is he available, please?"

  The voice on the other end paused. Ty could hear the woman take in some breath, like she was thinking about it. "Look, ma'am, I just want to make sure he's okay. He's not in any trouble."

  The unnamed woman sighed, and then Ty heard the sound of a phone being handed off. After a moment, he heard Juan's voice on the other end. "Mr. Ty?"

  Ty knew that his grin was as wide as the Grand Canyon. "Juan! It's good to hear your voice. I heard you weren't in school today and I got worried about you."

  Juan cleared his throat. "There was a raid in the neighborhood. My mom got scared. We bolted."

  Ty nodded. "I figured." He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, do you think you'll be back in school tomorrow?"

  "I have no idea." Ty's heart threatened to break at the despair in Juan's voice. "I want to, but I don't know if I can. Mom's real scared. She can't go back to Guatemala, you know? She's terrified."

  "I know. I do. She doesn't want that for you, either. I'm going to talk to the school, see if we can't work something out about maybe doing summer school. You're a really smart guy, Juan, and I want to see you graduate. You've got just as much of a chance as I did of getting a scholarship, you know? I want to see that happen." He bit his lip. "I can't promise anything, but I'm going to try."

  "Okay. Thanks, Mr. Ty." Juan sniffed. "I'll see you." Juan hung up.

  Ty emerged from the office with a heavy heart, but he masked it as he saw a crowd of six teens squeezing through the center doors. Immigration raids were part of life for many of Gray House's teenaged clients. Even kids whose families had been in the States for generations knew people who were undocumented, and knew people who just disappeared one day. No one needed to be reminded. He greeted the teenagers by name, and was happy to be greeted by them in return.

  Gray House had been founded at the turn of the last century to serve "refractory" teens and their families. Some of their clients had no other home, and lived at Gray House in the residential unit. Ty had been one of them, not too long ago. Others lived in foster care, or with their families. Some had criminal records. Some were runaways. Some had been kicked out for some infraction or other. Gray House staff didn't differentiate. They tried to help them all.

  The time between when school let out and six o'clock was supposed to be dedicated to the clients. Staff were not supposed to be on their phones or computers, unless they needed to check up on a student. Ty met with his clients in his office, if they had to talk privately. If he wasn't meeting privately, he walked around with the kids and helped them with their homework, or did some informal work with them. Today proved to be a fairly intense day, with one girl and one omega going through pregnancy scares and needing to be talked down, but he was able to use those as educational moments too. It wasn't always easy to get access to clinics, but both clients could get condoms and over-the-counter pregnancy tests right there at Gray House.

  The police showed up looking for someone who wasn't there, which caused a huge stir among the clients and didn't have staff feeling all that great either. Ty wanted to have a better relationship with the police, but he also knew that local police had a pretty cynical view of most of the kids at Gray House. His job was to protect the kids, so his hackles tended to rise whenever he saw a uniform these days. It was an unfortunate side effect of both jobs that he hoped to overcome someday.

  And then, once the police left, the day was made even better when Dick Hartmann walked in the door. He didn't stop in at the Adolescent Center, although he stopped at the door long enough to let both Penny and Ty see his lip curl before he walked up the ancient wrought-iron stairs toward the director's office. His seersucker sport coat looked especially out of place against the dingy yellow walls of the main hallway.

  Penny looked at Ty. Ty shook his head. "I can't even imagine what he wants this time," he said with a sigh.

  Penny pursed her lips and glared toward the stairwell. "You know what he wants. It's the same thing he always wants." She smirked. "Why he thinks that the director's going to give it to him, I have no idea."

  Ty couldn't think of a reason either, but the fact that Hartmann was on the property after he'd already been kicked out more than once boded poorly. The blond omega's visit put a pall over the rest of the afternoon that even the clients felt. Most boisterousness stopped, and the parents and foster parents who picked their kids up commented on how quiet everyone was when they showed up to get their kids.

  After a few hours of answering emails, and sending a few of his own, Ty dragged himself home, where he devoted himself to schoolwork over a bowl of ramen. Then, and only then, did he allow himself to go to bed.

  Light from the street lamps crept in from around the edges of his blackout shades, giving Ty just enough light to stare at the ceiling. He needed to find a way to relax if he wanted to get any sleep tonight at all. Unfortunately, he kept hearing irregular thumps, followed by occasional cursing, on the other side of the wall.

  Oh. Right. In all of the excitement of the day, he'd forgotten to introduce himself to his new neighbor. From the sound of things, there was at least one male living there. He hoped they'd forgive the slight, and then he laughed at himself. The way things were going lately, it wasn't as though Ty was around often enough for them to even know he was there.

  ***

  Ben rolled out of bed and fell onto the ground. Fortunately for him, he didn't have far to fall. Not yet. At least he had that going for him. Last night he'd been too tired to assemble the bed, and he'd kind of hated himself for that, but now it had all worked out because Ben just had a little bump on his funny bone instead of bruises or something. That would have been fun to explain at the beach or at a club. How'd I get the bruise? Oh, well, you see, I fell out of bed. No, alone. Yes, I'm an oaf. I'll see myself out.

>   He picked himself up off the floor and dragged himself into the kitchen, scratching at his belly. He'd made the time to go pick up a few essentials from the local grocery store. He hadn't had time to do a full grocery run, but at least he wasn't starting off his morning groping his way around the neighborhood in search of coffee and cereal. And the best part about being an adult, besides the fact that no one was trying to force him to claim some unwilling and unfinished kid, was the fact that he could buy the sugary cereal if he wanted.

  He picked his head up and shook it when he recognized the thought that had just passed through it. That was unusually bitter for him. He had no idea where it had come from.

  Well, that wasn't necessarily true. He still thought about home sometimes. He never went back, of course. Sometimes his mother made some noise about inviting him back for Christmas or Thanksgiving or something, but she never did. He didn't know if he would accept if she did, or if he'd make up some excuse. He might not have to make up an excuse. He was making good money, and he got paid extra to work around the holidays. It wouldn't even be a lie to tell her that he had to work. Just a little stretch of the truth.

  She never asked, so he didn't have to trouble his conscience with such a stretch, but the option had always been available to him if he wanted it, kind of like a security blanket.