Page 4 of Knot Convenient

Marshall had been dragging ass, though. He still hadn’t sat down. At this rate, he was going to miss out on all the food.

“We got a match,” Marshall said as he finally joined us at the table.

I stilled, a piece of bread halfway to my mouth. We’d been waiting to hear those words for what felt like ages.

“Shit, really?” Noah asked, glancing between us excitedly. The fresh pasta he’d placed on the table steamed up his glasses slightly.

“Are you sure it's the right match?” I asked. We had signed up for a matchmaking service almost a year ago and had heard almost nothing from them.

They had given us the profile of one omega who was an option, but she came with so many rules and regulations and wanted so much compensation that we simply couldn't provide. She’d been out of the picture fast.

“She seems like a sweet girl. Here,” Marshall said, holding the folder out toward us.

“Summer Olsen. Twenty-three.” Emmett started to read off her information.

“Fuck me, she’s pretty,” Noah said, pulling a photo out of the file.

That was obvious. Young, with a wide smile and silvery blonde hair that hung in a braid tumbling over her shoulder.

“What sort of compensation does she want?” Emmett asked, taking the photo and frowning at it. No doubt he believed that an omega that young and beautiful would have a list of demands.

“That’s the strange thing. She’s hardly asking for anything. Not even an allowance, just room and board.”

My eyebrows shot up.

“An omega like her could ask for millions, and she would get it,” Emmett pointed out with a frown.

She would, just not from us. We were comfortable, but nowhere near as comfortable as some of the packs the matchmaking service had on the books.

“I have no idea why she wouldn’t ask for more. The matchmaking agency has requested a call soon, though. Maybe we should take them up on it.”

We all stilled, looking down at the image. Something pulled in my chest, and I nodded, saying, “You know…I think we should.”

We didn’t want to get our hopes up. When we’d realized our lives were shockingly empty, we had decided to submit the application. We wanted to expand our family, and it simply hadn’t happened naturally.

I, for one, was curious about Summer.

“Hello! Thank you for taking time out of your day to talk to me,” Callie said, beaming wildly at us through the screen. We had all taken the morning off to sit around the laptop screen in our tiny living room. Actually, that was a lie. Our living room wasn’t tiny; it simply felt tiny when we were all packed into it, trying to look at the same laptop screen.

“Why did you ask for a call?” Marshall asked, not beating around the bush, which we’d all come to expect by now. He was a no-nonsense kind of man, which served him well in his field of work. Running his own auto shop came with a unique set of challenges that Marshall took to like a duck to water.

“Did you happen to get a look at the file I sent you?” she asked, cordial as ever, effortlessly composed.

“We did,” Emmett said, nodding.

“What’s the catch?” Marshall asked.

I shot him a look. He needed to stop coming on so strong. We all wanted an omega, and his distrust of every little thing was making that extremely difficult.

Callie smiled, not fazed by him. “And what do you think of Summer?”

“She seems lovely, though her requirements are minimal?” Emmett said, a clear question in his tone.

Callie nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Summer is a sweet girl. She doesn’t want much at all, just a home and security. There’s only one thing⁠—”

“So there is a catch.” Marshall looked a little too pleased with himself.

“Not a catch, per se. In your application, you stated that you want children. Well, Summer has a nine-month-old son. We wanted to touch base with you before we went any further with the matching process, in case that was a hard no for you guys.”