My polite smile twisted at that, becoming something harder.
“I should let an alpha knot me, bite me, and claim me just so I won’t get hassled by guys on the streets?”
“More than hassled.” She looked over her notes at me, her gaze steady. Probably because she could with me. I was an omega, so I was always going to look away first.
“You don’t have to,” my trainer always said to me. “You might want to, but you don’t have to. Feel the discomfort, the pain, and do it anyway. Meet my eyes.”
So I held the beta’s gaze long after my body began to riot, the muscles twitching around my eyes, a sharp spike slamming into my skull, but was rewarded when she finally looked away.
“Cynthia—”
“Cyn. I told you to call me Cyn.”
“Cynthia, you know why we’re here, why your mother organised these appointments. The Omega Ball is coming up again, and she—”
“Wants to see me safely squared away in the arms of an alpha, so she can get on with her life.”
That should’ve been a snappy retort, but in the end, I was a fucking omega, even if I was a shit one. My eyes dropped, the psychologist’s consulting room fading away as I saw seventeen-year-old me stumbling into the backdoor, my mother emerging from her office, taking in the state of me with a gobsmacked expression. She saw the leaves and the dirt from where I’d fallen over, but it was the front of my pants that had her shaking hand rising, then a frown setting in.
“What did you do?” she asked in that thunderous way that made me question her designation. Surely this was the bark of an alpha, because it hit me like a slap to the face—her anger, her disgust, her fear. “Get in the shower right now, young lady!”
She apologised much later, after haul
ing me into the bathroom, commanding me to strip down, and then just staring at me like I really was that changeling child. No longer her sweet, soon to be beta daughter, I was this. My mother watched me, her body frozen, caught in between fight or flight, I worked out afterwards, making sure I scrubbed myself until I was clean, and then just a little bit more.
Despite my skin being flushed and warm in ways I didn’t understand, I huddled up in my bed as Mum called the doctor, all thoughts of the girl in the forest gone now. Me, my focus was on me, in the utterly selfish way kids have, wondering what the hell I had become.
Chapter 2
“Punch, punch, kick. Good, good, Cyn. Keep going. Feel the burn and push past it.”
Kai was my trainer, a female alpha standing at over six foot two, with the kind of spare, muscular frame my mother had wanted me to develop. She was a picture of confidence as she walked around me, unable to take the prowl from her step, even in a professional setting like this. Her pale blue eyes took in my every strike of the boxing bag, saw that I was flagging, that the meagre muscle and low testosterone of an omega couldn’t carry me through the workout, but she didn’t relent. No pampering, no coddling the little omega. Well, not so little. I’d kept my mother’s height—not six foot, but close—but my bones, my muscles, my ligaments were all omega and I pushed them hard.
My arms and legs burned with a fire that outmatched the bite of a heat, because there was no pleasure to be had here. We lacked the necessary endorphins that carried a beta or an alpha through a vigorous routine. Instead, it just fucking hurt. I felt the reverberations of the bag down my arms and into my shoulders, felt each thump like a counterattack. But I danced and moved and kept on fighting.
“Good. Very good.”
That faint praise, that alpha growl, just a little, it crept into Kai’s voice as she paced. In some ways, this was as hard for her as it was for me, but we got something out of it. The stupid hard-wired part of me that just bloomed under her encouragement took that tiny bit of a growl and spun it exponentially into something so much bigger… It carried me through the workout, until finally, she said I could stop.
I collapsed into myself, wanting to drop to the floor but knowing how bad that was for my body. Kai rushed over with a towel and some water. She would not budge on that part of the aftercare, that was too much for her nature to bear otherwise, but she pulled away, not patting me down, wiping away the sweat, talking me through my cool down until I was settled again like most alpha trainers tried to do. She knew I had this, but she watched me closely, observing every mouthful of water, every pant of breath until it evened out.
“Omegas have power too,” my therapist insisted, and it was right about now I could see that. This killed Kai, to see me like this, to see an omega like this, but she did it and I paid her well for the privilege.
“So what are we working towards now?” she asked me when I’d caught my breath. “I’m thinking you’re not the ‘get into shape for the Omega Ball’ kinda girl.”
She asked this as she crossed her arms, biceps flexing in a way that pulled my eye. I wasn’t attracted to Kai, hadn’t felt drawn to women ever, but…there was something about strength, an easy competence, confidence that made me sit up and take notice.
“I want to be strong,” I replied, then cracked open another bottle, skolling that.
“But you—”
She stopped herself with a hiss, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, you told me. I guess I wasn’t sure you were serious. An omega…” Her eyes slid up and down me in the proprietorial way alphas did, like you were a possession for them to pick up or set down at will. By the time my teeth tightened, she’d forced her eyes down and to the side. Damn, that was positively servile. But she recovered quickly, her eyes meeting mine head-on.
“So what are you going to do about the Omega Ball? Any luck on getting that dispensation?”
I shook my head, feeling the tension I’d just displaced start to ratchet up again.
“Only due to physical or mental disabilities that impair consent. I’m sure my psychologist would come at the latter, but that means institutionalisation.” I glanced around at the big empty training space. Kai had to clear the place out when I trained, since the scent of an omega was enough to fill the place and drive the largely alpha clientele mad. Part of the prohibitive costs of hiring her went towards the cleaning that had to be done after each session. “I think I’ll stick with the current bullshit. More freedom. So are you going?”