Fuck, why the hell did I say that?
She stiffened slightly, those pretty blue eyes becoming more heavily lidded. “Why do you ask, little omega?”
Always with the ‘little.’ I wasn’t even little, though I guessed compared to their hulking frames, I was, but I stood head-to-head with most betas. I practised what she’d told me, tipping my chin up, holding her gaze, and not looking away, even though every fucking instinct screamed at me to do so.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” she said when she realised, raking her hand through her hair.
“No, don’t be. Always putting my foot in my mouth,” I replied. “Yeah, I’m going. Yes, it’s gonna be a disaster. I’ll end up mated to some mouth breather, even though I just asked where the loo was.”
She snorted at that and then laughed, the tension dropping away to my relief. Keep ’em laughing, trick number two forty-four in my book, 5000 Ways to Keep an Alpha at Bay, yet to be published.
“Hit the showers, omega. I put a new de-scenter in there.”
“Other stuff not hitting the spot?” I asked, walking towards the communal bathroom.
“Oh, it hit the spot, all right. Had a bunch of alphas charging into the women’s change rooms, noses working. The alpha girls put them on their arses, but y’know.”
Fuck, I looked down at my hands, unwinding my wraps, and wondered what the hell I was doing with my life.
“Bill Mum at a higher rate.”
“What? No, it’s fine. I’m already charging her three times my normal rate. The boys, they just need to get some chill or some suppressors.” Kai reached out slowly, knowing what it would do to me and giving me time to pull away. Her hand landed on my shoulder, a comforting weight.
See, it doesn’t have to be that bad, I told myself, even as I listened to my heart rate stampede.
“You’re doing really well, omega.” There, that warm, commanding tone became something else, something affirming, rather than pushing me down on my knees to— “Better than half of my beta ladies, so go and have a shower and I’ll catch you the same time next week. Unless you’ve been swept away by some dashing alpha at a party.”
“God, I hope not,” I snapped back, but I think even Kai heard the lie there.
“It’s your ambivalence that’s the problem,” my therapist had said. “If you truly didn’t want this, you could just keep popping suppressants and find yourself a secure place and live. Instead, you’re caught on the horns of two conflicting desires. That’s what we need to work on.”
Chapter 3
The Omega Ball, not the Alpha or Beta Ball. It all centred on us. Every major city had one, and most rural born omegas flocked to the city as soon as they discovered their designation. To live with family, to be swept up into elite boarding schools, sponsored by rich and powerful alpha families. No omega was going to moulder away in some backwater. We were rare, we were desired, and at the ball, we were to present ourselves like prize calves to market. They stopped short of checking our teeth and hooves. Well, mostly.
“Cyn, your fitting,” Mum said, bustling into the kitchen. We still lived in the house by the forest, despite my mother’s very impressive climb of the corporate ladder. Always underestimated as a beta, she’d left the company she’d been working for when I was a teen and then started her own. Having to prove herself rather than rely on old alpha connections, she was nimble, responsive, and could pivot with the market like no one’s business.
Or so I was told.
Being an omega, nothing
like that was expected of me, but I read the financial pages and the magazines with my mother’s face on the cover anyway.
“Because she has transcended the limits of her designation, or the perceived limits,” my therapist had said.
“Maybe.”
Maybe it’s because she was strong and capable and had the fucking world at her feet, I’d thought, but of course, I could have some of that. If I just—
“We’re going to be late,” Mum prompted, bringing me back to the here and now. Back to the kitchen, the peanut butter toast in front of me, the coffee she was pouring in her travel mug. Black, of course.
“OK, I’ll put some clothes—”
“Breakfast first, Cyn. You know that.”
And so I sat and ate the toast that now felt like sticky, gooey cardboard in my mouth. Make sure you eat regularly, Cyn. Take your vitamins, Cyn. Don’t stay up too late or sleep too long, Cyn. The balancing act of an unmated omega felt so fucking oppressive sometimes.
But if you don’t, someone else will take over your care, I thought furiously, swallowing and then chewing through the rest of my breakfast. You’ll be at someone else’s beck and call. Theirs to control, theirs to make sure you—