“Get a wriggle on,” Mum said, and being a good little omega, I did.
“Ah, madam, we’re quite booked up for the upcoming Omega Ball,” the receptionist at the dressmaker’s told us. A new receptionist, one who might not have her job for long, if the look my mother was giving her was anything to go by. She was a beta, so she had no way to smell my scent and confirm what I was. All she could do was look me up and down and make her decision—beta.
I looked into the mirror behind her, saw the long dark brown hair, a tall, slim figure like my mother’s, and understood. I should’ve been a beta. Mum and my erstwhile father were betas. There hadn’t been an omega for generations, and then there was me. Lacking all the soft, small, sweetness of an omega, like Mum, I looked like the sharp edge of a blade, something she directed at the poor girl.
“And my daughter is an omega. The booking was for Rhodes. Cynthia Rhodes. Look it up.”
Beta to beta, you couldn’t rely on physiology to make sure your orders were followed, but Mum had channelled enough bad bitch energy dealing with dickhead alphas that she wasn’t going to let a silly receptionist get in her way. The girl clicked onto the booking screen quickly enough, then her face fell.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” Mum replied, cutting her off short. “I’ll need a long black and a quiet space. I’ll need to work through the fitting, Cyn.”
“Of course,” I said as we were herded over to the fitting rooms.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, was why I hated the whole season. Like something out of a fucking Jane Austen novel, omegas and their mamas clustered around the centre of the circular fitting room area. There, Madam Colette—pretty sure her real name was Mrs Colleen McDougall, but whatever—stood in the middle of that, gushing over omegas, chatting with the other mothers, and barking orders at her staff as they held swatches of fabrics up to their models’ skin, twisting swathes of it around their bodies.
I was low-key fascinated by her. She was an alpha, no two ways about it, with the appearance of an omega. Soft, shorter than normal, and always wearing voluminous gowns in shades of purple or pink, she couldn’t have seemed less alpha if she tried.
But only if you weren’t really looking.
The way the beta seamstresses all rushed about to do her bidding, the place run like a well-oiled machine with her at the centre.
“My dear Miranda,” Madam said, sweeping up to Mum and kissing her on both cheeks. I always liked that bit, the totally awkward freeze up Mum did each time, emerging from the shop owner’s embrace wide-eyed. Well, right up until Colette descended on me.
“And my pretty little omega.”
Not pretty. Not little. Not… Oh fuck.
“I have just the thing for you. When you emerged unmated, I searched my brain. How are we going to help the lovely Cynthia find her mate this year?”
“Cyn,” I prompted out of habit.
“Come, come, see my vision board. I think you will love it.”
Every omega had a little alcove in the fitting area, somewhere she could retreat to, seek the closed space and reduced scent burden she craved. I didn’t, having blasted through my olfactory response young by staying at public school until I turned eighteen and enduring the many competing scents of the classroom. Really awkward when you started scenting the desire coming off the teachers in waves. But when Madam pulled the curtains, creating a little nest for the three of us, I had to admit, my shoulders did drop a few inches.
“As you know, this year the theme is ancient Greece, so I searched and searched through countless tiresome books of marble sculptures and came up with this. Et voila!”
With a wave of her hand, the big monitor in the cubicle flashed a series of images on the screen, and I sucked a breath in.
It didn’t happen very often, that I felt actually seen. Not ‘little omega,’ not my mother’s daughter, just me. Cyn. The dress was veils of midnight blue chiffon, bound to the body by a series of gold cords, and across the back, a decorative quiver made of gold leather. It was beautiful, but in a way that didn’t offend me like it normally did. This wasn’t bustles and push-up bras, something, anything to make me look more traditionally omega. This was much more like a beta dress—fierce and unapologetically gorgeous.
“For Artemis, the virgin goddess,” Colette said with a beaming smile, taking that moment and stamping her dainty little foot on it.
“Well, what do you think, Cyn?” Mum asked. “That shade of blue with your eyes and colouring will look stunning, and I think the quiver is a lovely touch.”
Sure, let’s send a message to the entire fucking world that I’m an old maid and haven’t been dicked before.
I had, but one wasn’t supposed to acknowledge that. I’d had one-night stands, only with betas, but alphas were caught up on this whole ‘undiscovered country’ bullshit, so hence the inspo.
“It’s beautiful,” I agreed, because it was. I did like the colour and the quiver, wondering if it would be too much to chat to Kai about showing me how to use a bow and arrow. Going into the ball armed would go a long way towards making me feel more comfortable.
Groping hands as I passed.
Pew! Shot in the mitts with an arrow.
More sliding up my thigh at the dinner table.