Page 3

Chapter 3

Ava

I up my dosage the moment I get home.

Call me paranoid, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. I still sometimes have nightmares about what might have happened if I’d presented as an Omega just a few weeks or months sooner than I did. What Marcus might have done. How I would still be trapped.

I’m never going to give an Alpha a chance to hurt me ever again. I have a life, and a fulfilling one. I don’t need an Alpha, no matter what the media or convention says.

Even though I know I should be fine, I can’t stop checking my scent wherever I go, just to be sure. Even at the shelter, where the scent of the animals can often obscure everything else, I keep discreetly double-checking.

I can’t slip up. I can’t be discovered.

I’m crouched down cleaning a cage out, and I lean into my armpit a bit, just to make sure. Even the dogs have stopped responding to my scent. That’s how blocked it is, and yet here I am, still a ball of anxiety.

“Get it together, Ava,” I mutter to myself.

Hands land on my shoulders and I scream in surprise, dropping the cleaning brush and nearly banging my head on the top of the cage.

“Sorry, sorry.” Athena leaps back out of the way of my flailing limbs. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. The only thing bruised is my dignity.” I pull off my gloves and stand up. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s great.” Athena beams at me. “It’s just almost the end of the shift. We were wondering if you’d want to join us—it’s Friday and all that—and we’re headed to the club.”

“Oh, I’d love to, but…”

“But, but, but. You always have an excuse.” Athena tilts her head at me. “Are you okay? The last few days… you’ve been jumping at shadows. Is something wrong?”

Athena is a Beta, and so is everyone else who works here, except Bonnie, who’s an Alpha. And Bonnie doesn’t count, since she’s a teenager who wears blockers for herself so she doesn’t smell people and let her teen hormones take over. It’s common practice for underage Alphas who present early, so that they don’t get aggressive.

They’re good people, all of them, and I like them. But even if they might not be Alphas, I don’t know how they’d feel about me if they realized the truth that I’m an Omega—and a hidden one. They could report me to the ORD for dodging registration. I can’t have that, either.

“Are you guys going out to dinner first?” I hedge. “I could join you just for that.”

“Ava, come on, you need to live a little. When was the last time you did anything social?” Before I can answer, Athena holds up a hand. “I’ll tell you when. It was six months ago for my birthday when I took us all to that karaoke bar. You haven’t been out doing anything social since.”

“You know I’m here all the time.”

“And we love you for it, really, we do.” Athena smiles at me gently. “But we also love spending time with you, and this job can’t be the only thing you have in your life. I know that you like spending time with us too, so come on. We’re not that old yet. We can still kick it in the club.”

I crack a smile. “Pretty sure nobody says ‘kick it’ anymore, dear.”

Athena leans back and yells down the hall. “Bonnie? Do people still say ‘kick it in the club’?”

“Nobody has ever said that,” Bonnie deadpans from another room.

I descend into giggles. “Never change, Bonnie,” I yell.

“That kid’s got an attitude problem,” Athena grumbles.

“She’s hilarious. You just don’t get her sense of humor.” I sigh, knowing what I have to do. If I keep saying no to stuff, then Athena’s going to keep pushing, and soon my other coworkers will join in.

And they might find out the truth.

I can’t have that. I don’t know how they’ll react. I know they’ll all mean well. It’s not that I feel unsafe around them. But they might treat me differently, like I’m too delicate to do things. Or they’ll pester me to find an Alpha.

It’s a delicate balance that I have to walk: keeping myself distant enough that nobody figures out what I really am, but also not staying so aloof that I raise alarm bells or hurt feelings. It’s exhausting, feeling like I’m always one small step away from disaster and losing everything.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go out with you guys, but I have an early shift tomorrow so I can’t stay for too long, okay?”

Athena rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Fine, deal’s a deal.” She sticks her hand out for me to playfully shake. “See you at the end of the shift. I’ll text you the address and time. We’ll meet up around the corner to grab some food beforehand.”

“Fine by me.” She’s clearly excited that I’m coming along. I love my coworkers and consider them friends, so I wish like hell that I could be just as excited.

I wish I wasn’t filled with fear.

* * *

It takes me forever to pick out something to wear.

My bed is covered in my clothes. “Too slutty,” I announce, throwing another dress onto the pile. “Too worn out.” There goes another one. “Too frumpy.” Another.

I’m not usually this anxious. I like to be friendly and social, and more carefree. But this thing with that Alpha the other day—I can’t shake it. I haven’t had that reaction to anyone before. A few seconds more and I might’ve been perfuming.

“Be honest,” I tell myself, sorting through my clothes with increasing frustration. “You haven’t been social, or carefree, in years. Not since you had to flee.”

I was, once, with my friends in college. I wonder how they’re doing. If they miss me, if they ever think about me and wonder why I disappeared off the face of the earth.

Finally, I settle on a little black dress. Classy, classic, nothing too crazy, but still sexy and fun. I won’t look like I was dragged to the club against my will, but I also won’t give the impression that I’m looking for someone to hook up with. This is a fun night with friends only.

By the time I’m ready to go, I’m almost late. My stomach is growling. “Just a quick top up.”

I have to be careful. Better safe than sorry. I throw on another dose of blockers, and only then do I head out the door.

I make it just in time to the restaurant down the street from the club, where my six coworkers are already stationed at a booth in the corner. I slide into place, we order, and we eat. I have to basically force the food down.

Maybe it’s just my anxiety, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is a bad idea. That something is going to go wrong.

Everyone else is having fun. Relaxing, talking, making jokes. But sometimes I feel like one of them is sneaking a look at me. I wonder if it’s just that they can pick up on my nerves, or if it’s something more.

I really need to stop being so paranoid.

“Maybe I should go home,” I tell Athena as we pay the bill.

“Nonsense, the evening’s barely begun.” She grabs my hand and leads me out the door with the others. “This will be a fun time, Ava. I promise.”

There’s a line outside the club, but we’re all good-looking people, so we get in easily. Athena and I wink at the bouncer, and Athena even blows him a kiss, making me laugh. He ushers us in with an unimpressed raise of his eyebrow. He’s wearing scent blockers on his nose so that Omegas can’t entice him to let them in because of their scent, and Alphas can’t intimidate him with theirs.

Once we’re inside, the wall of scents and body heat hits me like I’ve run smack into it. I breathe carefully through my mouth. The club’s already bouncing. I’ve clearly been out of the game too long. I don’t remember clubs being quite this crowded.

That’s probably the anxiety talking again.

“Here,” another one of my coworkers says, managing to flag down the bartender. “Order!”

We have to yell over the crowd to tell the bartender what we want. I just stick to a basic Cosmopolitan. I’m only having one drink tonight, even though I’m not driving. In my state, I shouldn’t be adding a ton of alcohol to the mix.

For a moment we just all sip our drinks, but then a song comes on that has my body moving along instinctively. Athena grins at me. “I love this song!” she yells over the music. “Come on!”

I down the rest of my drink and let her lead me through the twisting head of bodies and scents until we reach the middle of the dance floor. I can feel our other coworkers behind me like a conga line, until we’re all bunched together and we can start dancing to the music.

Okay, I can admit—now that I’m in the middle of it, with a drink swimming in my veins, I can feel myself starting to have fun. Maybe Athena was right and this will be good for me.

I sway my hips, letting the bass of the song thump through my body, and I fall into a rhythm of dance. I’m not the best dancer, or at least not in my opinion, but I’m no slouch either. I like to have a good time.

I throw my head back, baring my teeth a little and letting the long waterfall of my hair fall free. My anxiety melts away as the song progresses, the music washing away everything else until it’s just me and the melody.

All around me, people swirl—my friends mostly, but also strangers. Everyone smells good. It’s the smell of life and energy and joy.

After a few songs, I feel a body behind me. I push back a little, and find hands landing on my hips. I grin and dance along. The person behind me is an Alpha, I can tell by his scent, and it smells pretty good. He doesn’t seem to be bad-looking either, at least from what I can tell with him standing behind me.

I dance with him, enjoying the feel of two bodies together, the playful, flirtatious rush. This is good, this is great, this is…

My thoughts all grind to a halt as the Alpha presses himself against me. I can feel the length of him against my ass, half-hard. Talk about a lack of etiquette.

But then his mouth presses against my throat and I feel him inhale sharply. His cheek rubs against my neck and my blood fills with ice. My heart stammers and then takes off running.

He’s scenting me.

My world spins as my own scent filters through to me. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m perfuming. I don’t know when I started, but somehow I got carried away in the music. I don’t know how my scent overcame all the blockers I piled onto it. That should be impossible. And yet, it’s happening.

The music is continuing to play, but around me, my friends have awkwardly paused and are looking around. I can see their nostrils flaring. They can tell an Omega is perfuming, but they haven’t yet figured out it’s me.

I want to burst into tears of humiliation.

Then the Alpha at my back tightens his grip, and I realize with a churn of my stomach that I’m in for more than just humiliation if I don’t find a way to get out of this. This Alpha is trying to scent me and mark me as his .

He’s trying to claim me.

Panic claws at my throat as I try to pull away. No Alpha is going to claim me, no Alpha is going to mark me. Not anyone ever, but especially not some stranger in a club, not like this—

“Holy shit. Ava?” Athena stares at me, her eyes wide with shock. “Is that… you?”

Around me, the crowd is shifting. There are a lot of Alphas in here and now they’re all catching onto the scent of a perfuming Omega. Oh my god, I might be about to get stuck in the middle of an Alpha fight.

This is the kind of story that parents tell their little Omega kids about to warn them not to go around unmated. I’m going to become a cautionary tale, a story on the eleven o’clock news. Shit.

Eyes are starting to turn to me, and my friends seem to be in too much shock to say anything. I want to burst into tears. The Alpha still won’t let go of me.

I can’t breathe, I can’t —

“There you are.”

A hand lands on my shoulder and someone stands in front of me, blocking me from view of anyone else. My mouth drops open.

This is another Alpha, tall and muscular, with a devilish grin playing at the corners of his lips and mirth in his deep green eyes. The lights of the club dance off his messy brown hair as he dips his head a little, bronze highlights glinting among the strands.

“There you are,” he repeats, smiling down at me. His eyes on mine are warm, but then his gaze flicks up to the Alpha who still has his hands on my hips, and those eyes sharpen. The mirth in them becomes something much harder.

My body reacts to him, to that handsome face, to the heat of his firm body, to the protectiveness in his stance. I can only remember one other time I reacted so strongly to an Alpha, and it was the one I ran into the other day. My body starts to sway into him instinctively, my gaze locked on his as he returns his attention to me.

I can’t seem to look away. It’s like I’m under a spell. Whoever this Alpha is, with one simple, gentle touch, he has me more under his command than the Alpha who was just grabbing me and grinding against me.

“I was wondering where you’d got to,” the Alpha continues. The green of his eyes is offset by the tiniest flecks of gold, and I want to sink into them like they’re pools of cool, refreshing water in a forest. “Next time wait for me, okay?”

It strikes me in a sudden rush what he’s doing. He’s covering for me.

He’s pretending that he’s my Alpha.

He’s saving me.