11. Emerald
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EMERALD
T he scents around the room were strong even though the alphas were trying to rein themselves in. It was almost enough to make me laugh, but then again, even mine had spiked in a way that was unusual. I’d always been pretty muted, as a beta should be. The only time that differed was when Ainsley and I were alone, then it turned into sweet lemonade, the eucalyptus fading almost completely.
But when I caught the scent of the omega’s perfume and my alpha’s reaction to it, something new appeared in my scent. There was still a touch of sweetness that denoted arousal, but now, instead of lemon, there was eucalyptus with a strange, sweet note. Strong, pungent, dominating.
Like an alpha.
Silence followed the couple out of the room as Kasen showed them around. We could hear his voice come in and out of hearing range until they headed upstairs. I silently wondered what room they were staying in.
“We’ve never had an omega here,” Blakely said for the hundredth time. I could hear the nervousness in his voice. Even as distracted by my own scent as I was, I didn’t miss that his leather and ginger had turned sweet as pie.
“Relax,” Ronan said, his voice deep and gruff. “It’ll be fine. Whatever brought them here was likely as traumatizing as what brought you here. Common ground.”
Blakely nodded, his focus going far off. I’d only gotten hints about what had dumped this lot of alphas onto my island since no one ever talked about it. Part of that was because they weren’t supposed to, but, as Ronan suggested, whatever they had gone through was also traumatizing. They didn’t want to talk about it. I respected that and didn’t ask.
Although I wanted to know about all of them, it was Ainsley’s past that I desperately wanted to know. Right now, he was staring out the door that Kasen had led the new alpha and omega through, completely still. His brows were slightly puckered as he considered them.
I gently elbowed him. His hand on my thigh responded immediately, tightening a little before relaxing. It was another half a minute before he looked at me.
Ainsley was one of the most attractive men I’d ever known, but it wasn’t just his alpha that spoke to me or the promise of a pack that everything in me craved. That was all well and good, but after getting to know him, those factors were almost secondary.
He was a good man—kind, thoughtful, romantic. A great cook. He treated me as if I were his omega. Seriously, he was courting me right now and everything. Little gifts. Dates. All the sweet stuff.
His body was that of a goddamn god—sleek, hard, and perfectly shaped. Tall with tree-bark-brown hair and gray eyes. A face of scruff that he kept low to his jaw. Since the island was moderately warm year-round, he was typically found in tight jeans and an open shirt, the sleeves rolled up his forearms.
I could stare at him for hours and never get tired of it.
He knew exactly what I was thinking. His smile turned sexy as he held my gaze, and the hand on my thigh stroked a little, petting me. His other came up to cup my face. “We’re good,” he said.
Maybe I looked nervous, but why shouldn’t I be? There were many stories of alphas ditching betas once an omega came along. They were the true answer to what an alpha wanted, while a beta was simply a substitute when they couldn’t get the real thing.
But this omega wasn’t here for the pack. She was here for safety. Something had happened to her, and she’d come with an already bonded alpha. That meant I had nothing to be concerned about... Right?
It wasn’t often that I was insecure about something since I was one of the odd betas who was considered designation fluid. That meant I was a little bit of every designation, though technically and biologically speaking, I was a beta.
Around betas, as I had exclusively been for nearly my entire life, I could be a beta through and through, but I could also be an alpha to some extent. I didn’t actually produce a knot, a bark, or a bite, but my tone could turn as demanding as an alpha’s, reaching the octave that was just before a bark. However, I was pretty good at purring. It wasn’t as good as an actual alpha’s, but it was pretty great, if I did say so myself.
And around alphas, I could be their omega. It was like a switch flipped in me. I didn’t have a heat, nor did I have a whine, but my scent became almost perfume-like in its sweetness. Some of their tendencies, like being softer or needier, awoke in me, too.
With Ainsley, I tried to keep myself completely beta. I didn’t want him to want me as a substitute omega. I wanted him to want me for me . As a beta.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Ainsley said, getting to his feet and pulling me with him.
With my hand securely enveloped in his, we walked out the back door. The house they lived in was one of the old plantations of the island. Once, it had been centered around cotton harvesting. Today, most of the land was for other kinds of farming, and there were also horses here.
The entire property was government owned. Those who lived in the house worked the land, selling the goods produced from it to live off of. Kasen also dabbled in computer science. He was really into game coding, and we didn’t think it would be long before he was designing for real.
Lohtus was a self-published thriller writer. I’d read a couple of his books, which were fucking terrifying. I told myself it was just his imagination and the scenes he wrote had nothing to do with what had brought him here... but it left me wondering.
Lohtus wasn’t big game yet, but all he needed was someone with a big mouth and mad social media skills to bring his work to the next level and get him noticed.
That might seem counterintuitive to his needs here on the island since anonymity was the name of the game, but he wrote under a pen name.
That’s not to say someone couldn’t do some digging and bring it back to him, but that was a bridge he’d cross if it came up.
Ainsley’s arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me to his side. I was slightly taller than the average beta male, standing close to six feet, which put Ainsley only a couple inches taller than me. He kissed my cheek, making me smile.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice a low purr.
I smiled, nodding. Leaning into him, I stared at the gorgeous garden ahead. It was massive, covering many acres, but the pack didn’t garden it all. All of that land was managed by employees.
“Fine. Just trying to understand my reaction.”
He grinned. “I certainly smelled that. You found your alpha streak again.”
I shrugged, trying to play it off. “And you?”
Ainsley chuckled. “The entire room reacted to the omega. I mean, we’re programmed to. Right now, it doesn’t mean anything.”
I appreciated that he didn’t lie. Right now it didn’t, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t.
He pulled me to a stop against his chest. Fuck, his smell was intoxicating and that perfect smile was almost more so. “I promise her presence does not threaten your position with me. Understand?”
“I’m not truly worried about that,” I said. “Not logically. I mean, I get the whole alpha-omega thing. All betas do. It’s that natural response to them that makes us mad with jealousy.”
“Are you jealous?” he asked, his voice low and sultry.
I shook my head. “No. Not yet, anyway.”
His lips brushed mine once, twice, lingering there a third time until I wasn’t breathing in anything but him. So good. So, so, so good.
“If I ever make you feel like my attention has moved to her, tell me.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re programmed to. You just told me so.”
“You know what I mean. Emerald, I insisted you be here to meet them because we’ve all but had the conversation of you joining my pack. We haven’t verbally made that commitment nor made it official with a bond, but you’re mine.”
The way he said ‘mine’ nearly had me creaming my pants. There was nothing like being wanted. The possession in his voice was only matched by the affection in his eyes.
I nodded.
“We both know that to some degree, we’re slaves to our biology, to that bit of us that dictates what our designation is, but a lot of that is a choice. You prove that every day when you don’t allow yourself to go full-on mimic omega around me.”
This time, I grinned. It wasn’t hard to tell a designation-fluid beta from a common beta. Our scent alone was enough to mark us as something different. Beta scents were muted and always floral or herbal. Mine was typically herbal and something that was generally designated as an alpha’s—citrus. There was also no mistaking the sweet notes that went beyond arousal when I was around an alpha.
And all that was without getting into the way my personality also shifted slightly. I never stopped being me, but some of my traits surfaced more strongly when I was morphing into another designation.
It was all very weird, and there weren’t any classes on fluidity in school. We were just winging it. Unfortunately for me, as far as I knew, I was the only designation-fluid beta on the island. Outside of the internet, I had no one to learn from.
Until I met Ainsley, I was a little lost. Unsure of myself and how I reacted to anyone. Unsure what to do with the attention on me. Unsure of what I was. I knew there was a name for me but nothing beyond that.
Ainsley just made everything align, and with him came a pack that not only accepted me but wanted me around. There was no pressure to be anything but me. With them, I had found myself and my confidence.
“Hey!”
We turned to find Kasen crossing the yard toward us. He was the first beta that actually did something for me. He was a little rough around the edges and easily defensive, but he was also sweet as all hell. His hair was short on the sides but long and messy on the top. His eyes were dark slate, almost gray like Ainsley’s but there was a blue hue to them. He was thin, lanky, and generally an average beta.
He stopped at my side with a smile, and I caught the slightest hint of the omega’s perfume on him. Just a brush of orange creamsicle, yet it gave me chills. What the fuck was this woman made of?
“You get them settled?” Ainsley asked.
Kasen stuffed his hands into his pockets as he replied. “Yeah. I just wanted to tell you… Colby said something weird. You know we decided that I’d show them around because I’m less potent than you all.” We nodded. Kasen’s brows knit together as he frowned. “Colby said something along the lines of ‘usually I’d agree.’ So maybe I wasn’t the best idea after all.”
Ainsley frowned, and we all turned back toward the house even though Kasen was the only one who knew which room they’d chosen.
“What would a beta do to a bonded alpha and omega?” Ainsley asked.
Kasen shrugged. “I don’t know. In an effort to make them comfortable, I just thought that was an important piece of information to share.”
“Maybe we just let them dictate our interactions for a while,” I said, still staring at the house. Was I imagining one of them staring out the window at us? They weren’t really watching out the windows, right? “Until we know what makes them uncomfortable.”
Kasen nodded. He bit his lip for a minute before looking at me, his eyes shining with mischief. “He smells so fucking good.” The groan that left his mouth had me grinning.
Ainsley shook his head, smirking. “Let them be, Kasen.”
“Oh, I know, but did you smell him? He’s all sorts of hot spices. I kinda wanted to lick him.” He stopped himself from getting too dirty, his slate eyes meeting mine.
His eyes meeting mine settled something inside me. All those pieces that had gone haywire when the omega stepped in moved back into their usual places, and I felt… like a beta once more. These two men were the only lovers I had in the house. I liked the different parts of me that came out naturally with them. Kasen didn’t need another alpha; he already had two. With him, I could just be a beta, so I found that his presence helped to ground me into the designation I was always supposed to be.
He leaned into my other side and kissed my neck, dragging his teeth across my skin. “Kinda like Lohtus with that earthy wood, but his is slightly different. I just want to suck it until I can identify it.”
Ainsley chuckled, shaking his head again.
“Don’t get yourself in trouble. Alphas are very finicky, and we don’t know anything about this one,” I warned.
Kasen sighed, leaning heavily against me for a second. “Oh, I know. I have no intention of going anywhere near them.”
Even though he acknowledged her presence, I could tell he had no interest in the omega. Which was fine and exactly what I’d expect from him.
“Good,” Ainsley said. “Give them some space, and we’ll see how much and how often they want to interact. Whatever they’ve been through, it was recent. They both look absolutely exhausted and worn.”
“Might be from their around-the-world traveling,” Kasen muttered with a slight shake of his head. He had told me about his trip to get here. He had traveled a total of thirty-three hours, not including all the layovers. Apparently, he’d even been to one airport twice. I couldn’t imagine the money spent on relocating people.
“Maybe,” Ainsley agreed. “But it could very well be from whatever brought them here. You and I both know that law enforcement doesn’t wait long to ship you off after you’ve minimally recovered from whatever it is that made them send you away.”
I appreciated that they were at least this open about their lives with me. Because we were a small, tight community, it wasn’t at all hard to miss the rotation of people or when someone new showed up. The island didn’t know exactly what brought random people to this house, but they knew it was government owned.
Kasen sighed, moving off me to look back at the house again. “I wonder what they saw?” he murmured.