Chapter 9
It didn’t take long for me to find the club. A couple of quick searches spit out the address once I was in the right neighborhood.
Surely, that isn’t safe?
An alpha-free club made sense in theory, but, in practice… they were asking for trouble. Inviting the sort of alphas that wanted to take advantage of the hazy decision-making that came with alcohol and being in a so-called 'safe space.'
I pulled the cracked glass door of the pub across the street open, my nose turning up at the overpowering smell of alpha and stale beer.
Certainly, there had been worse dives than this, the bar in the basement of our university student hub with its nicotine-stained walls—predating laws prohibiting smoking inside—coming to mind. But this? It was a close second.
Too close.
The acrylic faux wood of the table tops was chipped badly enough that I could see the pressboard beneath, and the cracked floor tiles invited deep grooves of black dirt that made my skin crawl.
Filthy, and not just because it was shabby and run down in general, but because it was clearly unkempt as well.
Nowhere near my standards for a place I'd willingly choose to spend my time.
But these were extenuating circumstances.
I needed a place to wait for Eva to emerge from the club, and this was the only thing open.
A thought that I seemed to share with the other alphas in the room, drinking flat beer from smudged glasses and crowding around a dinged-up pool table near the back of the sullied room.
I'd expected to find the bar full of half-rutted singles with their faces pressed up against the glass, trying to get a glimpse of an unbonded omega to orchestrate a late-night meet-cute.
Not every pack was as affluent as ours, and the fees that came with being a member at a heat facility like the Omega's Lust or a matching service like All Packed Up were often out of reach, even with combined resources.
A problem that, thanks to me, my pack would never experience.
Well, thanks to me… and Charlie.
We even helped FinCorp cut a deal with All Packed Up to license ScentCX to them to improve their algorithmic matching. When we started, it was because I’d wanted to meet someone that way, to take the fuss and frustration out of the process as much as possible.
Going through the tedious steps of meeting someone and getting to know them enough to let me fuck them was such a hassle.
It was easier to stick to heat hotels, since they required regular sexual health checkups to maintain membership; it entirely eliminated the need for a lot of uncomfortable conversations.
Besides, don’t get me started on scent cards. Disgusting, demeaning, and without the benefit of even being entirely accurate. Being forced to handle what was effectively an omega’s pap smear rubbed onto highly porous paper was about the least romantic thing I could imagine.
And that was before I considered how they made them for alphas.
Absolutely not.
As I got older, it began to gnaw at me. Fun, meaningless hookups blended together and lost any real excitement. A lack of fulfillment that grew from a pinch of discomfort into an ache that I couldn’t soothe.
Companionship, it seemed, was more complicated than code.
What online matching made up for in practicality and convenience, it entirely lacked in romance. Besides, it wasn't like an omega looking for a respectable pack was going to list anything on a public profile that would catch my attention.
My tastes were… eclectic.
Niche.
Instead of the trove of horny to the point of frothing at the mouth bachelors I’d expected, the bar was filled to the brim with packs that seemed to be waiting for their omegas to be finished with dancing and ready for a ride home.
Jealous stronzos. Can’t you let your partner go out alone for one night?
It was a little pathetic, needing to be up your omega's ass every possible second.
That would never be me.
I found a free stool in the corner of the front window, a thin wooden ledge that was really just a ring-stained two-by-four nailed into the window frame to rest glasses on.
Taking a single-use alcohol wipe from the pocket of my jeans, I gave the stool and my segment of the board a quick wipe.
Usually, when I was in public, I simply suffered through the indignity of other people's germs, but the stickiness of the floor kept me from looking at any flat surface too long.
Even my grim acceptance of discomfort had limits as I settled in to wait for Eva.
Of course, I wasn't here because I was worried about her safety. Tara and Jesse were more than capable of wrangling an unruly omega.
But I hadn't seen or heard from her since the Halloween Packtacular, and that didn't sit right with me. She was mine, and this game of hardball was starting to lose its polish.
I wasn't a patient man, my limited ability to wait quickly finding the end of its time.
Not when Eva could be the solution to my pack's problems.
Courting her for the purpose of acting as our surrogate would solve everything. Creating a timeline that I was comfortable with.
I wanted a pack.
I wanted a family.
A baby.
And the longer that I waited around to find somebody who was ready for that, the harder it was going to be. I’d seen no less than five articles this week alone about how an alpha became less potent after thirty, losing more and more of their virility as time went on.
I still had a few good years left, and I wanted to make sure I capitalized on them, securing at least one heir to my sizable fortune before I kicked the bucket.
Plus… I spent so much time on the dead. Life was calling to me. Something more than myself, a legacy that'd walk through the world in a way that zeroes and ones couldn’t.
A life outside of work and duty. A home.
It was almost exciting, the measured uncertainty of when she'd appear through the doors. The eagerness of when I'd finally catch another glimpse of the woman that'd invaded my thoughts since Halloween transformed into a slow thrum of adrenaline in my veins.
A surly waitress appeared with a coiled notepad in hand, and I ordered a beer that I had no intention of touching while I waited, allowing the sounds of the bar to wash over me as I lost myself in thought. When she brought it over, I used the empty wipe package as a coaster.
I wasn’t a fucking animal.
The overpowering scent of cigarettes was just starting to give me a headache, the last of the new bubbles in my pint glass rolling to the top of the amber liquid, when there was movement at the door, a familiar omega storming onto the pavement, armed with his phone in hand.
Mine.
The thought radiated with surprising force, lifting me from my seat.
At this distance, I didn't have Joon's scent to clue me into his mood, but the hard press of his mouth, tightening his lips into a frustrated pucker, was all I needed to know that my omega wasn't fucking happy.
Suddenly, the alphas staking out the club to wait for their omegas and I were on a level playing field. If I'd known that he would be here…
My half-hearted attempt to lie to myself was over before it started. Had I known Joon would be here tonight, no matter the maddening pull I felt towards Eva, I would've been waiting for him.
He was mine.
But so was she.
It was hindbrain, surely. But there was something else, too, a level of concern and care that I felt for the omega even if we were having difficulty connecting emotionally.
Sure, the Packtacular had helped the physical side, and Joon had stopped flinching every time I spoke to him, but things were still… tense.
Of course, I wanted things to move along with him, but he was complicated. Skittish and unruly in a way that would take too long to tame.
Even still, I was committed to seeing things through with Joon, even if the omega's glacial pace tore at me more by the day.
There was something about him that was so intriguing.
I’d never had issues attracting whoever I wanted, omegas, betas, it didn’t matter.
But Joon had been… resistant to say the least. At first, I found it off-putting, but it didn’t take long for me to realize he wasn’t just being petulant, he was a brat that needed to be tamed.
And our pack seemed up to the challenge, even if Marcus needed time to catch up to the rest of us.
I tossed a bill beside my unfinished beer and was out the door before I'd really considered how strange the omega would find it that I'd appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
My long legs took me across the parking lot and street without looking, earning a loud honk from a white sedan as it nearly struck me on its path to pulling up beside my fucking omega.
"Don't you dare," I said, ignoring the driver as they lowered their window to shout towards me.
Joon's reddened nose turned up as he opened the door to the rideshare. "Go away, Cameo."
I ignored him, closing the distance between us and using my hand on the window of the car to close the door again. "I'll take you home."
"I am more than capable—"
"Joon! Wait—please—let me explain!" Eva's voice drifted from the door as she exited. I recognized Jesse and Tara behind her, the third friend a mystery to me as she rushed towards my omega, who suddenly looked more like a deer in headlights than a man.
He grabbed my hand, towing me down the street and away from her just as she got close enough for a whisper of her strawberry matcha scent. At least, I'd thought so, until the smell continued as Joon stormed down the street in the opposite direction of where I'd parked. Maybe I had imagined it.
"I'm not interested!" he snapped. "Call Indigo if you want him so fucking bad!"
I blinked, though I was used to Joon's surly attitude, I'd mistakenly assumed that it was something he'd reserved mostly for me… or Marcus.
Joon really didn't get Marcus.
But it seemed Marcus didn’t get Joon either.