Chapter Four – Redd
The room was too full. Too overwhelming.
Everyone talking, the band playing, not to mention the alpha musks and the omega scents all mingling together—I’m not used to it.
I don’t like it. It’s too much for me. I need somewhere quiet where I can reset, where I can breathe in and out slowly and count to ten, tap my fingers on my thumbs and settle those frayed nerves inside me.
It’s just too much. There’s no other explanation for it.
Monroe and Lev are chatting about what to do, which omega to try to pull and talk to first, but when I tell them I need some air, they don’t try to stop me.
I think Monroe knew this whole time tonight would be a challenge for me, and though I tried to play it cool—I was excited, I still am excited—it’s just too much, and when things are too much, I tend to shut down.
I know. An alpha who shuts down in situations he’s not used to isn’t the definition of a prime alpha. I’m not what some people would call normal or neurotypical. I have my quirks, but as far as I’m concerned, so does everyone. Mine tend to get in the way sometimes.
Monroe and Lev have always been accepting of me.
They might not be blood, but they’re as good as brothers to me.
My pack. Without them, I honestly don’t know where I’d be right now, what I’d be doing.
Heck, maybe I’d be on the street begging, although I’d drive myself crazy in the process. I need my daily showers.
But anyway, back to the present, back to me trying to zigzag my way around the crowds to get to an exit so I can step out and calm myself down.
I’m not expecting anything. Why would I?
I have one singular goal in mind as I walk, frowning to myself, and that is to relieve the overwhelming sensation filling me—the last thing I expect is to come across an omega on the outer rim of the ballroom, sitting all alone, with nothing but a bowl of overflowing candy to keep her company.
And I sure as hell don’t expect her scent to stop me in my tracks, even from twenty feet away.
Fruity. Raspberries, maybe? Or strawberries, topped with warm sugar. Sweet and tasty, her scent fills my lungs and makes me instantly forget what I was doing in the first place.
And I know it’s her. That scent is coming from her, not from any of the other omegas in the room. The others smell nice, yes, but this one… this one has me on the hook just like that.
My head spins. The world stops. We lock eyes, and even though there’s twenty feet between us, it’s like she’s right there in front of me.
Within touching distance. I want to go towards her, touch her, grab her hand and run my fingers over her knuckles.
I want to pop one of those candies into her mouth and watch her eat it.
And that’s not even mentioning all the inappropriate things I’d like to do to her, too, thoughts that came to my mind so naturally they shock me.
I know what she is. I know what this means.
Just like that, the thing that’s overwhelming isn’t this room or the amount of people in it.
It’s not the strange mixture of scents and musks.
No, now the only overwhelming thing is the omega sitting twenty feet away, with pretty pink hair and a matching pink dress, with beautiful dark eyes that are so wide it’s clear she’s as shocked as I am about this whole thing.
If I was anyone else, I would probably go right over to her table, sit down, and bask in her presence. But I’m me, and I’ve never been in this sort of situation before, nothing close to it. I don’t know what to do, and I’m too overwhelmed by the sheer gravity of it all to do much of anything.
What do I do? I turn around and march away from her, almost mechanically, like I turned into an emotionless robot when I wasn’t looking. Hell, being a robot would probably be easier than being me at this point.
Damn it. What am I doing?
Walking away from her hurts, but I think I’m so overwhelmed at this whole thing, at the sudden turn of events, that the pain inside doesn’t really register until I find Monroe and Lev again.
“Dude,” Lev says, his eyebrows furrowing as his hazel eyes study me up and down, “what happened? I thought you were going to find somewhere quiet for a while.” Lev is our beta, and thus he’s a good six inches shorter than me.
Nine inches shorter than Monroe. Still much taller than any of the omegas in the ballroom, though.
“I was… I am, but…” It seems the words would not come out. I feel so… out of sorts. Like I stepped into an alternate reality when I wasn’t looking and now I don’t know how to get back home.
“Let’s find someplace to sit down,” Monroe says, taking on his über alpha tone.
As our pack leader, he wants to take care of me.
He always has. Even though he’s four years older than me, when we were at the academy together, he always made it a point to watch out for me and make sure I didn’t get into trouble.
And Lev? We knew each other before we presented as our designations, and promised each other we’d be pack.
“No,” I quickly say, and my outright refusal makes Monroe look at me strangely, like I sprouted a third eye or something when no one was looking. “I can’t. It’s…” Even now, even after the shock of it all worn off somewhat, I still can’t get the words out.
How pathetic am I?
Lev was so excited for tonight, and I was too. So was Monroe. And here I am, ruining it.
“Talk to us,” Monroe says. “Tell us what’s wrong. Are you that overstimulated? Do we need to leave? We can leave. There’s no pressure on us tonight. It’s okay—” He’s only trying to say what he thinks I need to hear, but he’s wrong.
He’s so, so wrong.
“It’s… there’s an omega over there,” I say, my throat so very dry. My hands feel clammy. My heart is beating too fast in my chest. All that to say I feel like I need to crawl out of my own skin to escape this feeling, or at the very least, tear off this damned suit.
“You want to talk to her?”
I shake my head no, then I close my eyes and say, “No, that’s not…” I should just come out and say it. Dancing around the bush like this is not something I like doing. As difficult as it is to face, I need to face the truth.
And the truth was I walked away from my scent match and probably hurt us both, all because I didn’t know what to do at the time.
“I think she’s my scent match,” I whisper, finally saying the truth out loud. Even now, it feels like an eternity has passed between now and when I first smelled her. Years when, in reality, it has only been mere minutes.
The look Monroe gives me tells me enough, but Lev cannot hide his excitement, “Your scent match? No way. What the hell are you doing over here, then? We need to go talk to her, get to know her. Where is she?” The beta in our pack, taking the lead, while both me and Monroe are speechless.
Lev sets his hand on my arm, and as a result, he helps ground me, helps calm down the inner emotions in me that were previously out of control. In a gentler tone, he adds, “It’s amazing is what it is. Fate brought us here tonight. We were meant to find her.”
Monroe gives a quick nod. “He’s right, Redd. If she’s your scent match, she’s ours. Let’s go talk to her.” His blue eyes hold a seriousness they did not hold before; he believes what he said with no hesitations, and that makes me feel a certain type of way.
Good. It makes me feel good that I have these two in my corner.
I nod once. Even though a part of me still wants to find someplace quiet to decompress and relax, I know they’re right. We can’t put this off. If she’s feeling anything similar to what I am, she’s not feeling the greatest right now.
Together, I lead Monroe and Lev to where the omega was, but as we walk across the ballroom and come upon her table, the table where the omega should be, I find she’s not there. She’s gone, having abandoned her overflowing bowl of candy.
I walk around the table, to the chair she was sitting in, and I place my hands on the back of said chair, my fingers curling around its wood. A poor substitution for the omega that was here before.
“She’s gone,” I whisper, unable to hide the sorrow in my tone.
“Where could she have gone?” Lev asks as he plucks one of the candies out of the bowl and pops it into his mouth. “The bathroom, maybe? Or maybe she’s trying to look for you.” He whips his head around and searches the nearby area—a feat made not so easy for him thanks to his five-foot-eight frame.
Monroe stares at me, but I can tell he’s also sniffing the air. If he’s anything like me, he can still smell her even though she’s not here. Lev probably would only be able to catch her scent if she was here, but us alphas were born to pick up omega scents.
“She left,” I say, feeling it in my bones, in my very soul.
Speaking those two words aloud makes my shoulders slump.
I should never have walked away from her like that to begin with.
What was I thinking? She is probably upset, and rightfully so, and yet the mere thought of never seeing her again fills me with such sharp agony I can barely stand. “I’m so stupid.”
“No, you’re not,” Monroe says, while Lev quickly agrees with him.
“I am. She’s gone because of me, I know it.
” I slump down, pull out the chair she was in and sit in it.
The others pull chairs closer to me and sit down with me, one on either side.
The only thing I can do is stare at the abandoned bowl of candy and wish the omega was here, still eating out of it.
“Why did I walk away from her? I’m so fucking stupid. ”
Monroe sets a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Stop saying that. You’re not stupid. You weren’t expecting to stumble across her. It’s not a crime to not know how to react in a situation like that.”
“You would’ve known how to react,” I mutter. “Why can’t I be more like you?”
The hand on my shoulder moves to my back, where he gives me a gentle pat before dropping that hand to the table in front of him.
“Because you’re you. Being you isn’t a bad thing, Redd.
We’ll find her, we’ll apologize, and we’ll beg her for forgiveness.
If you’re scent matches, you won’t be able to stay away from each other. ”
He’s right. I know he is, but that’s not enough to make me feel better. If I made her feel terrible enough that she wanted to leave… it hurts me more than words can say. I’m not used to this. I wasn’t expecting this. I’m such a fool.
“It’ll be okay,” Lev says as he goes for a second piece of candy. “You know, these things aren’t even that good, but I can’t stop eating them—”
My downward spiral into self-hatred and depression is interrupted by the woman who put this whole thing together. She approaches the table and folds her arms over her chest as she studies us and then the bowl of candy.
“You’re the one, aren’t you?” she asks me, somehow already knowing.
I swallow hard, guilty. “Yeah. I… I messed up.”
“You did. She’s leaving the mixer. She doesn’t want to stay.
” Delilah sighs as she pulls out the other chair across from us, slow in sitting down and studying each of us in turn.
“And I can’t blame her after her scent match saw her and walked away from her.
I’m not an omega myself, nor have I ever come across my scent match, but they say a denial like that is one of the most painful things an omega can go through, so emotionally charged the pain becomes physical. ”
The more she says, the worse I feel—a feat, considering I didn’t think I could feel worse than I did moments before. I was wrong, apparently. I can always feel worse.
“I’m having someone come get her. I won’t force her to stay,” she goes on.
“As the headmaster of N.O.A. I am in charge of these omegas’ well-being and safety, and I take my job very seriously.
As an alpha myself, I always tried to look out for those who may not be able to look out for themselves.
” Her gaze flicks between the three of us, though it lingers mostly on me.
“You three don’t seem too bad, though, so let me ask: what were you thinking? ”
Now she sounds like a mother scolding her children for doing something naughty. The bizarre thing is, it’s working. I sink into the seat I’m in, feeling worse.
Monroe takes it upon himself to answer for me, “He can get… overwhelmed in certain circumstances. He was looking for a quiet place to gather himself when he came across her—the last thing in his mind when he walked away was hurting her. You have to believe he didn’t mean to.
When he told us, we came over here to meet her, to apologize for his reaction. ”
She digests that for a while, and then she nods once.
“I believe you. I don’t think it was malicious.
Still, you have to take accountability for your actions.
I cannot bring her back in, but if you three would like to write her a card, I’ll make sure to personally hand-deliver it to her in the morning.
I cannot promise that she will read it or that she’ll want to respond and see you, but we can try.
There is still hope for you hopeless alphas yet.
” She tosses a quick glance Lev’s way. “And you hopeless betas.”
“We’ll do that,” Monroe says. “Thank you so much.”
Delilah gives us a tight smile before she stands. “Make it a good card, boys. That one is as skittish as they come. She’ll need to know you’ll never walk away from her ever again.” With those words of wisdom, she walks away from us.
Lev elbows me. “See? There’s still hope. We can do this. I’ll go see if I can grab a card and a pen.” He gets up and hurries away, leaving me and Monroe at the table.
“Do you really think a card will make her want to see us?” I ask. “Seems stupid.”
“All we can do is try.”
I can’t argue with him, mostly because he’s right. Still, I can’t fight the feeling that I messed up so royally we might not be able to fix this—and the mere thought of never seeing that beautiful omega again makes me want to die.
I can only hope she reads the card, and that she reads it with an open mind and an open heart. I’ll never forgive myself if she doesn’t accept my apology. I don’t even know her name yet, I barely got a good look at her, but I know it in my heart.
She’s mine. She’s ours. She’s pack.
This pack won’t feel right until she’s a part of it.