Sunday #2
"Nice to meet you, Adrian," Marguerite says, already turning back to her screen.
"You too."
Owen's hand finds the small of my back for half a second, steering me toward the hallway.
I hate that he never says mate or husband. Just my name, floating out there with nothing attached to it, like I could be anybody. A friend. A roommate. Nobody in particular.
I hate it every single time. But there's no helping it.
Owen says goodbye to Marguerite, then he leads me down a long corridor branching off from the main stacks. The light is dimmer down here, older.
"The ballroom's this way," he says, smoothing the collar of his polo.
I let my eyes drop to his ass, taking in the sight of my gorgeous mate. The fabric of his jeans pulls snug with every step, and I quickly look away before I get too worked up.
You’re in public, I remind myself. Behave.
I really wish I had gotten to see him in that tux.
The air changes about halfway down the hall. Faint and sweet, something underneath the polish and old paper smell of the rest of the building.
Vanilla.
And toasted almonds.
It's too clean to be perfume or air freshener.
It’s probably a student's natural scent, or one of the staff. But I like it. A lot.
"This is it," Owen says as we turn the corner.
The gallery opens up ahead of us, low light pooling over glass display cases lining both walls, old leather-bound books propped open under it, yellowed pamphlets pinned flat behind the glass. Owen goes quiet beside me, watching my face instead of the room, waiting to see what I think.
"Owen." I stop in front of the first case, an old brown volume covered in a tidy, foreign handwriting. "This is incredible."
"Yeah?" His voice goes soft, pleased, like he wasn't sure I’d like it.
"Yeah." I move down the row, admiring each piece and reading the placards. "You built this."
I look over at him, and Owen beams with pride.
"Come here." He waves me toward a case near the back wall, tapping the glass over a slim brown volume open to a page of cramped handwriting.
"This one's my favorite." His voice drops to a whisper, as he traces the edge of the glass, careful, like he could still damage the page from out here.
"It's a letter from a pack omega to her sister.
" He looks up at me, something quiet and open on his face.
"She talks about the love and security she feels being bonded to three alphas.
The whole book is a love letter to pack life and how special and important it is. "
My eyebrows climb. "You put that in here? In a library owned by the Van Houtens?"
Owen smiles, then slowly nods. "Yup. Buried in the middle of the exhibit on seventeenth-century alpha literary achievements," he says. There’s a spark in his eyes, and it makes me smile too. "Figured if I was going to build something, it might as well mean something too."
I look down at my mate, something warm and fierce settling in my chest.
My beta, hiding a piece of our world in plain sight, right under the nose of the man who wants people like us erased. He has no idea how badly I want to kiss him right now.
"Anyway," Owen lets out a soft sigh. "I’m glad you like it."
"I love it," I say, following my mate to the next exhibit, then the next.
That scent gets stronger as we move deeper into the gallery. Sweeter. Closer.
I inhale deeply, letting the aroma soak into my skin.
It’s so fucking good.
I stop in front of a squat clay vase with dense etchings circling its belly.
I try to focus on the placard beside it.
Something about trade routes. My eyes keep sliding off the words, my head turning half an inch toward the back corner of the room before I catch myself doing it and force my attention back to the glass.
"Do you smell that?" I ask.
Owen frowns, sniffing once. "Smell what?"
"That." I turn in a slow circle, chasing it. "Kind of like toasted almonds. With something sweet."
"I don't smell anything." He watches me with a small, confused smile. "Could it be perfume or…" he trails off, looking at me as I stare off into the distance. "You feeling okay, Adrian?"
I don't answer him, because I'm already moving, my feet carrying me toward the back corner of the gallery.
It's like something's got a hook in my chest and started reeling.
I need to find the source of that scent.
I need to find, claim, love, fuck.
A narrow hallway breaks off from the corner, dim and easy to miss, lined with a couple of unmarked doors on one side. My legs carry me past the first door, then the second, the scent growing so strong I can taste it at the back of my throat.
"Adrian?" Owen's voice trails behind me. "Where are you going?"
I stop in front of a plain door, unmarked, tucked at the end of the hall.
Mine.
"That's the cleaning closet," Owen says somewhere behind me. "Mops, buckets, extra light bulbs, that kind of thing."
My hand is already on the handle.
"Adrian, what are you—"
I pull the door open, and that sweet scent slams right into me, thick enough to make my head spin for a second, and then the base of my cock pulses hard.
Desperate to know the source of the delicious aroma, I slap at the wall, finally hitting the light switch. A bare bulb overhead flickers once, then floods the closet in harsh yellow light, and I have to squint against the sudden brightness burning through my skull.
But then I see her.
An omega is curled on the floor of the closet, folded small between a mop bucket and a stack of paper towel boxes. She’s wearing a white tennis skirt gone gray with dust, and the top button is missing. Dark bruises ring both her wrists, four fingers wide, like someone was holding her down.
My gaze drops down to her bare legs and I immediately see dried blood streaking the insides of both thighs.
Her hair looks a little ratty, with a few leaves stuck in some tangles, and her breathing is so shallow I have to watch her chest for a full second before I'm sure she's still breathing at all.
Then her scent hits me again, that warm vanilla and toasted almond, and my cock goes from half-hard to steel in a single, painful throb.
It presses against my jeans, an insistent, demanding pressure that makes my head spin.
And I hate myself for it.
This omega is clearly hurt, curled up on a dirty closet floor, but all I can think about is dropping to my knees and burying my face between her legs.
I want to taste her, to lap the blood off her skin, then press my tongue against her pussy and breathe her in until my lungs are full of nothing but her.
Stop it, I tell myself, but my mouth won’t stop watering at the sight of her.
It’s confusing and horrifying, a primal urge so strong it overrides every decent instinct I have.
"Adrian?" Owen inches closer. "What is it?"
The sound of his voice wakes the omega.
Her little body jolts, eyes flying open, and for one suspended second she stares up at me from the floor, glassy and unfocused, like she doesn't know yet whether she's still dreaming.
Then in one swift second, her scent immediately shifts. The sweet vanilla and almond turns sharp and acrid, souring with a terror so potent it should be repellent.
It would be enough to make any decent alpha back away, to soothe the protective instinct and cool the blood. But it does nothing to me. If anything, the bitter edge of her fear only sharpens my hunger, twisting it into something darker and more urgent.
The need to claim, to override that fear with my own scent, to make her safe by making her mine, is a physical ache.
"Please," she whispers, her voice cracking on the single word. Then our eyes lock, and every muscle in me pulls tight.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Every instinct I have surges toward her at once, screaming at me to drop to my knees, gather her up, and promise to kill whoever did this to her.
But her face doesn't match any of that.
Instead, she scrambles backward, kicking her feet out, her back slamming into the metal shelving hard enough to rattle the bottles lined up on it. Both hands fly up in front of her, palms out, fingers shaking.
"Please." Her voice cracks, barely more than a whisper. "Please, don't hurt me."