Chapter Six
DEAN
I was still thinking about Avery when the alpha walked into the room and everything went sideways.
That was the literal sequence of events.
I was standing near the drinks table with Tomas, half-listening to him talk about the attorney general's rep and whether the handshake had been firm enough to indicate genuine interest, and I was thinking about Avery's face on my couch four days ago when she'd pulled back — that particular expression she got when she'd made a decision she didn't want to make but was going to make anyway because she'd decided it was correct — and then I felt it.
Not him, specifically. I didn't even see him yet. I felt the match response first: my pre-heat, which had been lying quiet for almost a week, spiked sharp enough that I grabbed Tomas's arm without meaning to.
"Dean?"
"I need—" My voice came out strange. "Something just happened."
Tomas understood omegaverse biology in the particular way of someone who'd spent thirty years working in advocacy spaces. He looked around the room without making it obvious he was looking. "Alpha?"
"I don't—" I was tracking the scent without meaning to. Black tea and vetiver and something underneath that, something like rain-warmed stone after a storm has passed, and my whole nervous system was doing something complicated and unanimous about it. "I think it's a match response."
"Okay," Tomas said, calm. "Okay. You know the protocol."
"I know the protocol." I did. We'd trained for this — the advocacy center trained for this because public figures with omega designation needed to be able to handle a scent-match with professionalism and full consent procedures.
I knew the protocol. My body was doing something that was aware of the protocol and completely uninterested in it.
I saw him when he turned.
He was tall, controlled in a way that was immediately legible as deliberate self-management rather than natural ease.
The way he was standing — very still, breathing evenly, not moving toward me — told me he'd felt it too and was holding himself back.
That mattered. A lot. I'd been in spaces where alphas let a match response override their good judgment and it was never a situation I wanted to repeat, and the fact that he was standing across a crowded room and not moving was telling me something about what kind of person he was before I knew anything else.
His eyes found mine.
Brown eyes. Steady, like the rest of him.
I breathed.
"His name?" I asked Tomas.
Tomas looked at his phone. "Event list has a Price-Kent Holdings representative. Isaac Price."
Isaac Price. I knew the name — corporate dynasty, Micah Kent's business partner, financial circles far above what I usually moved in. I'd never met him.
"He's leaving," Tomas said quietly.
I watched Isaac Price cross the room toward the lobby.
He didn't look back, which was — that was probably the most consent-conscious thing a person who'd just experienced an involuntary scent-match could have done in a public space with a hundred witnesses.
He'd felt it, held himself, and removed himself.
"I need to sit down," I said.
Tomas found me a chair and a glass of water and stood near me with the protective patience of someone who'd been doing advocacy work since before I was born.
I sat and breathed and thought about the match response still running through me, which was already settling now that the source was gone, but not entirely.
Not entirely.
"Are you all right?" Tomas said.
"Physically." I drank some water. "Emotionally I'm processing about six different things at once."
"Take your time."
I took my time. What was happening in my body was involuntary and biological and did not require my approval or agreement, and I had feelings about that — strong ones, trained over years of watching people treat omega biology as if it was the whole of the person instead of one layer of them.
But I also couldn't pretend the response didn't exist, because pretending didn't change the biology, it just changed whether you were honest about it.
He'd been careful. That mattered.
I texted Avery on instinct, which I realized immediately was an odd choice given the conversation we'd had four days ago, but she was the person I wanted to tell.
Something just happened at the fundraiser. I don't know what to do with it.
She texted back within a minute: Are you okay?
Physically yes. I had a scent-match response.
The three dots appeared and then: Dean.
I know.
Do you know who?
Isaac Price. Price-Kent Holdings. He left the room when he felt it. Didn't approach.
A longer pause this time.
That's good. That he left.
I know.
Are you somewhere safe?
With Tomas.
Okay. Call me when you're home?
I held the phone and thought about Avery texting me calmly from wherever she was, asking if I was safe, offering to be the voice on the other end of the phone when I got home.
And I thought about Isaac Price standing across a crowded room, holding himself completely still, removing himself so I could process.
Two people doing the opposite of what would have been easy.
"Can someone get the representative's contact information?" I asked Tomas. "Isaac Price. I'd like to reach out properly."
Tomas nodded, the small professional nod of someone who'd seen this before and knew how to handle it. "Of course."
I sat with the match response and my water and the complicated sensation of having had one thing I understood turned into something I didn't, and I thought that maybe that was all right. Not comfortable, but all right. Things that changed you weren't always comfortable.
I'd call Avery when I got home.
I'd figure out the rest from there.
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