Chapter 8
EIGHT
Playing: “To Die For” by Sam Smith
“Unfortunately, you were right,” I say after I swallow my last bite and reach for a napkin to wipe my hands. “You did know the best place to order my obscure pizza choice.”
Kit lets out a quiet laugh, his mouth full. Once his mouth is free, he gives me an exasperated look. “Unfortunately? You wanted me to order somewhere bad?”
I playfully scrunch up my nose. “Call it a weird character quirk. I wanted the place I order from to be the best.”
Between the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life and the comfort of One Piece on in the background, my body finally starts to relax.
Even with the combination of my scent matches lingering in the air, there’s a buzz in my bones as I recline, letting the fig jam and cheese settle happily in my stomach.
Kit got his own pizza, a meat lovers with hot honey.
He finishes his last slice, closes our separate boxes, and steps away to put them in the fridge.
His scent doesn’t dissipate, but it doesn’t make me as skittish as it did when I first arrived.
The force of it was so overwhelming that it tempted a flare-up, and I desperately didn’t want that, not in front of Rory and Stacia.
My omega keeps taunting me for practically pushing him away, but having him so close and so potent can’t be good for the hormones that I’m trying to keep at bay.
Still, I can’t help being near him. He’s a force of bubbly energy. Someone with both cool and nerdy attributes, making him a complete enigma to me. I have never had a cool bone in my body, so being near him is electric, even though his scent consistently reminds me of the predicament I’m in.
He steps back into the living room and claps his hands a tiny bit too loudly. “Okay, time for the house tour. I should have given you one earlier. I apologize for being a shitty host.”
My lip goes between my teeth without thinking, anxiousness mixing in with my guilt as I say, “No, it’s okay. I wasn’t being a very good new roommate, either.”
“Hey, don’t say that,” he scolds me. “It wasn’t your job, it was mine. So now I’m going to rectify that. Let’s go.”
He leads me down the hallway, past my room and the hallway closet that I’ve already discovered.
He shows me the bathroom in the hall, which has a full bath and shower.
There’s a simple sage shower curtain, and the counter is impeccably organized.
“I love my pack, but they’re not allowed in this bathroom.
Call it an omega perk, but it’s ours now.
So don’t worry about any of the alpha pheromones messing up our stuff.
I have bath bombs by the pile down here.
” He shows me the basket full of plastic-wrapped balls beside the tub.
“Use them anytime you want. I buy a ton of them.”
Something about that causes my heart to stutter.
I keep forgetting that we’re both omegas, but this is a firm reminder.
We both desire self-care and time to ourselves.
We both wish to have a bathroom to ourselves, and now we’re sharing one.
“I don’t want to commandeer your space,” I say, realizing that I’ll be taking over the one place he has to himself.
He arches his brow at me. “What? No! It’s okay! I told them you could share it with me. I don’t mind at all.”
“But—”
“Opal,” he warns, giving me a serious expression that looks both foreign and really hot on his face. “If I ever change my mind, I will tell you. But I am being truthful, I promise. Okay?”
I nod because I don’t know what else to say. Also, I am having conflicted feelings about being talked to so sternly by another omega. Is it because he’s my scent match? I think I may need to ask him to leave the facility for a second so I can puke up my nerves in the toilet.
When I don’t say anything else, he takes a step forward. I startle as he takes my hand, my breath hitching as he softly brushes his thumb back and forth. “If you ever feel uncomfortable, please tell me. I will try to make it right.”
After a moment of thinking about it, I let out a sigh. “Fine. But Kit, I’m being serious. As another omega, I understand how we are. I know you want to help me, but I want your omega to have his space, okay?”
The smile that blooms on his face is cheeky, but also a bit shy. “Trust me, Opal. My omega has a lot to say about you being here, and none of it has to do with you going away.”
A sharp inhale sounds from somewhere, and I realize too late that it came from me.
He squeezes my hand slightly, the look on his face impossible to interpret as he looks down and says, “You’re trying to take care of my omega, but I’m trying to take care of yours.
We want the same thing. Let me give you what you need, okay?
And I promise if anything changes, you will be the first to know. ”
I gulp slightly at the still-close proximity of our faces, but I still manage a nod of confirmation. “Deal.”
I let him pull me out into the hallway. My skin tingles where his touch lingers just before he drops his hand from mine. I take a breath once more, but it’s bittersweet. My omega and I both long for him to touch me again, even the slightest bit.
“Alright,” he says, and I realize he was watching me as I went through a rollercoaster of emotion. His jaw tenses slightly, the movement confusing me until he diverts my attention to the stairs just off to the side of the bathroom door. “Let me show you upstairs.”
With every step, I feel something brewing inside me.
My omega is alert, which is another sign that something awaits us on this next floor.
The smell of the house starts to morph into something cleaner, something fresh.
It mixes until Sam’s apple and Kit’s watermelon scents resemble something like toothpaste in the air.
The first door we come across is ajar, and the tiny sliver of essence that comes through it hits me right in the face.
Crisp, mint leaves. Bristles so clear, I can feel them between my fingertips, and taste the sharp green on my tongue. I barely keep the omega whine inside my chest, letting it burn as it tries to come up my throat.
Three scent matches. I’m stuck in a house with three scent matches.
I thought it was bad enough when I met Sam almost a year ago and immediately went into heat. Then we ran into this omega beside me at that hockey game a few months ago, and I realized his watermelon scent did things to me that I couldn’t even process because he’s another omega.
A very hot, anime-loving omega that I have thought about way too often during moments of weakness.
But this is just icing on the cake. This is officially some kind of prank. How can I be scent matched to all three of these men? And how did I end up moving in with them?
Fate must be a real jokester.
My omega practically snorts, and I slap my chest to metaphorically shush her.
Thatcher’s scent is minty gooey goodness tied up in a wonderful little menthol bow. I find myself stepping forward without thinking, my nose pulling in a tiny bit more of the forbidden scent inside. I’m so enraptured by it that I almost forget that I have an audience.
“Yeah, Thatcher’s scent is strong,” he says as he interprets my reaction to Thatcher’s scent as being a normal one. Thank the universe. “It keeps the place smelling nice, though, like we all just cleaned. And let’s be honest, we haven’t.”
He laughs as he walks on by, leaving me to catch up as I struggle to walk away from the mouthwatering smell coming from that room.
I clear my throat, trying to distract myself by asking, “So, how did you guys get this house anyway? It’s pretty nice for college students.
” Renting houses for college students isn’t uncommon, both Rory and Stacia’s packs have houses near campus, but this house isn’t just nice.
It’s near pristine. It’s just missing the chandelier hanging right inside the front door.
Not to mention the neighborhood that it’s in. The tax bracket of this neighborhood is not one that I think I will ever be in, not on a teacher’s salary.
Kit hesitates, clicking the side of his mouth in a nervous tic. “Sam has an inheritance, but to be honest, it’s a touchy subject.”
I’m about to ask what that means when I hear something.
“Did you hear that?” I ask. The sound was muffled and likely coming from the TV downstairs, but then I hear it again. It’s much clearer the closer it comes, tiny dramatic meows warning us before a ball of fur comes around the corner, the strands dark as night.
The omega gives a knowing chuckle. “You mean my cat?”
The void kitty marches up to Kit’s leg and rubs against him. Her presence suddenly lights me up from the inside out as I get down to my knees and gawk at her.
“You have a cat?!” I whisper-yell at him.
“Yeah, I should have asked if you were okay with animals. This is Jemma.” She meows again, looking at me with bored and impatient eyes. “She takes her dinner time very seriously.”
A sincere laugh falls from my lips as I put my hand closer to the gorgeous being. She leans forward, giving my finger a hesitant sniff before rubbing her head into my hand. My heart melts.
“Let’s get this baby her dinner, then.” I get up to walk downstairs. When we get to the bottom, I turn back to Kit. “I love animals, by the way. Cats in particular.”
He smiles then, his face soft. “Something told me you would.”