Chapter 2 #2
The shower block smells like chemical lemon and industrial bleach—the kind that strips everything, even hope. The tile has been scrubbed so many times that the grout’s worn thin. A single drain gurgles at the center.
My skin crawls.
“Strip. Hang up your suits. Five minutes,” an attendant calls.
I peel my jumpsuit off, hyper-aware of every bruise and the female guards blocking the exits. The shower room’s lined with polished steel instead of mirrors—Nexus doesn’t trust us with glass.
When I angle my shoulder toward one of the panels, the reflection’s warped but clear enough. The taser marks have gone purple. The needle mark on my elbow has yellowed.
Naked, we’re all the same—scared, scarred, trying not to look at each other because seeing someone else’s shame reflects your own.
The water hits lukewarm at best, and my breath catches, shoulders knotting.
Steam wafts up, and I’m twelve in our bathroom at home, Sabrina counting with me before my first book report in front of the whole school. You’re braver than you think, Jess. Remember to breathe.
I didn’t believe her then. I barely believe it now. Except I keep counting until my shoulders feel like they drop half an inch.
“Thirty seconds,” someone calls.
We hurry, but the water cuts off mid-rinse. Terrific.
Next, I towel with coarse fabric that smells like storage. Fresh gray sets wait folded on a steel table—slightly better cut, still cheap. My ankle monitor blinks: Asset Tracking – Nexus Intake.
Lily fumbles with her zipper. “They want us to look nice. Maybe the Alphas will be too, and I’ll get picked this time.”
“Any Alpha should be fucking glad to have an Omega like you.”
Her laugh is barely a breath, but it’s real.
The locker room could almost pass for normal: benches, peeling paint, a half-empty vending machine unplugged in the corner. We line up as a floor lead checks names against a tablet.
Halfway back, a panel of safety glass throws me my reflection—pale skin, bruised eyes, posture of someone waiting for the next order. I square my shoulders. If they want presentable, they can have it. They don’t get broken.
Lily’s hand brushes mine, and I give her a small smile.
“Eyes front,” a voice shouts, making us both look up.
They’re going to place us.
I knew Nexus placed Omegas with Alphas, but knowing and feeling it in your bones are different things. We showered. They made us presentable. Because someone’s coming to evaluate, and I’ve never felt more like an item to be bought until now.
“Oh God,” someone whispers. “Oh God, oh God—”
“Quiet,” Rachel hisses.
We funnel into ASSESSMENT HALL A, a long room with taped rectangles on the floor and a mirrored strip along one wall.
The air is overconditioned and smells faintly of citrus cleaner.
Staff line us on the marks—shoulders back, hands at sides, eyes front.
The slip-ons squeak as we settle. Fourteen of us are in this group.
Fourteen gray silhouettes under fluorescent glare.
A compliance lead paces with a tablet. “You’re here for evaluation and placement review. Stand still. No talking.”
I find Lily two Omegas down. She feels me looking and exhales, almost a nod. I hold my ground and try to keep my breathing even. In for two, out for four.
A chime sounds that’s pleasant, but out of place. Someone unlocks the far door.
The air changes.
It starts as a pressure shift, like weather moving in. Then scent threads the room, subtle at first, then undeniable—sandalwood and cold iron, bergamot, cedar, clean rain and ozone, warm leather with a curl of spice, and something darker under all of it, ambered heat that prickles along my skin.
My body recognizes before my brain does.
Heat floods my skin, and something low in my belly pulls tight—an instinct I’ve spent years learning to ignore at the Institute, suppress with pills and sheer willpower.
But there’s no pill now, no barrier between me and the primal response that says submit, present, soften.
No. God, no. Alphas.
My hindbrain doesn’t care about my dignity or my defiance. It lights like a warning flare…except the warning isn’t danger, it’s want, and that’s so much worse.
I lock my knees so they won’t show the shake, bite the inside of my cheek until I taste copper. The pain helps. Pain reminds me I’m still Jess, still me, not just biology waiting to roll over.
Conversation on the staff side drops to a hush. Shoes on polished concrete. Eight silhouettes cross the threshold, with two more in their wake and Eli shadowing the flank, tablet in hand.
I force my breathing to slow, but my scent is already responding—blooming without permission, betraying me to every Alpha in the room.
Jasmine and vanilla, soft and sweet and eager. I hate it. I hate that my body is negotiating surrender to strangers while my mind is still building walls.
The Alphas’ scents layer, separate, test the edges of my composure.
Pine-smoke pauses near the door. Orange-and-cedar strolls, unhurried.
Ozone tracks the line like a storm about to choose where to break.
Leather-spice lingers, assessing. Amber heat doesn’t move much at all—just exists, heavy as gravity.
“Group A,” someone says, voice smooth as glass. “We’ll proceed in order.”
Clipboard smiles skim. Notes go in. Names are checked against a roster.
Lily’s gaze drops, but I keep my eyes front and pretend I’m not freaking out right now.
An Alpha whispers something to a guard, and she nods.
“Lily Watson, step forward.”
She gives me a wide-eyed look, but I nod. The Alpha who asked for her has brown eyes that look kind. True, never can tell, but my gut says he’s a good one.
He holds out his hand, and Lily, after a second, takes it, then the guard leads them out into what I imagine is like a meet-and-greet room or something.
Then another girl is called, this time it’s two Alphas with the guard and her. Since the Alphas aren’t puffing up like roosters, I assume they’re in a pack.
“Jessica Mancini,” a staffer reads. “Step forward one mark.”
The scents surge with pine-smoke, orange-and-cedar, ozone, leather-spice, that heavy amber heat like a hand on the back of my neck. I step forward with my chin up, shoulders back. My slip-ons squeak once, traitorously loud.
Clipboards tilt. Someone murmurs. No Alpha steps forward.
A stylus flicks on a tablet. A quiet, bureaucratic judgment: no interest.
The rejection lands like a slap. My stomach drops like I missed a step, and heat floods my face. Not embarrassment, something rawer, shame. The kind that whispers, of course, they don’t want you. Too tall, too sharp-edged, too much of everything except what matters here.
I stand there, frozen, while my brain spirals: Did I mess up the posture? Should I have looked smaller? Softer? Every Omega Institute class I skipped, every lesson I half-assed because I thought I’d never need them, they’re all stacking up now like evidence of my own stupidity.
My throat tightens. I won’t cry. I won’t. But the sting behind my eyes isn’t about wanting these Alphas. It’s about standing in a room full of women just like me and somehow still being wrong. Still not enough.
Even here, even as product, I’m defective.
“Back to line,” the staffer says, bored.
The words barely register through the white noise in my head.
Before I can move, Eli lifts his hand, a casual tilt of his fingers, and a compliance attendant waves me toward the side door. “With him.”
Great. Remedial manners with Beta Dad. I follow, every nerve shouting that this is worse, somehow, than being ignored.
The door sighs shut behind us, muting the hall to a low hum.
We’re in a narrow room with white walls and a strip of safety tape marking the floor. The air smells faintly of clean linen like an HVAC system that actually works.
A long, rectangular table sits in the center, scuffed plastic surface reflecting the harsh overhead light. Six gray plastic chairs are spaced unevenly around it, two pulled out like someone left in a hurry.
Across from us, a second door glows with a red indicator light—locked.
“Have a seat.”
Eli checks his tablet, mouth set in that neutral, too-controlled line that says he’s choosing his words before he speaks.
I pull out one of the chairs, and it squeaks against the floor. I sit on the hard, plastic chair as every muscle is vibrating.
“If you plan on surviving,” he says, voice low and even, “maybe don’t square up to a bunch of Alphas like you’re about to argue case law.”
Heat flares in my cheeks. “Didn’t realize we were grading posture.”
“We are,” he says. “We always are.” He finally looks at me, and it’s not unkind. Just clinical. “Head tilt. Hands relaxed. Mouth soft. Not meek exactly, but you don’t look like you wanna to stab someone.”
“Didn’t realize I was.”
He taps the tablet off and slips it into his pocket. “All that said—” He lowers his voice. “You didn’t ‘fail.’”
I blink. “What does that even mean?”
Eli exhales, decision settling over his face. “It means I’m not taking you back to your cell.”
My pulse spikes. “Then where—”
The second door unlocks with a soft chime. He gestures toward it. “You want out of here, Jess? There’s a pack willing to consider a trial.”
The word hangs there between us, dangerous and bright.
“Do you want to accept?” he asks.
The question should be simple. Yes or no. Freedom or a cage. But my tongue won’t move, because wanting something has never been safe. Not in my family. Not in my life. And definitely not here.
I open my mouth to force an answer when the second door swings open.
Two Alphas scents hit me like a physical force: sandalwood and rain on hot asphalt, amber and black pepper, warm leather that curls around my senses and squeezes.
My Omega scent of jasmine and vanilla floods the air, desperate and bright and completely beyond my control. In response, Eli’s scent sharpens, crisp linen and bergamot cutting through the tension.
They step in like they own the oxygen, and I forget how to breathe.