Chapter 24
Luna
“DON’T TOUCH HER!”
The roar vibrates through the floorboards, rattling my teeth.
I blink, half-expecting to find a bear loose in the studio. Instead, a blur of neon and red nylon launches across the room, tackling my meditation instructor to the floor and sending a dozen lit candles clattering across the floor.
What the—
I push up onto my knees, my breath stalling out.
Because the man currently pinning my zen instructor in a deeply compromising catch-wrestling hold—one oatmeal-linen leg hooked up over his shoulder, the poor guy’s crotch mashed against the side of his face, neither of them looking remotely sure how they got there—is Reed.
Reed. Wearing really short red shorts, a tight white track jacket and sweatband, along with neon glasses knocked sideways across his nose. Somewhere out there, a 1985 aerobics tape is missing its host...
“Reed?” I croak.
He doesn’t hear me over the shrieks of my classmates, who are already stampeding for the door in a tangle of bare feet and abandoned mats.
Am I hallucinating again?
I turn my head, searching for some kind of logic.
Instead, I find Bram.
He’s planted a few feet away, chest heaving, wearing a beige cafeteria uniform and—is that a toupee? Regardless, that means I didn’t hallucinate him earlier. I’m not losing my mind.
And right behind him, is Ash, in dark blue maintenance coveralls, a bushy blonde mustache glued above his lip that doesn’t come within a mile of matching his dark hair.
I stare at the three of them. My mouth opens and nothing comes out. Instead, a laugh climbs up my throat, because they look certifiably insane. A lunch lady, a janitor, and an eighties aerobics instructor.
But the laugh quickly dies in my throat. Because said lunch lady, janitor, and aerobics instructor are also my scent matches.
What in God’s name are they doing here?
“Luna,” Bram says, taking a heavy step toward me, his eyes dark and wild. “We can explain.”
“Yeah,” Ash grunts.
I open my mouth to ask exactly which part of this they think they can explain, but then my nose twitches, cutting me off as a sharp ache plunges into my lower abdomen.
Wait.
I pull in a deep breath, searching for them. For the grounding weight of cedar. The sharp bite of woodsmoke. The dark comfort of leather.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing but burning sage.
Why don’t they smell like them?
My inner omega slams against the back of my ribs. She doesn’t like this. She doesn’t like this at all. She wants her alphas, and the men standing in front of me look like them, sound like them, but they are empty.
A distressed whine tears out of my throat, loud and high.
Bram’s whole body jerks toward me. Ash goes rigid. And from the floor, still tangled around the instructor, Reed’s head snaps up.
“I yield,” the instructor wheezes from somewhere under Reed’s arm, one hand patting the slate in surrender.
“Luna—” Reed strains toward me without letting go of the man, which only drags them both an inch across the floor. “Baby, I’m coming, just—give me a second—”
“Luna.” Ash takes another step.
I scramble backward on the mat, my fingers clawing at the foam. The disconnect between my eyes and my nose is violent, and it feels like my body is being ripped in two.
Where are they? Where are they?
The room tilts. The sage scent turns to ash in my lungs. My head goes light, impossibly light, and then the floor rushes up to meet me.
***
“—cedar one’s mine, you can’t have him—”
I come to mid-sentence, my own voice slurring in my ears. I blink my eyes open. White acoustic ceiling tile swims into focus overhead, lit by a bright, fluorescent strip.
A low hum vibrates at the back of my sinuses, joined by a dull throb at the base of my skull. I roll my head to one side, then the other, I’m lying on a paper-lined examination table.
Ugh.
I rub my temples, trying to piece together how I got here. The last thing I’ve got is the meditation class, followed by a fever dream involving aerobics gear, a blonde mustache, a bad toupee, and, oh god, my scent matches.
My omega perks straight up at the word. Scent matches, she sighs, dreamy. Alphas, alphas, alphas.
Down, I tell her. We don’t even know if any of that was real.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
I turn my head to my left. A woman in a crisp white coat is standing by a stainless steel counter, charting something on an iPad. She has a soft, round face and a gentle, vaguely fruity scent. An omega.
“Ugh,” I croak, my throat dry. “Where am I? I had the weirdest dream...”
She sets the tablet down and walks over, offering a small smile. “Did your dream include three large alphas crashing the midday meditation class?”
I freeze. The hum in my sinuses spikes.
“Wait,” I say, my voice climbing an octave. “Did I mutter that in my sleep?”
“No, it really happened,” she says gently. “And then you passed out. About an hour ago. You’re in the retreat’s clinic.”
My stomach bottoms out.
“But why would they do that?” I whisper.
“If I had to guess? They just really missed you.” Her smile turns a little amused. “They claimed you were their scent match, then wrestled off six guards before security finally got them under control. Apparently they insisted on bringing you to a ‘proper’ clinic themselves. Spirited bunch.”
Somehow, I don’t have the slightest trouble believing that. Of course they did. These alphas.
At the word, my nose twitches, and that empty, hollow feeling flares back up in my chest.
“But...” I push up slightly, clutching the paper crinkling under me. “I couldn’t smell any of them. I want to smell them, and—”
“Yes.” She presses a gentle hand to my shoulder, easing me back down. “That’s actually a great idea. I’ve prescribed them a thorough shower. It seems they were wearing scent-suppressing spray.”
Figures. That’s why my body felt like it was splitting in half in the studio despite them being there.
“But,” she continues, sighing, “the shower will have to wait until the local police are done.”
“The police?” I choke out.
“Mm-hmm. The real blond one misrepresented his identity to staff. He signed an intake form under the name ‘Bruce Jovi’. Falsifying a legal document is a crime.”
Bruce Jovi. A laugh hiccups out of me before I can stop it. Of course Reed did that...
“Anyway.” The doctor gets back to business. “The reason I prescribed the shower is because you physically need to smell them. You’re suffering from scent sickness.”
“Scent sickness?”
She nods. “A rare biological backlash. When an omega is separated from her scent matches, sometimes her body registers it as a loss, a rejection. It causes severe phantom itching, aches, nausea, even fainting. The treatment is simple, though: close proximity to your scent matches for at least a week.”
I blink. “A week?”
“At least,” she confirms. “Which means you’ll unfortunately have to leave Serenity Ridge. The owner didn’t take kindly to your alphas. I doubt he’d let them stay, even on my prescription.”
“What if they left me an item with their scents?” I ask.
“I’m afraid that’s no real substitute to the real thing,” she says.
I let my head fall back against the pillow.
My expensive, peaceful, yoga retreat. Ruined. Over. Done. Because of my own body. Of course. Of course it would be me who wrecked it. Perfect. Just perfect... and does that mean—
“Doctor,” I say slowly, picking at the paper under me. “This scent sickness thing. Does that mean I can never be away from them for long? Like, ever?”
The doctor tilts her head, and something almost puzzled crosses her face. “Why would you want to be away from them?” she asks. “They’re your scent matches. You’re meant to be together.”
She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And maybe, for most omegas, it’s supposed to be that simple.
“It’s just—” I start, then stop. How do I even begin to unpack this for a stranger? “The thing is, we just met. Like, days ago. And I live eight hours from them by car.” I pick at the paper faster. “And I, um. I just got out of a relationship. A bad one.”
You’ll be lost without me. You know that. You ruin everything you touch.
No. I shove Derek’s voice back down before it can dig in. Not here. Not now.
“And I like them,” I push on. “I do. I just—I don’t really know them yet.
And based on my track record, my judgment about this stuff is...
bad. I tend to mess things up.” I pause.
“So I guess what I’m actually asking is...
if it doesn’t work out with them. If I screw it up, will I ever be able to live a normal life again? Or am I just—stuck like this now?”
The doctor goes quiet for a moment, considering me.
“It’s hard to say,” she finally admits. “Every omega reacts to scent sickness differently. Some never experience it at all. Others get it, but only at the very beginning, right when they’ve met their matches, the way you have now.
And in the rare cases where things genuinely don’t work out...
” She lifts a shoulder. “Well, let’s just say most are perfectly fine after a period of adjustment.
How long that period lasts depends on the omega. Could be a few days. Could be longer.”
“Could be,” I echo, because I can hear the rest of it sitting there, unsaid. “And for the rare cases?”
“A very small number of omegas never fully adjust to being apart from their scent matches,” she winces.
My stomach drops.
“So I could be one of those,” I say, my voice going thin. “I could end up never able to—”
“I have to emphasize, this is extremely rare,” she says.
“Vanishingly rare. And rarer still is true scent matches falling apart in the first place.” She steps closer, resting that warm hand back on my shoulder.
“My advice? For now, follow the prescription. One week. Use it to actually get to know them. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, you’ll take to this pack like they’ve always been yours.
I’m sure it won’t even take you the full week to feel it. ”
I swallow. “What if I’m the one out of a thousand?”
She smiles, soft. “Don’t worry about being an edge case. We’ve all dated the wrong people, you know. Every single one of us. That doesn’t make any of us fundamentally broken.” Her eyes hold mine, steady. “And it doesn’t make you broken either. So don’t be scared. All right?”
I nod, and look up at the ceiling tile.
Perfect. Just perfect.
“Now.” She gives my shoulder one last pat and straightens, scooping her tablet back off the counter. “I’ll let you rest. I’ll come fetch you the moment your alphas are cleared and showered. The shower’s on my prescription by the way, so you can smell them.”
The door clicks shut behind her.
And then it’s just me, the paper crinkling under me, and the wreckage of the time I came here for.
My expensive retreat... the one that was supposed to get me back to work in perfect shape...
And beyond that lies a question I can’t quite shake despite the doctor’s reassurances. What if I’m the edge case?
A part of me is devastated.
And yet.
Somewhere underneath all of the fear, the loss, and self-pity, tucked right behind my sternum, something else uncurls. Warm. Bright. Shamelessly smug.
My omega does a happy little spin.
Because we’re going home. With our alphas.