Page 104 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“Not that I don’t like dicks,” Blair adds, as if this clarification is necessary. “I do. Very much. Big fan. But it’s hard to find an alpha that it’s attached to that I actually like too, you know? The knot is great. The ego that comes with it? Not so much.” She laughs—a big, warm, room-filling laugh that makes two of the other volunteers look over and smile. “And this is much better than what I used to do when I was younger. I used to go to clubs and pick up random packs.”

She pauses, looks at me, and her grin softens. I must look more shaken than I thought.

“I know, I know. Not safe. Terrible idea. My mother would have killed me if she’d found out. But what was I supposed to do? I was single as fuck, my heat was coming on like a freight train every couple of months, and I didn’t have the money for escorts or one of those heat service centres where they charge you five hundred dollars to lie in a room with lavender candles and a machine.” She rolls her eyes. “So yeah. I went to clubs. I found packs who were willing. And I survived, but I’m not going to pretend it was smart.”

She looks at the monitoring equipment around her, the clinical chair, the neatly arranged products on the testing tray.

“This is better,” she says, and her voice suddenly becomes quieter. “A clean room with a product that works, reporting my feedback to people who actually listen, and going home with a device that does what I need it to do without the risk of waking up next to a stranger who doesn’t remember my name. You know?”

I nod. Because I do know. Even though I’ve spent a decade making sure I never have to.

“Anyway.” The bravado is back, full volume. Blair swings her legs off the chair and stands, stretching her arms above her head with the unselfconsciousness of a cat. “I’m done for the day. Diana, are we good?”

“We’re good, Blair. See you next week.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Blair scoops up her tote bag, then pauses at the sample station near the door—a display of products that volunteers can take home between sessions. She picks through them with the practiced eye of a sommelier, selects one, examines it, and then turns to me.

“Here.” She holds it out. A sleek, matte-black device. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. This one’s the new model—the one I was telling the tech about. The temperature thing alone will change your life.”

I stare at the device in her outstretched hand. I’m aware of my face doing something I can’t control—a blankness that’s working overtime to cover whatever is happening underneath.

“Oh, come on.” Blair waggles the device gently. “It’s not a grenade. It’s self-care. Every omega should have one.”

My hands don’t move. Because the thought of accepting a knotting device from a stranger—a device designed to replicate something I have spent a decade chemically and psychologically preventing my body from wanting—has short-circuited something between my brain and my fingers.

Blair watches me for a moment. Her eyes drop to my hands, which are still at my sides, and then back to my face.

Then she shrugs, leans past me, and drops the device into my open bag on the chair.

“You’ll thank me later,” she says, and winks. Then she’s gone, orange sneakers squeaking down the corridor, and I’m left standing in the clinical wing with a knotting device in my bag that I didn’t ask for and can’t bring myself to put back on the shelf.

CHAPTER 28

Finn

The club is called Aurelia. Private, members only, a place where packs and omegas meet on equal terms—screened, consenting, and anonymous. It’s not a brothel. It’s more like a very expensive bar where the unspoken understanding is that you might leave with someone, and if you do, both of you chose it.

I suggested it a week ago. “We should go out,” I said. “All three of us. Like we used to. Remember Aurelia? We haven’t been in months.”

What I meant was, I need to get Sophie out of my head. I need to stop thinking about the way she leaned into me in the kitchen before she tried to kill me, and the best way to do that is to surround myself with beautiful omegas who don’t have PTSD and a scar on their shoulder that makes me want to burn down whatever building it was given to her in.

Mostly, I meant let’s get back to normal.

Max agreed, which should have been my first warning sign, because he usually never agrees to anything social without at least two rounds of negotiation. Ethan said sure with a shrug that was too quick, which should have been my second.

We’re in our usual booth, the curved one in the back corner, elevated slightly above the main floor. Max chose it years ago because of the sightlines, and I wasn’t complaining—the elevation gives us a view of the entire room. The leather is burgundy and on the low table, there’s a bottle of Yamazaki between us, our usual, and none of us has had more than a sip.

The club’s lighting is warm and amber and the music low enough to allow conversation. The omegas circulate through the space, moving between the booths and the bar and the private lounges on the second floor, dressed in everything from silk dresses to lingerie, and every single one of them is stunning.

And I don’t feel a single thing.

A tall, dark-haired omega approaches our booth. She’s wearing a sheer black bodysuit that leaves almost nothing to the imagination, but I barely notice, and I can smell her omega scent—jasmine and vanilla—filling the booth. She stops at the edge of our table and smiles, confident and genuine.

“Good evening,” she says, directing the greeting at all three of us but letting her eyes linger on Max. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Are you new members?”

“We’ve been members for four years,” Max says, without looking up from the drinks menu.

The omega’s smile falters by a tiny bit, but she immediately recalibrates, shifts her attention to Ethan and me. And normally, I would have already been on my feet, offering her a drink.