Page 42 of Scheme
Her not-quite-warm expression faltered entirely at that, and Kit shifted uncomfortably next to me. It hadn’t escaped my notice that Kit’s father wasn’t here, though I hadn’t read anything into it. Seniya was an alpha, and they went wherever they pleased, though I was curious about Kit’s dad. Was he an omega? A beta? Another alpha? That was the least likely option since Seniya had called him her mate, and alphas made for dysfunctional, combative pairs.
Then again, maybe that was why he wasn’t here.
“I’m going to get us drinks,” Kit said quietly, leaning in close. “Are you alright here for a minute?”
I nodded, shooting him what was meant to be a quick smile but stumbling ass over tit into a lingering glance.
There was something in the air tonight, there was no other explanation for it.
“Okay. I’ll be back soon.”
The moment he left, Seniya excused herself to use the bathroom, and my cautiously optimistic opinion of her dropped dramatically.
Thea drained her wine glass, her hand trembling slightly as she set it back down.
“I’m sorry if I’m making things awkward by being here,” Thea mumbled, staring at the table. “I said after last time that I wasn’t interested in Kit—he very clearly wanted nothing to do with me—but Seniya is sort of my work mum, and I think she got a little fixated on the idea of having me as a daughter-in-law, you know?”
“There’s no need to apologise,” I assured her with what I hoped was a soothing smile. From Thea’s scent, she had definitely reached maturity, but she didn’t lookmucholder than eighteen, and there was never more pressure on an omega than at this time of their life.
“You guys seem really well-suited,” Thea offered, hesitantly returning my grin. “You’re so in-sync with each other.”
“Thank you,” I said after a small pause, a little thrown by her words. Maybe we were better actors than I thought.
“Were you waiting for him?”
“Waiting?”
Thea cleared her throat, seeming to struggle for a moment to find the words she was looking for. “Seniya talks a lot about Kit’s job, and how he travels all over the world. You two seem so close, I assumed you’ve known each other a long time. That you were… holding out for him or whatever.”
“Oh.Oh. No.” I laughed, partly at the general awkwardness, and partly at the idea of pining after an alpha. Been there, done that, zero desire to repeat the experience. “I only met Kit a few weeks ago.”
Thea frowned. “Would it be, um, rude to ask why you’re unmated then? It’s just you look a bit older—in a good way, I mean.”
Don’t be offended. She’s a teenager, and teenagers think anyone over thirty has one foot in the grave.
Asher and Chelsea regularly made me feel like the crypt keeper, intentionally or otherwise.
Thea was blushing at her own question, stammering as she attempted to explain herself. “Also you have a proper job and stuff, which is cool. But isn’t it really hard? Like the heats and stuff? I’ve only had one, and it washorrible. But I also feel all like… hot and panicky around alphas, and I don’t know what to say, and they get annoyed with me not making eye contact, so maybe I’ll just be single forever.”
I hummed in agreement, feeling something of a kinship with this young, overwhelmed omega. “I’ve met plenty of alphas like that—ones who wear their dominance like a crown. Trust me, they’re not worth your time. Agoodalpha doesn’t need to lord their dominant nature over you, they’re secure enough in themselves that they don’t need tocommandrespect. And it’s not respect, not really. Not if it isn’t freely given. That’s just fear.”
“Is that why you never bothered finding a mate? Before now, I mean,” she added hurriedly, glancing at the door that Kit had disappeared through. Right. Because she thought we were a real couple and actually going to go into my nest side-by-side when my heat hit.
It didn’t feel good to lie to Thea. Especially since she seemed like she could use an omega friend. She reminded me of how lost Michelle had been when I first met her. How lostI’dbeen at that age, though for slightly different reasons.
“Not finding the right alpha was definitely a big part of it. Not being someone’s first choice was another,” I added, infusing a little more honesty into the conversation than I usually did when I gave my reasons for being single. “If I’m tying myself to someone for life, I want to be confident that it’s because they genuinely wantme, not because I was there at the right place and the right time, that my heat struck and they found me convenient enough.”
Thea nodded earnestly, easily managing to make eye contact with me now. She had a very pretty, angelic face, and it was no surprise that alphas wanted her for themselves.
“As to whether it was hard being unmated…” I looked around, surrounded by laughing groups of friends and loved-up couples. Logically, I knew that all those people probably had their own struggles too, but in theory, loneliness wasn’t one of them. “Sometimes. Without the default companionship of a partner, I had to work really hard to build and maintain friendships. I was able to prioritise my career in a way that I’d struggle to do if I was in a relationship.”
“And the heats?” Thea asked in a small voice.
“Are never pleasant, but they do get easier. Each time, once it ended, I wrote down things that I thought would make it easier and more comfortable next time around. It’s a manageable sort of pain.”
“Itwas,” Thea amended. “You have an alpha now.”
Maybe it was that ickiness about lying that prompted me to keep speaking. Or maybe it was that I’d once been naïve and hopeful, and the world had burned that out of me in one perfectly-timed hit, and I didn’t want Thea to go through that.
