I couldn’t see why not since we were paying him a fortune to find her.
All we’d been able to find out so far was that Eva was still under ORD record, but past that, the director hadn’t been reachable via phone call or when we showed up at the nearby ORD branch.
What happened at The Bungalow had a ripple effect, and we were banned from all ORD events and premises.
A shit time for this to happen.
But we wouldn’t rest until Eva returned to her rightful place.
Chapter 33
Ifollowed Fern down the bland, hospital-looking hall. She took a sharp turn, her sneakers squeaking on the rubber floor.
All designations bustled around me in preparation for the Matching Event. Since this was the first time I’d been to one of these, everything was a shock. I knew about them because of Roberto, but he never went into detail.
“Since it’s your first day on the field, I’ll start you off in inventory.”
“Okay,” I murmured.
Even to my ears, my voice sounded exhausted. I had an itchy urge to collect blankets, something that I couldn’t afford, so I ended up using my single blanket, folding and refolding it. The movement was the only thing that soothed the incessant itchy urges. Two weeks had passed, and in the time I’d been with Fern, I learned a few more things I hadn’t known. One of those wasthat now that I had met my Scent Matches, my heat would no longer be every three months. It’d be everyfuckingmonth.
Two weeks had passed since I’d seen them, and each day I felt more and more numb. It didn’t help that I’d created a HeatLink account with the basic phone I’d purchased. I would have to meet a Pack that way, and something felt wrong about using my Scent Match’s app to find a Pack to fuck for when my heat arrived.
After the drama the Ironwyld Pack caused at the speed-meet, Fern had quickly had me out of there, and she’d set me up in a studio apartment in a small town right outside of the city. And each night had been hell.
Their faces haunted me. Every night, they filled my dreams like demons.
“Here we are,” Fern chirped and led me into a room lit up with fluorescent lights. Potent Alpha scent battered against my senses.
Metal tables were lined up in rows and contained a line of plastic containers, about twenty to each.
That was all there was in the room aside from the sink where there were gloves, cleaning solutions, and paperwork. Fern grabbed the clipboard, and a pen dangled from a string attached to the hole in the metal clamp, then handed it to me.
“This is the list of samples. Each one contains one Pack scent. Make sure you mark all the Packs that submitted. That way I can cross-check and ensure they’re present. I have to go and take inventory of the Omegas, but when you finish, meet me in the lobby where we have the sign-ins.” She was already walking out. “And glove up.”
The door slammed shut, leaving me in silence. I exhaled, the sound explosive in the quiet room, and turned toward the sink.
All the training videos I’d been watching in the last week had described what to do. I set the clipboard aside and started rigorously washing my hands.
I plucked a sealed packet and ripped the paper open to grab the little disposable antiseptic towel from inside. I swiped my hands clean, then the clipboard, and disposed of it under the sink. My hands quickly air dried, and I slipped on the latex gloves.
Starting at one end of the room, I began the menial task of checking off the samples provided. Each of the black four by four plastic containers holding a Pack’s ‘sample’ had the Pack name scrawled along the top.
Some of the Pack scents made me want to recoil, while some just allowed me to be near the scent without too much hassle. The bland ones, the unimpressive ones that I could be around . . . those would be the Alphas I would choose to soothe my heat. There would be no coffee scent, nothing to make me lose my mind. I sighed and finished marking off the checklist of the submitted samples from the first row.
Hopefully, next time I’d be assigned to chronicling the Omega’s samples.
It would be less unsettling.
The door opened with a squeal.
“I only have the first row done,” I called. “I thought we were meeting—” The lights turned off, shadowing the paper I was looking at. I furrowed my eyebrows and turned.
Dorian clasped the back of my neck, the hold hard, unyielding, and somehow painless. I stumbled after his grip until he had my chest pressed against the closest wall. The clipboard clattered on the floor.
“Dorian!” I gasped. His length pressed against my ass and retreated, and the sound of a belt sliding free was unmistakable. “What are you—Oh!”
He slid a finger inside the waistband of my jeans, and bared me with too much ease. He shouldn’t be able to rip jeans so easily. Lifting me by the waist, he slid inside with a hard thrust. My channel clamped on his cock, taking him like she was welcoming him home.
