"Suppressants?" I repeated, stepping under the spray and hissing at the heat.
"Pills that will stop this from happening again," my mother explained, her voice clipped and efficient even as her hands shook. "That will keep you from going into heat. That will hide what you are from—" She stopped, pressing her lips together. "Just scrub. Quickly."
I scrubbed. My arms, my legs, my stomach, my neck—especially my neck, where I could feel something swollen and sensitive beneath my skin. My scent glands. The place where an Alpha would bite to claim me. The thought made my stomach lurch.
"Mom," I said, scrubbing harder, trying to wash away the wrongness. "Am I... am I going to be okay?" My mother was silent for a long moment. When I looked at her through the steam, her eyes were wet.
"You're going to be fine," Elena said finally, her voice thick with emotion she was trying to hide. "I'm going to make sure of it. You're not going to end up like—" She cut herself off again, shaking her head. "Just hurry."
I didn't ask what she meant. I was too scared of the answer. The scent blocker burned when I applied it, a chemical sting that made my eyes water. When I lifted my arm to my nose again, the burnt sugar smell was muted, buried beneath something sharp and artificial.
My mother handed me clothes, loose, covering, nothing that would cling to my new curves or draw attention. A oversized sweater. Baggy sweatpants. My hair scraped back in a severe ponytail.
"Good," Elena said, looking me over with critical eyes. "Good. Now we just need to get to the car without?—"
A knock on the bathroom door. We both froze.
"Elena?" David's voice, muffled through the wood. My stepfather. The man who had given me a home, a family, everything I'd never had. "Is everything alright? I thought I heard?—"
"Everything's fine," my mother called back, her voice bright and brittle. "Ava just had a nightmare. We'll be down for breakfast soon."
A pause. Then: "Alright. The boys are already in the kitchen."
The boys. Mason, Caleb, Ethan, Leo. My stepbrothers—not by blood, but by marriage. I'd lived with them for five years now, ever since my mother married David. They were my family.
They were Alphas.
"We need to go out the back," my mother whispered, her hand gripping my arm tight enough to bruise. "Through the garden. We can get to the car without passing through the kitchen."
"Okay," I whispered back, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. We crept out of the bathroom, through my bedroom, into the hallway. The house was quiet except for distant sounds from the kitchen—the clink of dishes, the murmur of male voices. We were almost to the back stairs when?—
"Ava?" I froze.
Mason stood at the other end of the hallway, a glass of orange juice in his hand, his golden hair catching the morning light. He was nineteen now, tall and broad-shouldered, with honey-brown eyes that had always looked at me with warmth and affection.
Those eyes were different now. His nostrils flared. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the hardwood floor, orange juice splashing across his bare feet, but he didn't seem to notice. His whole body had gone rigid, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.
"Ava," Mason repeated, his voice different—deeper, rougher, something primal bleeding through. He took a step toward me. "You smell—you're?—"
"Mason, stop," my mother commanded, stepping in front of me, her small body a barrier between me and the Alpha advancing down the hallway. "She's fifteen years old. She's a child."
"She's an Omega," Mason breathed, and the word sounded like a prayer on his lips. His honey-brown eyes had gone dark, pupils blown wide, fixed on me like I was the only thing in the universe. "Our Omega."
Footsteps thundered on the stairs. More bodies in the hallway. Caleb appeared first, his massive frame taking up the entire width of the corridor, his ice-blue eyes zeroing in on me with laser focus. A sound escaped his throat—low, guttural, hungry—that made something deep in my stomach clench.
Then Ethan, pushing past Caleb, his usually controlled expression shattered, his green eyes wild, his hands visibly shaking. "The scent," Ethan gasped, his voice cracking. "I could smell it from the kitchen. I thought I was imagining?—"
And Leo, last but not least, appearing at the top of the back stairs, blocking our escape route. His gray eyes were sharp and predatory, his lips curved in a smile that showed too many teeth. "Well, well," Leo said, his voice silky smooth even as his body vibrated with barely contained energy. "Look what finally happened."
I was surrounded. Four Alphas, all of them looking at me like I was something precious and fragile and desperately wanted. Like I was prey. Like I was theirs.
"Stay back," my mother snarled, her voice shaking but fierce. "All of you, stay back. She's not ready for this. She's just a child."
"She's ours," Caleb rumbled, taking another step forward, his ice-blue eyes never leaving my face. "She's been ours since the day you brought her here. We've been waiting?—"
"You've been waiting for a child to present," my mother spat, disgust dripping from every word. "That's sick. That's?—"
"That's nature," Ethan interrupted, his voice steadier now, though his hands still trembled. His green eyes found mine, intense and unwavering. "She was always going to be an Omega. We knew it before she did. We've been protecting her, preparing for this?—"
