The door clicks shut. I brace for the question.
Are you going to invest, Esme?
It doesn’t come. Instead, he walks me all the way to the couch in the compact suite and gently presses me down into it.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he says. His voice is low, faintly cultured.
Now that I consider it, nothing in his outward demeanor projects the aggression I sense when he touches me. The removal of his hand severed the link, and all I get now is a cold, blank slate.
Interesting.
He turns, grabs a data tablet from a dock in the wall, uses his thumb print to open it, and takes a seat at the tiny table beneath the fake viewport showing a looping image of space.
Am I dismissed?
Yes, I think I am.
The rejection cuts deeper and sharper than I expect, maybe because I’m already wallowing in my failure as an omega. I’ve been with many alphas. It’s part of being deployed. I enjoy the sex. Who wouldn’t? Controllers are universally skilled when it comes to tending an omega’s needs, hardwired to wring pleasure from us until our bodies sing.
But I’m twenty-eight, and no one has ever claimed me.
Not even a close call.
The hope is always there during the transit time for operations, which can take anywhere from a day to several weeks. Just enough time to form a temporary bond before the bullets started to fly.
Forced heats.
I wish I’d never heard of them, wish I didn’t know it was a thing that happened between alphas and omegas as they while away the hours spent in transit. Controllers don’t always suggest it, though, and lately, I’ve started asking for it myself. My desperation is not attractive. Yet I keep hoping one of them will finally bite me—mark me—during the frenzy of the moment, because if an alpha bites an omega, even during a forced heat, it can forge a life bond.
It happens all the time. Certainly not approved, and definitely frowned upon, but when heat, fake or otherwise, is upon you, rules and obligations to the Empire go out the window.
When I first joined the healer ranks, I was the youngest. Now, I’m one of the oldest. Not because omegas have fallen. Warrarely claims our lives, although it does happen. But more that they exit stage left when they’re claimed as a mate. No longer allocated on the whim of a recruiter, they stay with the same alpha during deployment, until pregnancy.
I want that. A bond for life. A partner and a real connection I can claim as my own. Along with a child, one day, to nurture and love.
I’m like a cat in heat, growing more restless with every operation. I know no shame once they touch me. I beg and plead, first to be forced… and then to be marked.
None of them do.
Worse, if they won’t, I try to bite them, to forcethem.
My behavior makes me deeply uneasy once the moment has passed. I’m better than this.
Maybe it’s my healer mix. I’m not a pure physical healer, but a blend of mind, body, and spirit healer.
Am I broken? A faulty omega, doomed to be passed over, never quite enough to tempt an alpha to claim.
As I stare at the overly perfect alpha sat across from me, completely absorbed in his data tablet, I believe that I am.
I burst into tears.
Chapter Two
Esme
His head snaps up.
“What the fuck?” he mutters, tossing the data tablet aside with a scowl and surging from his seat.
