There were five of them on theWindchaser, not counting the captain. Big men, all of them, with broad shoulders and that particular way of moving that alphas had—like they owned whatever space they occupied. They'd noticed me from the first day. Not because they knew what I was, the blockers were working then, masking my scent completely, but because I was small and soft and didn't belong here.
Alphas always noticed things that didn't belong. Most of them had lost interest when I proved I could work and didn't respond to their posturing. But one of them?—
"Morning, little mouse."
I didn't look up from my nets. Didn't react at all, even though my skin was crawling.
Cort stepped into my peripheral vision, his shadow falling across my work. He was the biggest of the alphas, built like a mountain, with small mean eyes and a smile that never reached them. He'd been watching me for days now. Getting closer. Testing.
"Quiet thing, aren't you?" He crouched down, putting himself at my eye level. His scent washed over me, aggressive alpha musk, tinged with something I didn't want to examine too closely. "You know, I've been trying to figure you out."
I kept my eyes on the net. Kept my hands steady.Don't react. Don't give him anything.
"The others think you're just strange," he continued. "Beta with bad glands, maybe. Chemical problem." He leaned closer, and I could feel the heat of him, could smell the fish and sweat on his skin. "But I don't think so. I think you're hiding something."
My heart was pounding so hard I was sure he could hear it. Could he smell my fear? Alphas could sense that, couldn't they? Fear and arousal and submission, all the things omegas were supposed to feel.
"I'm just trying to do my job," I said, keeping my voice flat.
"Hmm." He reached out and tugged a strand of hair that had escaped my cap. I flinched before I could stop myself. His smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Jumpy too. Like a little rabbit."
"Cort!" The captain's voice rang out across the deck. "Get your ass up here, we've got a tangle in the main line!"
Cort's jaw tightened, but he stood. "Later, little mouse," he said, and walked away.
I didn't move for a long moment. My hands were shaking. The needle I'd been using to mend the net had pricked my finger at some point, and a bead of blood welled up, bright red against my skin.
Three more weeks, I told myself.Three more weeks until we reach the next port. You can survive three more weeks.
Even as I thought it, I knew it was getting harder. The blockers were failing. My scent was starting to leak through, not enough for most of them to identify, but enough to make me smelldifferent. Sweet, one of the betas had muttered yesterday, giving me a strange look.
Sweet. Like fruit ripening. Like prey. I tied off the last knot in the net and stood, wiping my bleeding finger on my trousers. The sun was climbing higher now, and the deck was getting crowded. Too many bodies, too many eyes. I needed space. I needed air.
I needed the water. The sea had always been my sanctuary.
Growing up on the island, I'd spent every moment I could in the waves. Swimming, diving, floating on my back and staring up at the sky. The water didn't care that I was omega. It didn't try to claim me or control me or sell me to the highest bidder. It just held me, weightless and free, and let me pretend I was something other than what I was.
My mother used to say I was born in the wrong body.You should have been a fish, she'd laugh, watching me swim out past where the other children dared to go.Or a seal. Something that belongs to the sea.
She stopped laughing when I presented as omega at fourteen. After that, everything changed. I wasn't allowed to swim anymore—too dangerous, too exposed, what if someone saw me? I wasn't allowed to leave the house without a chaperone.Wasn't allowed to speak to alphas, or look at them, or do anything that might attract their attention.
I was valuable now, you see. Precious. Rare.
I wassellable.
The memory surfaced before I could stop it—my father's study, the smell of pipe smoke and old paper. A man I'd never seen before, twice my age at least, with grey at his temples and cold assessing eyes. He looked at me the way you'd look at a horse you were considering buying. Checked my teeth, my hands, the width of my hips.
"She'll do," he said. "I'll take her when she turns eighteen."
My father shook his hand. Smiled. "Pleasure doing business with you."
I stood there in my good dress, the one my mother had made me wear for the occasion, and felt something inside me turn to ice. I was sixteen years old, and I had just been sold to a stranger like a broodmare at auction.
I ran two weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Stole money from my father's desk, clothes from my brother's room, and slipped out in the middle of the night. I'd made it to the coast by dawn, and by noon, I was on a ship heading anywhere that wasn't home.
That was eight months ago. Eight months of running, hiding, working jobs that no omega should ever have to work. Eight months of pretending to be something I wasn't, all to avoid being turned into something I refused to become.
A possession. A prize. A broodmare for some alpha who'd paid for the privilege.
