I held up my hand, cutting her off, “I know this already. You told me this last month when my heat put me in the infirmary.”
Normally my heats were like a really bad fever—I was laid out in bed and horny as all get out. But the suppressants kept it from being truly painful. Last month, however, it was the worst pain that I had ever felt. I couldn’t keep anything down and had ended up passing out in the bathroom. Tibby had had no other choice but to call the dorm mother. I had spent a week on fluids in the infirmary and the doctor’s diagnosis was that I was becoming immune to most suppressants.
“Well if you know, then you really need to start seriously looking through our scent books. It’s not healthy to let you go on like this.” Carolyn tapped her pen on her desk as she looked me up and down, taking in my unkempt appearance complete with a baggy sweatshirt and leggings.
“I can’t Carolyn, you know that.” I mutter under my breath and pull my thin legs up to my chest as if to shield myself from her perusal.
“You always say that, sweetheart, but you never really tell me why. You are such a promising young woman who would do really well with a solid pack.”
“I can’t. I’m waiting.”
“For what? What are you waiting for Eloise?” Carolyn leans across her desk and takes my hand in hers, her manicured fingers lightly scratching the inside of my wrist.
I just shake my head and refuse to answer, my mind filled with green eyes and the smell of citrus. Finally Carolyn sighs and leans back in her desk chair, rubbing a hand over her face. I felt bad that I was this much trouble for her.
“We will talk more after the Winter Ballet this weekend—there are going to have to be some changes, Eloise. This can’t go on forever or you will wither away and I really don’t want to see that for you.”
I knew Carolyn was right. Most Omegas needed some kind of attachment to stay healthy, we thrived on attention and quality relationships—mostly of the romantic or sexual nature. Unbonded omegas eventually would need to bond with an alpha (or alphas) or sign up for heat-services which helped with their sexual nature but not with the emotional component that was so important to omegas. I couldn’t imagine letting strangers help me through my heat, it made me nauseous to even think about it.
Most unbonded omegas died young, their bodies buckling under the sheer force of their heats. I didn’t want that to be my future. But I had promised.
Wait for me Ellie. I’ll come back for you.
His words echoed in my mind again. He was everything to me, I couldn’t betray him. I would wait for him. He would come back, I had to cling to that even though my body was already starting to crumble out of my control. Besides, it wasn’t like any of the alpha packs I had met so far had worked out. Just the thought of my past experiences with alphas was enough to make me shudder.
3
I was running late, as usual. I pulled into the valet’s lane and hopped out of my BMW, throwing the keys to the valet who was waiting to take my car.
“Good evening Mr. Zhao, come to see the ballet?” The skinny blond kid who caught my keys asked as he rounded my car to get into the open car door.
“Yeah I figured I would see it, I heard rumors that it’s a good year for it…” I searched my memory for his name from the last time I’d attended the ballet, “Sean.”
The kid seemed tickled pink that I had remembered his name, “Well you enjoy yourself sir. I’ll take good care of your car.”
The kid got into my car and whipped out of the valet lane with only a minor chirp of my car’s tires. Most of the teenage valets acted like Evel Knievel when driving the fancy cars that came through the theater’s valet service. I made a mental note to tip him extra on my way out and headed for the box office.
A young woman sat behind the ticket window, looking thoroughly bored as she flipped through a magazine but when she looked up and caught sight of me she practically threw the magazine away. I caught the title of the magazine and snorted,Forbes, had Leon made the cover again?
“Mr. Zhao!” The woman greeted me brightly as she sat up straight, “How wonderful to see you—will you be in your usual box tonight?”
I chuckled at her sudden change in attitude, “No not tonight. I’d like a seat in the front row if you don’t mind.”
As she hurried to print a ticket for me my mind wandered to the reason I was even at the ballet tonight—we usually avoided the SFOFA Winter Ballet (at Leon’s insistence). But the phone call I had received that morning had intrigued me.
“Eric, how are you doing?” Carolyn Smith’s voice filtered through the speaker phone on my desk. I normally wouldn’t take calls during my lunch hour but Carolyn was a part of a pack that Leon and I had gone to university with and it would be rude of me to ignore her calls.
“Just fine Carolyn, how are Oliver, Peter and Samuel?” Oliver and Peter were the alphas in her pack and Samuel was their omega.
“Just fine thank you, we are just super busy with the babies right now.” They had boy-girl twins who had been born at the beginning of the year. They’d plastered the babies all over their social media so I was very familiar with them.
“Good, good,” I was absentmindedly as I refreshing my email as I was waiting for a few edited contracts to come in from the law office downstairs and I had a few meetings that I was already mentally preparing for in my head, “No offense Carolyn, I love catching up with you, but why are you calling me today?”
Carolyn huffed a laugh over the line, “You always get to the point Eric Zhao. You are almost as abrupt as Leon.”
I gave an obligatory chuckle, but waited for her answer.
“Look I know you guys aren’t looking for an omega but there’s this young lady at SFOFA—”
