I also got something, uh, that might help with my heat. I’ll leave it at that.
I'm not stupid. I know my aunt will try to track me and find me, drag me back and match me with a pack before my heat. I'm only trying to make things as hard as possible for her. If things go my way, well, it's all the better for me.
The parking lot I choose is one of the oldest and smallest of the lots surrounding the park. The camera is an old one attached to the light post in the left corner of the lot, and based on the angle that camera sits, there's no way it catches the entire parking lot. I make sure to park out of its field of vision.
Since it's during the day, and a weekday at that, the park isn't too busy. There's only one other car parked in the same lot as me, and no one is nearby. I climb into the backseat of my car and change into an outfit I pull together from the second-hand clothes. Baggy jeans and a hoodie that totally swallows me up—and as I change, I wonder if these clothes smell at all.
I have a stuffed backpack along with a bag that slings over my shoulder full of things I would need at the cabin. I have cash in my pocket for incidentals once we get out of the city. Soap, shampoo, laundry detergent. That sort of thing.
I wrap my blueand black hair up and tuck it inside an old baseball cap, and then I throw on a pair of sunglasses that hide half my face. I'm not wearing makeup, and before I snuck out of the house I made sure to apply some scent-blocking cream to my neck. Just because I can't smell me doesn't mean others can't. Better safe than sorry.
Before I get out of the car, I pause.
Is this really a good idea? Am I really going to do this? I don't know.
Sadly I don't really have anyone to ask, no one I trust well enough to tell me the truth. No friends and obviously no family. I'm on my own, kind of like how I've been on my own the last ten years.
Oh yeah. Being stuck in the hospital after my parents died, barely surviving the whole ordeal myself, months of physical therapy… none of those things help a young girl keep her friends around. The ones that tried to stick around? Let's just say I didn't make it easy for them, and eventually they got the hint.
I was a kid hurting. I didn't know what to do with myself. How to act. No one has a blueprint, a step by step guide of what you should do after you go through such unimaginable loss. My uncle tried to help, but no offense to him, he was a poor substitute for my own dad. And my aunt? She's the furthest thing from motherly even after all these years.
So I've been a loner since. It's easy for me to shut people out. Honestly I'm surprised the alpha helping me agreed to it. In truth, this alpha owes me nothing. We may have been friends when we were kids, but we're adults now, strangers to each other. I don't know how it's going to go when I meet him in the park.
A tuft of blue hair refuses to stay beneath the baseball cap, and it brings to mind the reaction my aunt had when she saw me, before my family's driver took me to the Omega Garden.
My aunt's blonde eyebrows were so high up on her face I thought they might just pop off. Normally she's never one to show such emotion on her face—leads to wrinkles and all that—but it's clear my choice of hairdo and hair color was not what she thought she'd see when I came down the main staircase all dolled-up and ready to go.
“What on earth did you do?” Her tone was curt, brusque. She held her hands on her hips, her mouth hanging open as she continued to study me. “You were supposed to simply get your hair trimmed and styled, not whatever this is.”
I reached up and touched the ends of my hair. My stylist advised me to start off small. Bleaching black hair and applying color was not an easy feat. To do my whole head well would take multiple appointments, so we settled with color mostly on my ends. “It's just hair dye,” I told her. “It’ll wash out eventually.”
My aunt didn’t address my comment. Instead she studied the dress I chose and said, “And that's what you're going to wear? I know for a fact you have multiple nicer dresses in your closet. Come. We still have some time before you need to go—”
She tried to walk past me, taking hold of my wrist and turning me, as if she was going to drag me up the stairs and change me herself. Like I was a child incapable of making my own decisions.
The offending dress? A simple black number that ended at my knees. It had no sleeves, just two tiny straps over my shoulder. It wasn't revealing or anything, but it also wasn't special. It's not something you wore to a place like the Omega Garden.
“No,” I said, pulling away from her. She wasn't expecting the resistance, so I was able to easily get my wrist out of her grasp. “I like this dress, and I like my hair. This is how I want to go.”
My aunt didn't even know that most omegas chose to get ready at the Omega Garden. If she did know that, she'd realize Iwas doing this just to get under her skin. It was a fun hobby of mine.
The way my aunt looked at me after that told me everything: I was a disappointment. I was not the perfect omega.
To that I'd sayduh. I wasn't trying to be the perfect little omega on the hunt for a pack of alpha suitors.
I wanted that money, or rather I didn't want my aunt to get anything else out of my family.
The way she studied me again, I could tell she was losing patience with me. With her nose upturned, she said, “Well, at least you’re still pretty. And you're a Dryers. That alone should bring you multiple matches at every one of these mixers. Maybe I should call Delilah and see just what you get up to when you're there. I always wonder if it's a mistake sending you there by yourself. I know you don't want to believe it, but every omega needs help. Sometimes you don't know what's good for you.”
Such a condescending thing to say. It aggravated something inside of me, made me so furious I momentarily saw red. The things my aunt said on a near daily basis could go down in history as the worst things a guardian could possibly say.
I told her, “Delilah says not every mixer is a winner. Sometimes you have to go through multiple to find the right fit.” It's something she says every time, and every time I tended to tune her out, mostly because I never really cared. I would never admit it out loud, but even before I knew about this will, it was kind of a game to me.
“And I’m sure whoever started these things all those years ago felt obligated to say that,” my aunt dismissively waved off what I said. “If we’re honest, it shouldn’t be rocket science to match unmated omegas and alphas.”
“Believe it or not, not every omega is ready to hop right in with the first pack of alphas they find attractive,” I said dryly. Ittook everything in me to not get a snippy tone right back with her. “There’s more to life than attraction, Aunt Cecilia.”
The tight smile she gave me right then informed me she was finished with this conversation, and that she’d never agree with me or anything I thought. Why would she? I was just a silly little omega who didn’t know what was good for her. It’s why I needed her so-called guidance.
