I dumped Eva off my lap and onto the chaise, or at least I tried to, the omega sliding off and landing on her ass as I stood, scowling at her.
What’s wrong?
What’s wrong is that this little crush of Indi’s wasn’t fucking one-sided, and I was being used as some kind of pathetic proxy.
Andno onewas going to use me.
“If you think Indi smells so good, maybe you should go fuck him,” I snapped, my words harsh, but I didn’t care.
Suddenly, the air in the club felt oppressively warm. The scents and noises overwhelming. I turned on my heel and walked quickly away from the bathrooms, dodging patrons on my path to the front door.
“Joon, wait!” Eva shouted after me, but there was no way in hell I was stopping.
I was going the fuck home.
Now.
I pulled my phone out, typing in the details to grab a rideshare. Thank fuck a bunch of them were right in the area, so I wouldn’t have to wait long to make my escape.
All I wanted was to wash off her stupid fucking scent and crawl into my nest so that I could pretend she didn’t exist.
Or at the very least, that she didn’t want my alpha.
God, I’m such a fucking idiot.
It didn’t take longfor me to find the club. A couple of quick searches spit out the address once I was in the right neighborhood.
Surely, that isn’t safe?
An alpha-free club made sense in theory, but, in practice… they were asking for trouble. Inviting the sort of alphas that wanted to take advantage of the hazy decision-making that came with alcohol and being in a so-called 'safe space.'
I pulled the cracked glass door of the pub across the street open, my nose turning up at the overpowering smell of alpha and stale beer.
Certainly, there had been worse dives than this, the bar in the basement of our university student hub with its nicotine-stained walls—predating laws prohibiting smoking inside—coming to mind. But this? It was a close second.
Too close.
The acrylic faux wood of the table tops was chipped badly enough that I could see the pressboard beneath, and the crackedfloor tiles invited deep grooves of black dirt that made my skin crawl.
Filthy, and not just because it was shabby and run down in general, but because it was clearly unkempt as well.
Nowhere near my standards for a place I'd willingly choose to spend my time. But these were extenuating circumstances. I needed a place to wait for Eva to emerge from the club, and this was the only thing open. A thought that I seemed to share with the other alphas in the room, drinking flat beer from smudged glasses and crowding around a dinged-up pool table near the back of the sullied room.
I'd expected to find the bar full of half-rutted singles with their faces pressed up against the glass, trying to get a glimpse of an unbonded omega to orchestrate a late-night meet-cute. Not every pack was as affluent as ours, and the fees that came with being a member at a heat facility like the Omega's Lust or a matching service like All Packed Up were often out of reach, even with combined resources.
A problem that, thanks to me, my pack would never experience.
Well, thanks to me… and Charlie.
We even helped FinCorp cut a deal with All Packed Up to license ScentCX to them to improve their algorithmic matching. When we started, it was becauseI’d wanted to meet someone that way, to take the fuss and frustration out of the process as much as possible.
Going through the tedious steps of meeting someone and getting to know them enough to let me fuck them was such ahassle. It was easier to stick to heat hotels, since they required regular sexual health checkups to maintain membership; it entirely eliminated the need for a lot of uncomfortable conversations.
Besides, don’t get me started onscent cards. Disgusting, demeaning, and without the benefit of even being entirely accurate. Being forced to handle what was effectively an omega’s pap smear rubbed onto highly porous paper was about the least romantic thing I could imagine.
And that was before I considered how they made them for alphas.
Absolutelynot.
