Before the particular education of learning that some Alphas look at an Omega and see a person, and some look at an Omega and see a resource they haven't finished using yet.
Before all of that, she was pretty decent company.
"Go," Elowen says warmly. "Meet mysterious masked Alphas. Win large sums of money. See what it feels like to be Mila Castellanos when she isn't actively on fire. And bring the lucky coin."
"The coin is in my purse," I confirm.
"Then you're fully equipped."
I look at the mirror one final time.
The gown catches the apartment light differently at this angle—the gold threads in the seams catching and releasing in those small, glimmering flashes I noticed earlier, and the emerald panels have depth at this distance that they don't have up close. The mask is on the vanity where I set it; I pick it up and hold it—black lace and gold filigree, a delicate thing, the kind that covers the top half of a face and changes it completely while leaving the mouth free. Leaves a person recognizable to themselves and unreadable to everyone else.
Which, for tonight, is exactly the point.
I move toward Elowen, and she steps back automatically before realizing what I'm doing—and then I have my arms around her, which is a thing I do rarely enough that it constitutes an event.
She makes a sound.
"Oh my GOD." She freezes for approximately half a second before her arms come up and she squeezes back. "I said be a new person but I did not authorize a woman I've never met—AHH. I'm being hugged by the bestie who hates hugs."
I laugh into her shoulder. Her scent is close now—peonies and lavender, warm and clean, and underneath my own perfumed signature the honey-vanilla is present in a way it only gets in moments that feel genuinely good. Elowen smells like safety and I don't say that because there aren't words for it that don't sound excessive, but it's true.
"I don't hate hugs," I say.
She pulls back to look at me. "Excuse me."
"I don't hate them. I'm just—" I take a breath. The right way to say this, which is the honest way rather than the deflection way. "I'm not used to them. Affection like this wasn't part of the house I grew up in. It wasn't—demonstrated, the way it is in some families. And my pack—" I stop.
Elowen is watching me with the particular quality of attention she gives when she has decided not to fill a silence before it's ready.
"Touch with them was conditional," I say, finally. "It happened when emotions were running high—after an argument, or—" I gesture vaguely at the space where the word for the other thing would go. "The kind of touch that comes with an agenda attached to it. Never just—this."
Just this.
Just two people in an apartment above a florist shop in a small town in March, one of them in an emerald gown about to go to a masquerade ball, one of them in wine-colored silk having made sure every detail is exactly right—and a hug, freely given, no agenda, no aftermath.
"We're going to work on that," Elowen says quietly. No fanfare. Just a statement of intent.
"I know you will," I tell her. "Whether I cooperate or not."
"The fact that you know that is personal growth." She squeezes my arm once and then steps back because she is Elowen and she understands when a moment has been fully spent. "Okay. Your ride's downstairs." She checks her phone. "They're two minutes out."
"Train station is five minutes from the venue," I say, already moving toward the door, reaching for my clutch and the invitation folded inside. "Last one's just after midnight. I won't stay more than an hour."
"Mhm."
"I'm serious. In, observe, maybe talk to a few people, out. One hour."
"Absolutely." She is nodding with a great deal of enthusiasm and the exact expression of someone who has already decided she will be receiving a very different story later tonight. "One hour. Very sensible. If for any reason the sensible one-hour plan becomes a different plan, I'm one call away. And I want a text when you're home, I'm not even negotiating on that."
"You'll get the text."
"Thank you."
I lean over to the side table where my jacket is folded and my purse sits. The coin is in my purse, just where I put it—I can feel the weight of it before I even slip my fingers in. I touch it carefully, hearing the soft sound it makes settling against the lining, and something about the solid familiarity of it, the heft of it in a small bag on my wrist, settles something in my chest.
Scottish and Chinese and old.
