"If I find an Omega and open a bar," the pint man says, to nobody specific, in the tone of a man who is generating arguments rather than making points, "I'd want one that actually does what she's told."
Nobody responds. Priya at the far end of the bar finds something to arrange. Jamie has retreated to the floor.
"Could even be worth it to this one," he continues, in the direction of my back because I'm at the service end now checking the stock. "The city one said he'd take you as his Omega—" he makes a sound that is not really a laugh. "What, you think you'd actually last?"
I keep working.
Bars at 3 AM. The rule is simple: they want a reaction and the best response is none at all. Let them run out of material. This man is going to run out of material.
Elvin, however, has principles and considerably less patience than me.
"You've been drinking her pints for the last ninety minutes," Elvin says, with the exact level of calm that makes the observation land worse than any actual confrontation would. "Without complaint, until just now. So I'm not sure what that argument is actually based on."
The man at the corner of the bar—the one who'd been having the quieter conversation about bar regulations—adds, "If you're going to start something, take it outside. Nobody here is interested and the bar doesn't need to close early because of one person's decision-making."
I hear the stool scrape.
"You calling me a problem?" The pint man's voice has gone from loud to specific, which is the register that means the ambient aggression has found a target. "Skinny little—what are you even going to do?"
"I'm going to finish my drink," the other man says, with the unhurried composure of someone who has assessed the situation and found the other party insufficient. "And I'd suggest you do the same."
"I'll do what I want." The pint man's scent has crossed fully into the sour-dominant territory now—that rank, acidic Alpha aggression that fills a room faster than most scents, cuttingthrough the collective bar smell of hops and spirits and bodies and landing in my receptors as a clear signal. Danger-adjacent. Unregulated.
"All you two have been doing," he announces to the general bar, "is flirting with the Omega because you think?—"
I'm at the back of the bar by then, broom in one hand, dustpan in the other, clearing the spilled glass from forty minutes ago that's been waiting for a lull. The glass had come off a table in the general rowdiness of the game's final minutes—nothing dramatic, just someone's elbow and a pint that didn't survive the encounter—and I'd put it aside with the intention of coming back, and now I'm back, crouched, doing the sweep.
The noise level means I'm catching about half the conversation from this position, which is fine. I've heard variations of this argument more times than I can count. It runs out of steam eventually.
The specific timbre of the pint man's voice escalates.
Not the words—just the pitch. The way certain sounds cut through ambient noise by virtue of frequency rather than volume.
"Mila—" Elvin, sharp, two syllables, the register of someone who has run out of diplomatic options.
"Move!"
I lift my head.
The fist is already coming straight to my face..
CHAPTER 13
On His Knees
~MILA~
I don't get the chance to tense.
The fist is close enough that I can see the knuckles, the particular whitening of skin over bone that happens when a hand has committed to its trajectory, and then two things happen simultaneously: a hand shoots past me from behind and catches the incoming arm mid-swing, and another arm comes around my waist and hauls me backward into something solid.
Solid is an understatement.
The structure behind me is the kind that suggests the person it belongs to was assembled with a specific purpose—dense and warm and built in the way of someone who has spent considerable time in situations that required being built that way. My back is against a chest that doesn't move when I land against it, which is either physics or a person who has decided they're not moving and means it.
And then the scent hits.
It arrives fast, the way things arrive when they're very close—not the gradual build of a scent crossing a room but theimmediate, surrounding quality of something that has decided to be everywhere at once. Bourbon underneath everything, the good kind, the aged variety with the vanilla-oak character that comes from time in charred barrels rather than flavoring. Citrus peel above it—specifically orange, bright and slightly bitter at the edge, the zest rather than the juice, the same distinction that exists in my own lime note. And threading through both: something smoky but sweet, like a fire made from good wood rather than anything accelerated, the kind of warmth that exists at the base of certain Alpha signatures when the designation is particularly strong.
