After the men made themselves comfortable, she and her mother followed suit. Mother took up her needlepoint, but Naya stayed still, hands knotted in her lap.
Crispin had chosen the seat next to her. She could smell his warm, outdoorsy scent—like sunshine on the grass. She found the smell very pleasant. He was pleasant.
Naya had met Crispin when she was just sixteen while he was on leave from his Administration Army duties. All alphas, with their aggressive tendencies and well-documented issues with self-control, had to serve thirty years in the military. Given their lifespan was double that of beta breeds or drone humans, the requirement for alphas to practice managing instinctive impulses while in service protecting the 12 Sectors benefited society as a whole and cost them little besides their time.
Crispin was much older than Naya, but most of his peers still considered him young and immature, and incredibly lucky to have snagged the attention of an omega breeder from Sector Five.
After revealing her willingness to consider him as her mate, Crispin told her it was the first time his father had ever admitted being proud of him.
Looking up from her hands, Naya only half-listened to her mother's conversation with Corre. Mother shared news of who’d accepted invitations to the final bonding ceremony. The impressive list of acquaintances, business associates, friends, and family had grown so long they would have to use the grand hall in her father's Scribe House to accommodate them all.
Instead of watching Naya's mother as she spoke, Crispin's father watched her. His eyes traveled over her, lifting from the neckline of her wrap dress to her mouth, then her eyes in a way that made her look at Crispin to see if he saw.
He did not, attentive instead to the human drones entering the room with food.
Naya didn't know if Alpha Corre found her wanting or if the tightening of his brow when he observed her meant something else. He was her father's Second at the sector Scribe House. While he’d met with Father in their home for business many times before, she rarely encountered him. He conferenced on the second floor of the house in the rooms her father had claimed for his own. None of the family spent time on that floor. It was an alpha-only domain.
She had dipped her head to him in acknowledgment in the hallways and at community dinners her mother required her to attend, but they hadn't interacted otherwise.
After they’d mated and married, Crispin would move Naya into their own home while he took a job at the Scribe House in Sector 8. Once they were away from both their fathers, he would work his way up to becoming a Master. At home, Naya would set up their home and establish her position in their new neighborhood. They would have their own lives.
"That would be wonderful, don't you think, dear one?" Mother asked, catching Naya's attention.
She glanced back and forth between her mother and Crispin, who was lifting a berry pastry to his mouth.
Making a rough sound at the back of her throat that showed her displeasure at Naya's drifting, her Mother repeated, "That would be wonderful if Alpha Corre and Crispin stay here at the house while you get ready for the mating. That way Crispin will be available at all times, and Corre can be here to assist us in preparing for the marriage ceremony after. Don't you think, my dear?"
Naya hoped she hadn't blanched at the idea. She hoped no one could tell what she was feeling.
"You smell near your time, sweet child," Corre said. It was not a fatherly comment, although his casual posture made it seem as if he’d meant it as one. No one should have been commenting on her smell in her mother's sitting room. "Isn't her perfume divine, Crispin?"
Crispin nodded. "As I have told you, Naya, you grow more irresistible every day. I shouldn't want to be across town in a different sector when your body decides it is ready for me."
Naya kept her eyes lowered. Her cycle would make her want Crispin. His touch. His body. On hers and in hers. The doctor’s notes and her own schooling had explained it all in clear black and white lines that looked terribly intimate, messy, and vulgar.
The hormonal change would rob her of all her dignity and will.
Naya couldn't wrap her mind around feeling any of it, but she'd seen it happen to her sister Phee two years ago at her bonding ceremony. They'd been in the dining room with her intended, Grayson Swift, two of his brothers, and the family. Phee's face and upper chest had melted to pink before she moaned, biting her bottom lip bloody. Clutching her waist, Phee had started to crumple to the floor, flushed with perspiration and sudden arousal.
Naya, two years younger, had smelled the difference in her sister's pheromones, a shockingly rich sweetness overshadowing every other scent in the room.
Chaos had exploded around them, but the families’ trusted friends and her brothers held back Swift's siblings, whose pupils grew giant in awareness of the ready omega breeder in the room. As if it bled from his face, composure left him, inner animal taking over as he entered a mating rut.
Naya remembered feeling a fascinated dread watching the change take over Swift from his head to his toes.
Father had carried Phee out, Swift tailing them like she was bait. Struggling in his arms, lost to the powerful instinctual onslaught, Phee had fought as she cried, reaching toward all the available alphas, not just her intended.
Naya had felt so ashamed for her.
But that would happen to her as well. Biology would take over, and there was no knowing how she might act, or what she might do under the power of her first estrus.
In contrast to this animalistic drive was all this civilized ceremony. Family to protect her. Crispin at hand as her choice. Drones and beta servants at the ready to see to their needs. And everyone there to witness her loss of self-discipline and every shred of self-respect.
She dreaded it.
"Yes. That would be nice, I'm sure," Naya replied reflexively. What else was there to say? No one wanted to hear her honest thoughts. "I think my brothers will also be here in a day or two. I can't wait for you to meet them. It will be nice to have them in the house again. Wherever shall we put all these guests, Mother?"
"We always make room for friends and family." Mother smiled, pleased by Naya's compliance. When Mother glanced toward Alpha Corre, Naya thought she saw her blush a little. How odd.
