He pinches the bridge of his nose, but he is also smiling — the millimeter Rémi smile, the one I have to be paying attention for or it slides past unmarked — and he pads across the kitchen toward us in his bare feet. “What is she up to that involves being kidnapped?”
“I am right here, you know.”
Three men ignore me.
“Job-hunting,” Matteo informs Rémi over his shoulder. “It is going horribly.”
“It is not THAT bad.” I jab my pen at the closest flyer. “Look. Look at this one. Maid position. Local. Hourly.”
“Sex trafficking,” all three of them say in unison.
I freeze.
“… Excuse me?”
I jab at a second flyer. A bright red one with a stock-photo woman in a too-tight uniform. “Okay. Female firefighter recruitment.”
“Cosplay sex trafficking,” the chorus chimes.
“WHAT.”
“It is, Pinky.” Matteo, very serious. “There is not a fire station within forty miles. Where do you think she is firefighting?”
“You three are unhinged.” I scrabble for a different one, slap it down. “This one. This one. Cafe staff. Off-campus. Five minutes’ walk. You cannot — you absolutely cannot tell me a cafe is sex trafficking.”
There is a long, telling beat.
“The Omegas who serve at that place,” Rémi says, mildly, in the same tone you would use to discuss the weather, “generallydo not last more than a week. There has been a campus advisory out about it for a year and a half. It is trafficking.”
“OH MY GOD.”
I throw the pen down. I throw my hands up. I drop my head into both of them in front of three Alphas in a kitchen at nine in the morning and emit a small, pure, professionally embarrassed wail into my own palms.
FUCK!
“Fuck!” Out loud, this time, scrubbed of any composure. “Fuck. I need a job. I need a jobnow.I cannot borrow Matteo’s phone forever, I have three pairs of underwear to my name, I have barely any actual female clothing in this country so I am going to start looking like one of the lads by Wednesday, and I have to buy a new set of pads.”
Jude’s expression does a small, neutral thing.
“… Pads,” he says, very carefully, “as in.”
I blink up at him. The flush hits me a beat behind comprehension, because I am, in this kitchen, surrounded by men, in a borrowed shirt and reading glasses with my legs crossed on the marble like an indecisive cat.
“Oh — oh, my God,goaliepads.” I wave my hand frantically. “Goalie pads. Hockey pads. The ones I strap to my legs and use to terrify wingers. Not, ah — notpadspads. I am an Omega, gentlemen. We do not get periods. We get Heats.”
“Ah.” Jude nods. Civil. Adult. The exact face a four-time-Eagle-Scout would make. “Carry on.”
“Though I do have to say,” I add, tipping my head, “the fact that you are this fluent in the vocabulary of menstrual products as a man is, frankly, a level-up on the curve. Color me impressed.”
Jude’s mouth tilts.
“He has four sisters,” Matteo announces, like a man delivering a press release. “Four. All Omega-presenting exceptthe youngest. He has been buying tampons in bulk for ten years. The man could write a thesis. He is, in this respect, more qualified than most Alphas I know, and that bar was already lying on the floor.”
“Four sisters,” I repeat.
Jude shrugs, easy. “Four.”
Filing that. Filing all of that. The eldest of four. Of course he is.
