Page 11 of My Begrudging Scent Matches

“Because I–I wasn’t supposed to have one,” Alice whines between little sobs. She’s being dramatic, but she can’t help it. It feels like the world is falling apart around her. “I didn’t choose this. What if I wanted to be single forever?”

“Oh, Al,” Olivia sighs. She’s always shown sympathy and tentative support to Alice’s choice to hide being an Omega—Olivia waited until she was twenty-seven before settling down with an Omega. But as an Alpha, Olivia had the privilege of not needing someone to help her through a heat. She wasn’t a certifiable leach on the people around her, not like Alice who was certain she’d have to be. “You never want to be with someone? Won’t you be lonely?”

“No, you’re right, it’s just that I—” Alice hiccups. “I’m not ready for a relationship. I sort of like my job, but I don’t want to work there forever. I don’t know what I want, or who, and it feels like the decisions are being taken from me! I’m not ready.”

“You may never be fully ready,” Olivia agrees, and it stings more than Alice would like to admit. “How could anyone be? Bonding with someone is incredibly permanent, nearly every part of your life changes. You’ll never be fully prepared for all the ways that things will be different, but the point of having a pack is having someone, or multiple someones, who are there to navigate that with you. And mating with them is your choice. It can’t just be one-sided.”

Alice sniffles and remembers Olivia’s bonding celebration, when she and her mate Johnathan beamed with love and excitement. They aren’t scent matches, but they love each other fiercely. Their relationship is strong because they chose each other and keep choosing each other.

“But a scent match?” Olivia lets out a huge breath. “That’s not something you can just ignore, Al.”

Alice doesn’t deny this while she tries to stop the influx of tears sliding down her cheeks, chin, and neck. Scent matches are the things of fairy tales. Of Alice’s four siblings and parents, not one of them is bonded to a scent match.

“Have you told Mom?”

“No, are you kidding? Please do not tell Mom about this,” Alice pleads. “I haven’t told anyone. I wouldn’t even let him talk to me. I just fled. Literally.”

“You work with him? Please say it’s not your boss.”

“No, oh my God.” Leave it to Olivia to show Alice the one silver lining: her scent match isn’t Logan. “Not my boss. Just the guy who points out every week that I can’t write something without misusing a comma.”

“Him? What’s his name again? Carter?”

“Caleb.” There would be no way to permanently avoid him, not unless Alice quit her job and moved out of the city. But even then, he might still find a way to track her down.

Seems like the type.

“Does he want to be with you?” Olivia asks.

Alice hadn’t considered the possibility that he didn’t want to explore this, whatever this is. But of course, he could feel just as overwhelmed and out of control as she did. She’d always just assumed that all Alphas wanted to settle down if they had the opportunity. Unless he already has. . .

“I don’t even know if he’s single, Olivia, he could have a pack already!”

Homewrecker, homewrecker, homewrecker glides across the imaginary jumbotron in her brain, flashing red.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Olivia soothes. “I know plenty of packs that have added members. It’s rare, but I have a colleague with two Omegas in his.”

The situation increases in potential mess and chaos the more Alice thinks about it. Committing to even one person feels like a leap, much less trying to join an already loving, committed pack when they didn’t ask for her.

She’s never even had a serious boyfriend, just a series of flings and hookups that ended with her being the weak link and getting out first before anyone could get too attached.

“What if I ignore it? It’s not like we’re bonded, it won’t hurt me.”

Olivia is quiet, which is usually a sign that she’s trying to think through a reasonable way to say something Alice won’t want to hear. Alice tenses in preparation.

“I can’t speak to how you’d feel because I’ve never had a scent match. I don’t know what that does to a person.” There’s a huge but coming, Alice can practically taste it. “But have you made a plan for your first heat yet?”

“What does my heat have to do with this?” Alice grumbles.

“Alice!”

“Liv, I know. I’m going to call a clinic. Work is just busy right now, I can’t take a week off out of nowhere.”

Alice drapes her damp towels on the rack and pulls on a loose night dress while she waits for her sister to chastise her, to tell her how reckless she’s being. How she can’t run away from her fate. Not for much longer, and certainly not forever.

Instead, Olivia lets out a long sigh through the line. “I think you should talk to him. Have a conversation. I’m not telling you to bond with the guy, just—what I think you need to do is open your heart a little bit.”

Alice combs curl cream through her hair with her fingers and forces her gaze in the mirror to her face, taking in her puffy cheeks from crying and the dark undereye circles that never seem to lighten. Her skin is almost sallow, she thinks, sickly from the cocktail of medications and pushing herself too hard. But what other choice does she have?

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