Page 7 of My Begrudging Scent Matches

Stretching her hands over her head, she looks around at the empty desks and the vacant private offices with their automatic lights long clicked off.

Her body isn’t made for this. She’s weary in her bones, even her spine is tired from pushing too far and on so many meds blocking her heat cycles. She needs to get home and shower then snuggle into a bundle of her favorite blankets with no concern if anyone will smell her perfuming for the rest of the night.

Her computer pings with a Slack message just as she’s fantasizing about calling in sick to sleep in.

Caleb Everett

Just received your memo and report.

The screen shows that he is typing, then stops typing. No message comes through.

Alice Walton

Thanks. Please review it tomorrow morning if you can. Enjoy your night.

His reply is immediate.

Caleb Everett

Sure.

Are you still in the office?

Alice debates replying to the message when a third comes in.

Caleb Everett

Did Logan ask you to stay late? You shouldn’t be there later than 5:30 if he’s not.

Alice Walton

Just wrapping up. See you tomorrow.

Alice watches the chat, waiting for a response and wondering what the hell is wrong with him. Plenty of people work past five! Well, maybe not plenty, but probably some. Depending on the department. Either way, who is he, an overtime cop? She’s salaried, so it’s not like she’ll get more money for her extra efforts.

Caleb starts and stops typing four different times before his account goes offline.

Alice heaves a sigh and shuts her laptop. She won’t bring it home, it would be too tempting to do more work in the hopes of making tomorrow easier. No, she needs to rest, to sleep for as many hours as she possibly can, and somehow get through the rest of this week. The weekend is for locking herself inside and hibernating as long as she needs.

Alice rubs her eyes as she slides on her coat, mentally calculating how long until the next bus and if she has time to stop for a hotdog or not. Probably not. It’ll be spicy noodles for dinner again, and if she has the energy, she’ll add some vegetables and an egg.

It’s nights like this when she sees the appeal of a relationship, a pack to help bear her burdens and make her dinner sometimes. Or even to just pick her up in their car. That way she doesn’t have to fight to keep her eyes open on the humming, bumping bus with her head resting against the cold and fogging window.

Better yet, if she worked from home, she wouldn’t have to brave public transport at all. Maybe then she wouldn’t have a boss clapping and snapping and asking her to do his shit all the time. And if she was the boss, she wouldn’t have to deal with one at all! She could only dream.

Alice brambles her way through the building and into the cold night air, heavy with unfallen snow. She daydreams about a blizzard so strong that nobody can leave their house and the wifi goes out. In this fantasy, she can burrow beneath a heated blanket with no possibility of an email or an unplanned Slack call pinging on her laptop.

She remembers days like this from her childhood when the weather was so bad that school was canceled and her family snuggled up together in the living room under a sea of blankets and pillows. The safety and warmth of the memory make her ache.

Standing beneath the bus stop, she wonders if Caleb has a pack at home, an Omega he takes care of. If they traveled here with him the same way Grant did. She jolts with what she should have thought of sooner: is Grant an Alpha, too? She hadn’t spent long enough with him to even catch a whiff of his scent, and she hadn’t gotten close enough to touch his skin, not even a handshake.

It’s prudent that she spend as little time with them as possible. The further away she stays from them, the safer she will be. Her heat suppressants are barely working as is, she doesn’t need to add the hormones of Alphas into the mix. The cocktail of suppressants, scent blockers, and deodorizers is an impermanent and, frankly, unsafe solution; the clock is rapidly ticking down to her inevitable first heat.

She needs to think about it, make a plan, and after that, a backup plan. She needs to figure out which one of those damn heat clinics she’ll go to and probably schedule time off to make it happen—but not tonight. Tonight, she needs to get home, eat something, numb her brain, and snooze her alarm many times in the morning.

The bus pulls up, and as she mills on, her phone buzzes in her pocket. A work email.

From: Caleb Everett

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