Page 36 of Shaken Knot Stirred

“A dress like this deserves more than tea,” she drawled in an accent that was a dead ringer for La Luna in “Moonlight Pack.” The dress was a good match for the costume in that scene.

“I loved that movie.” Lana slid into the room, heading straight to a pile of garments.

I glued myself to the doorframe. On a good day, the thought of throwing Moxie over my shoulder and ravishing her like some alphahole was always close to the surface. Today was not a goodday. I absolutely would not think of what I could do to her in a dress like that.

Moxie shook out a long chocolate brown wig and compared the color of it to the dress. I stifled a smile, remembering all our early failures with hair dye.

We had tried black first. It didn’t take and left behind this ghostly gray color. That was fashionable now, but not 10 years ago. Brown got her to a puke blonde color. I had liked the blue the best. She had looked like an anime character with an ice blue bob. She still had a slight blue tone to her hair.

Lana cooed from one of the piles of dresses. She held one up at arm’s length. There was too much dress to bring it closer to her. It had a shimmering top and skirt that shared a circumference with the sun. It was exactly like the dress Moxie had worn the night of The Plan.

My basement apartment had been dingy. I had found all the furniture on the side of the road. We had tried to brighten it up with posters. Moxie had covered an entire wall of her bedroom with glossy wrapping paper. It had been almost a year since I had broken her out of that hole the B.O.W. had stuck her in. I had insisted she take the bedroom, and I’d sleep on the couch. Our four-year age difference hadn’t meant anything until I hit 20. I had never wanted her to feel like this was a “me alpha, you omega” thing. The B.O.W. had messed with her enough. I hadn’t touched her, not once, despite her scent sending me over the edge. I had gotten Chinese takeout because she thought eating with chopsticks was fancy as fuck. As she broke apart the wooden sticks, she’d said, “Here’s The Plan. We’re going to have sex.” I had nearly choked on my egg roll. She went on to explain that her first heat was coming and she was nervous about it. She didn’t want to have to figure out sex and knotting in the middle of heat.

I’d gone all out. Started dealing Disco for Gash to make a fast buck. I set up a picnic and a little tent with fairy lights in the woods out past the burbs. I didn’t want neighbors to pound on our door to yell at us for noise. She’d found this dress, all sparkly on top with a giant poofy skirt. I got shrimp cocktail and sushi. Chocolate-covered strawberries and these little French cookies. And champagne. We’d never had it before. We discovered that night that she smelled like champagne and peaches. We’d danced, and I’d told her I loved her a million times. She slept that night, spent, slick everywhere in a nest of that skirt and my arms. She woke that morning asking for my knot.

“Here’s the plan.”

Wait, what? I shook my head to pull myself back from the memories. Moxie was even more fierce now. I drew a shaky breath, but the only scents in the room were Lana’s floral citrus and that fucking pine. I rubbed at the center of my chest. It hurt that Moxie was taking blockers to keep her scent from me. And that was a crazy thought. Moxie owed me nothing at this point.

“I’m sorry, what?” I shook my head again, my focus slipping. “You want to go to the Gala?” My head was spinning to keep up with the parts of the conversation I had spaced on.

“Yup,” Moxie ineffectively kicked tissue paper out of the way to dig in another box.

“The only reason to go to the Gala is to find a pack or a job.”

Both the women ooh’ed as Moxie stood with what looked like a mass of liquid steel in her hands.

“Put that on right now,” Lana discarded the poofy dress without a second thought.

Moxie turned her back to Lana and looked over her shoulder. Lana unzipped her dress, light fingers skimming Moxie’s shoulders, pulling down the straps, like they had done this a thousand times before, like they already knew each other’s bodies. Suddenly light-headed, I looked up at the ceiling, staringright into the fluorescent light, hoping it would burn away visions of them together.

“Hell’s bells,” Lana said, stealing my catch phrase.

“Okay. With that reaction, I’m going to hold on to this one, in case I need a coup de grâce.”

“A what?”

“You know, I might need a little extra push to get someone over the bite finish line. Oh,” she reached for her phone. “I’ve started cross referencing most eligible pack lists from the society pages with the Gala’s website. Maybe Justice Twill? He’s on the top ten eligible alphas list this year.”

“Ugh, not Just. He’s got a terrible reputation for violence in the bedroom,” Lana said.

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to fuck him. I just need him to want to bite me. Drew Persing?” Moxie read another name off her list.

“No. He bit his first omega so viciously that the bite never fully healed till the day she died. And he insisted on doing the bite publicly, like in the old days.” Lana wrinkled her nose at the thought.

“Maybe a pack and not a single alpha?”

“No one is biting you.” In a blink, I was across the room. Moxie gave me a look. My fingers curled around her upper arm.

“First, my neck, my choice. Second,” she paused, pointing two fingers in my face, “you are already in a pack. You don’t get to have a say in what other people do with their auras and bonds.”

My chest was tight. Letting go of her was hard. I retreated to the other side of the room and sat on the edge of the worktable. The dress looked like it was poured on to her, crafting her out of molten metal. She looked like a warrior goddess dressed up for a party. It accentuated her hips, her round tummy. The neckline was fairly modest, but that only made my fingers ache to touch her breasts.

“You always said you didn’t want a pack,” I said, not caring if that sounded whiny.

“Idon’twant a pack.” Moxie turned her back to me and slithered out of the dress.

“Then why the fuck are you talking about going to the Gala? The Gala, all of the Dinghy Race events, are just glorified speed dating.”

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