Page 42 of Hot Knot Summer
“A true scent match is rare, Emma,” she’d told me, running a brush through my hair as we sat on her porch swing, watching the lake. “So rare that many Omegas never find it. And that’s okay. You can still have a good relationship with an Alpha without it. It’ll still work out.”
I never felt anything close to a scent match with Chad. His smell was pleasant enough, sandalwood and citrus, but it never made my knees weak or my heart race. I thought that was normal. That my grandmother’s stories of overwhelming attraction were just romantic exaggerations from a different generation.
I didn’t realize how intense a fragrance match could actually be. How different my body’s responsewould feel compared to Chad. The way my skin tingles when Atlas is near, how my pulse jumps when River looks at me, the strange calm that settles over me when Levi speaks, it’s nothing like what I felt with Chad. Nothing like any attraction I’ve experienced before.
Gah, fucking Chad. I wish I could stop thinking about him and the situation he’s put me in. The betrayal, the mess, the fire, all because of him rejecting me.
If I ignore the attraction, then nothing will happen between me and firefighter Alphas. I mean, I can try to suppress my Omega response, right? I can handle this. I have to. Getting tangled up with one Alpha nearly destroyed me. Three would be suicide.
I push myself up, determined to distract myself with something productive. I’ve got soggy, soapy clothes to deal with, and sitting here obsessing over three Alphas I have no intention of getting involved with isn’t going to solve that problem.
As I make my way back to the laundry room, I catch the faint trace of their combined scents lingering in the hallway. My knees actually weaken for a second, and I have to steady myself against the wall.
“Pathetic,” I scold myself. “Pull it together.”
The laundry room is still a disaster zone, with foam coating every surface. I grab a mop from the supply closet and get to work, trying to focus on the task rather than the memory of River standing too close, histouch on my face, the heat of his body nearly pressed against mine.
“Need a hand with that?” a female voice asks.
I whirl around to find a young woman, maybe in her early twenties, a similar age to me, in a uniform standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised at the sudsy carnage.
“I’m Claire,” she says, already grabbing a bucket. “Volunteer firefighter and, apparently, now a janitor.”
“Emma,” I reply, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. “This is... kind of my fault.”
“I heard,” she grins, filling the bucket with water. “The soap monster strikes again. Happens at least once a month around here.”
“Really?” I ask, relieved I’m not uniquely disaster prone.
“Nope,” she laughs. “But it makes you feel better, right?”
Despite myself, I laugh too. “Not particularly.”
“So, you’re the author they rescued last night?” Claire asks, efficiently mopping a section of the floor. She’s petite with short-cropped dark hair and friendly brown eyes. Her scent is mild, distinctly Beta.
“That’s me,” I confirm. “Though I’m hoping that doesn’t become my permanent identity. ‘The author who neededrescuing’ doesn’t exactly scream competent adult.”
“Could be worse.” Claire shrugs. “Could be ‘the volunteer who set the training dummy on fire trying to demonstrate proper extinguisher technique’.”
“Oh…”
“In my defense, it was my first day,” she says with a mock-serious expression. “And in my further defense, Chief Wood looked really hot putting it out.”
I nearly drop my mop. “You and the chief...”
“Gosh, no,” she laughs, waving dismissively. “Not for lack of trying on my part, but those three are notoriously difficult to pin down.”
“Really?” I ask, trying to sound casual while my heart does a strange little skip. “They seem so... I don’t know. Solid.”
“Oh, they’re solid with each other,” Claire says, wringing out her mop. “That’s the problem. They’ve got their little pack, and nobody else seems to fit into it for long.”
I focus on scrubbing a particularly stubborn patch of foam, pointedly not looking at her. “What do you mean?”
“Just that they don’t have the best track record with relationships,” she explains. “River will flirt with anything that moves, and I do mean anything. I once caught him winking at a mannequin in a store window.”
That sounds like him, and I can’t help the small smile that tugs at my lips.
“Levi’s the ghost, here one minute, vanished the next. He once left mid-date because he had an epiphany about flame retardant chemical compositions,” Claire continues, making airquotes.
