Page 2 of Hot Knot Summer
The tiny Mistcrest airfield is barely more than a glorified landing strip, with a log cabin pretending to be a terminal. It’s the only way in or out of this corner of nowhere unless you’re up for a six-hour drive on winding mountain roads. Whispering Grove is pretty much it as far as civilization goes around there—just a little town tucked into the valley, about thirty minutes from the airfield by car.
On the plane, I scan the row numbers.
I settle into the window seat, immediately popping in earbuds and turning to stare out at the tarmac.
My mind circles back to three days ago, the moment everything imploded.
“Your scent is wrong,” Chad had said.
I’d been standing in our kitchen, well, Chad’s kitchen, but after a year together, it had felt like ours, chopping vegetables for dinner when he’d walked in and dropped the bomb with all the ceremony of commenting on the weather.
“What?” I’d turned, knife still in hand, something that would seem almost prophetic in retrospect.
“Your scent. It’s wrong.” Chad hadn’t even bothered looking up from his phone as he’d said it, thumbs tapping away at some message. “Nothing draws me to you anymore.”
The carrots lay forgotten as I’d stood there, stupidly mute with shock. “Is this... are you breaking up with me?”
“Look, Emma.” He finally pocketed his phone, his handsome face arranged in that patronizing expression I’d somehow never noticed before. “We had fun, but let’s be real. You knew this wasn’t forever.”
“I... what? We’re leaving for Whispering Grove in three days! We’ve been planning this trip for months!” My voice had risen with each word, disbelief turning quickly to anger. “You said... you literally said last week that maybe this trip would be ‘the one’.”
Chad had shrugged, actually shrugged, like we were discussing a canceled dinner reservation. “I was trying to let you down easy. You Omegas get so emotionally attached.” His tone suggested this was somehow my biological failing rather than his colossal dick move. “I paid for the cabin already. You can still go if you want.”
“Wow. So generous.” The knife in my hand had suddenly seemed very relevant to my interests.
“Look, you’ll find someone else.” He’d glanced at his watch. “I need to head out. Can we skipthe dramatic Omega meltdown? You can get your stuff later this week while I’m at work.”
And then he’d walked out. Just like that.
I’d stood frozen until his car pulled away, then sank to the kitchen floor, vegetables abandoned on the cutting board. An hour later, his iPad had chimed with a message. Something in me, call it writer’s intuition or just garden-variety suspicion, had made me pick it up.
The text preview from Megan Sloane glowed on the screen.Did you tell her yet? Can’t wait to see you tonight, Alpha.
Megan. My so-called friend from Omega Academy. The woman who’d hugged me last month and said Chad wasso lucky to have you.
That’s when I started throwing things.
The memory makes my chest tighten all over again. A pathetic whimper escapes before I can trap it behind my teeth. God, I hate that he still has this power over me.
This wasn’t even my first Alpha rejection. There was Jason in college who saidI was too opinionated for an Omegaafter three months of dating. Then Michael last year, who ghosted me after meeting my successful Beta friends at a dinner party. Now Chad, with his ‘your scent is wrong’ crap. Maybe there is something fundamentally broken in me, some Omega defect that makes me untouchable, unmarked, unwanted. Maybe I’m cursed to always be almost enough but never quite right.
I hiccup a heavy breath, fighting back tears. Three strikes. That’s what my grandmother would call it. Three strikes and you’re out, Emma: F.O.E. Failed Omega Extraordinaire.
“Excuse me. I believe this is my seat,” a deep male’s voice says, instantly rising delicious goosebumps down my arms.
Reluctantly, I glance up.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Standing in the aisle is six-plus feet of what can only be described as walking Alpha fantasy. Dark brown hair with a perfect hint of dishevelment and sides cut shorter than the top. A jaw that could cut glass, sporting a meticulously maintained five o’clock shadow. Shoulders that make the economy seat look like doll furniture housed in a body that’s clearly been forged through years of physical exertion, not pretentious gym sessions. And eyes… good lord, they’re not gray as I first thought, but the deepest midnight blue, so dark they’re almost black, like the ocean at its most fathomless point.
But what collides into me hardest is his scent. Woodsmoke that makes me think of controlled bonfires on autumn nights, toasted sugar with caramel and rich maple that reminds me of Sunday mornings. It wraps around me with such intensity that my Omega hindbrain short-circuits momentarily, neurons firing in every direction while synapses meltlike candle wax.
This is what a scent match is supposed to feel like. This is what I’ve read about, what I’ve written about in my books. This is what I never felt with Chad, despite trying to convince myself otherwise for a whole damn year.
“That seat was supposed to be empty,” I blurt out.
