Page 6 of Knot Your Sunshine
Claire walks in balancing a stack of papers, her heels creating a steady rhythm on the marble. She takes one look at me and her face cycles through confusion, recognition, then that particular brand of mortification, the one she's worn every time she's caught us with this bottle over the past three days.
"Oh. Um." She sets the papers on my desk without making eye contact. "Sorry for bothering you. I just, uh. I'll leave the Singapore merger paperwork here."
"Claire, you don't have to—" Josh starts, but she's already edging toward the door.
"No, no, it's fine. Uh, anyway, I have... calls. Many calls." Her hand fumbles for the door handle. "Very important ones."
The door closes with a soft click that somehow sounds final.
"Well." Keanu sits up, running a hand through his hair. "That wasn't uncomfortable at all."
"She's never going to look us in the eye again," Josh mutters, adjusting his glasses.
"Can you blame her?" I finally manage to straighten up, tossing the bottle back to Keanu before it completely destroys what's left of my composure. "We practically tackled her in this very room three days ago."
"Except we didn't tackle her," Keanu protests, catching the bottle one-handed. "We just... enthusiastically surrounded her."
"While making sniffing sounds," Josh adds helpfully.
"Dudes, we gotta stop beating ourselves up over what was just an honest mistake!" Keanu throws his hands up, then immediately brings the bottle back to his nose. "How were we supposed to know she was wearingthis?" He takes another deep inhale. "Daaamn, that smells good... I thought for sure she—"
"Was our scent match." I cut in, the memory still fresh and mortifying. That's right, folks. For a brief, insane moment, we thought our beta assistant, who's been working with us for seven years without triggering our instincts once, had somehow become our scent match. "That wasn't our brightest moment."
"Well, at least it made us find out about the hair oil and the TikToks," Josh says, swiping at one of his displays to pull up a new data stream. "Without that, we'd never have foundher."
Her. Mia Everly from Lakeview. The omega whose homemade hair oils have somehow captured a fragment of her scent. Grrr, just thinking about it makes me want to tear off my shirt and howl at the moon.
"Speaking of." I force myself to focus, moving to stand behind Josh's chair. The holographic display shows data that might as well be hieroglyphics for all I understand. "Give me the analysis one more time."
Josh's fingers dance across the keyboard as he speaks. "Based on the residual genetic markers in the oil sample, my proprietary algorithm gives us a 98% probability of a true scent match. The markers align with our pack's specific pheromone receptors at a molecular level." He pauses, pushing his glasses up. "Which is great news."
"But?" I frown.
"But to be 100% certain she's our scent match, we need an in-person confirmation. The scent chemistry captured in the oil could have been affected by other factors that have nothing to do with her…"
Ninety-eight percent should feel like a sure thing. Instead, that two percent gap feels like a chasm we could all fall through.
"Always impressed with what you can do, Josh." Keanu whistles low, then caps the bottle with obvious reluctance. "Hey, have you thought about selling your scent-match probability analyzer to the Department of Pack Compatibility? That could easily add another billion to our net worth."
Josh shakes his head, not looking away from his screens. "The algorithm and analyzer are tailor-made for our specific genetic code. I had to map our entire pack genome and create predictive models based on our individual pheromone production. It would take years to adapt it for general use. And even then, there's no guarantee a public organization could deploy it across the country. Anyway… back to our omega." He pushes his glasses up again. "In the worst-case scenario, if it turns out she's not our scent match, I believe buying her salon would be a sound real estate investment. Its value is projected to quintuple in the next five years based on current development trends in Lakeview."
"But don't we already know she's not interested in selling?" Keanu asks suddenly. "Remember when we tried to lure her here by emailing that offer to buy her salon? Radio silence."
Josh's typing slows. "Sure, but being here, surrounded by all this"—he gestures vaguely at our office, the obvious wealth dripping from every surface—"might change her mind. Sometimes people need to see what wealth looks like in person."
"Whatever." I wave them off, though the thought of her rejecting us sits heavy in my stomach. "Money's not the issue here. We could buy half of Hawaii if we wanted. The question is, what's the progress on getting her to come here?"
The temperature in the room seems to drop. Josh's typing slows, then stops entirely. His shoulders hunch in that way that immediately sets off every alarm bell in my head.
"Josh?"
"Well." He shifts in his ergonomic chair, the leather creaking. "I've been working on it."
"And?"
"I've made contact."
The way he says it… it's like he's confessing to a crime. "Stop dancing around it. Show me."
