Page 1 of Outback Mate
Prologue
Poppy
Iwork at No Knots Hairdressing Studio, and if that isn’t a clue about my love life, then I don’t know what is. No knots for Poppy Harding.
I’m single. Really single. Not by choice, but because I haven’t found an Alpha brave enough.
I promise it’s not because I’m a raging bitch. Nope, I’m just a giant unlucky idiot.
A walking hazard.
I can’t get through my day without something going catastrophically wrong. I have more than my fair share of scrapes, bruises, and scars to prove it.
To be honest, most days it feels like I’m consumed by the illness which afflicts unmated Alphas and Omegas. Aurasickness gradually amplifies a patient’s personality trait until it becomes unmanageable – sometimes even resulting in insanity or death.
It’s a case of mate or die.
Talk about romantic.
I don’t know how the hell being unlucky is a personality trait. I’d like to speak the person in charge about it, but knowing my luck, I’d somehow make it worse.
Aunt Jo says I’ve always had two left feet and I’m just clumsy. She’s a bit of an old hippie and looks for the best in everyone. My auntie reminds me daily I’m more than my aura sickness.
There’s more to me than the fifth car accident I’ve had this year, none of which were my fault, I swear. Or the dog poop I tracked through the front door of the salon. I’m more than the mascara I poked in my eye this morning, and the endless burns on my hands from slipping and scalding myself with styling tools.
Some of those, sure, they’re clumsy. Most are just the universe messing with me.
Aunt Jo is an Omega like me and knows my aura sickness isn’t something I can control. She understands how much I wish I wasn’t such a liability.
Shedoesn’tunderstand why I’m not trying harder to meet my Alpha.
Aunt Jo is also a firm believer in soulmates. She says the instant you meet them, you just know. Your whole life… lights up.
The only thing lighting upmylife are my curtains after a freak electrical fault ignited them. Apparently, waking up to a window lined with flames was the last straw for the Alpha I’d been dating. He called me cursed and sprinted from my apartment like his ass was on fire. I mean, it might have been on fire, but I was preoccupied with the fire extinguisher.
It was for the best. After all, if he can’t handle a little flame-related incident, then he’s not the guy for me. At least that’s what I told myself while sitting on the couch last Saturday night with a tub of ice cream in my lap… before I flinched at a jump scare and it up-ended in my lap.
Working at Aunt Jo’s salon, I hear the stories from our clients about how they found their fated mate.
I love hearing how finding the other half of their soul mended their aura sickness, and I used to believe my turn would come.
Except, I’ve exhausted the local Alpha dating pool. I think I’ve met every unmated fella in ‘cooee’ shouting distance.
I’ve never even come close to that feeling of rightness Aunt Jo and the clients talk about. I have met no one I instantly clicked with. Not even an inkling of a special connection.
I think I’ve been too picky. I need a cure for my aura sickness or I’m going to die in some embarrassing, unlucky accident.
Death by choking on a hotdog alone in my apartment seems on brand.
My last client of the day is a friend. Kirsty’s been coming to me for years, and our friendship bloomed over chats while I do her hair.
The Beta lives the party lifestyle and tells me the latest gossip from the dating scene. Tonight, she’s going to a bonding ceremony between an Alpha and Beta, and I’m curling her platinum blonde tresses into loose face-framing waves.
“They met on a mating cruise,” she gushes about the bride and groom, gesturing with stiff fingers so as not to mess up her new set of nails.
I snort incredulously. “The bang boat?”
My aunt shoots me a disapproving raised brow from her station beside mine, checking to see if her client heard my scandalous words. She’s carefully trimming the bangs of her most critical client.
