Page 4
Wonder bursts through me in a laugh. “Is that me?”
Honey claps both hands over her mouth.
Junie squeals.
Scarlet’s whole face brightens.
Honey reaches me first and cups my cheeks. “Yes, Pep.”
“I’m perfuming?” The words come out breathless and high.
Every test has always said omega. Most omegas perfume before high school graduation and have their first full heat by twenty-one. At twenty-six, I’ve become a polite medical shrug. Every doctor has told me my body is healthy but late. My sister bloomed at seventeen. My mother at sixteen. I waited through college, graduate school, my first classroom, my second classroom, and years of family pack announcements. At twenty-six, waiting had become a hope I carried quietly. Now my scent fills Heritage Hall.
Honey kisses my forehead. Junie wraps both arms around my waist. Scarlet grabs my hand, smiling so widely that tears rush into my eyes.
“My body figured it out,” I say.
“It always knew how,” Honey answers.
A delighted noise escapes me, halfway between a laugh and a sob.
Then an alpha near the fountain display walks directly into a velvet rope. The brass post tips. He catches it before it hits the floor and tries to pretend he meant to grab it.
Roman covers a smile with one hand.
Another alpha turns too quickly, bumps into his beta, and spills lemonade down his own shirt.
“Oh,” Junie whispers, delighted. “They smell you.”
Scent is not consent. Every health class I teach, I drill that in, but knowing that does not make it less strange when my body announces it’s ready before I have decided what I want anyone to do with that information.
The first man rights the velvet rope and approaches with determined confidence that does not survive the second step.
“Hi.” He glances at my glittered overalls. “Your sparkle is very… sparkly.”
I blink. “Thank you?”
His beta drags a palm down his face.
A younger alpha appears beside him. “Are you a botanist? Because your rosemary is growing on me.”
Junie makes a strangled sound against my shoulder.
“That’s not how rosemary grows,” I say, though I can’t keep the smile from my voice.
A third man lifts his hand from across the crowd. “I like your scarf.”
Another answers, “I like her whole head… that sounded better before I said it.”
Laughter ripples around us. My perfume deepens under the attention. Vanilla warms until it seems to coat the air. Peppermint slips cool across my tongue. Rosemary rises brighter, sharper, carrying farther through the gallery. More heads turn.
An alpha near the doors checks his hair in the glass case. A beta straightens his jacket. Two men argue over who noticed me first, though neither appears to know my name.
Honey squeezes my hands. “I’m obsessed with everything about this.”
“It’s a lot.”
“You waited so long.”
