The Omega He Couldn't Find

Chapter 3

Callum

The estate was bigger inside than it looked from the road, which was saying something because it looked enormous from the road. The main hall opened into a ballroom that could’ve held three of Thornhollow’s great halls and still had room for Chase’s ego. Chandeliers hung from a vaulted ceiling so high the candlelight had to commit to the journey. The floor was polished stone. The walls were draped in banners from every attending pack, and the collective scent of several hundred wolves hit me the second I walked in.

My wolf surveyed the room before I did. Alphas. A lot of them. I could feel their dominance signatures pressing against mine like currents in water—most weak, a few middling, one or two that had actual weight. Nobody close to matching mine, which wasn’t arrogance. It was just math. Thornhollow was one of the strongest packs on the continent for a reason, and that reason was standing in a suit that Reid had picked out because the last time I’d dressed myself for a formal event I’d worn training sweats.

The room shifted when people noticed me. Conversations dipped. Bodies angled away. A cluster of omegas near the bar found somewhere else to be. A young alpha—couldn’t have been more than nineteen, fresh-faced and rigid with nerves—made eye contact with me, held it for exactly one second, and then stepped backward like I’d shoved him.

I hadn’t done anything. I was just standing here. This was the part I hated.

“That kid looked like he was going to pass out,” Chase murmured from my left, snagging a drink off a passing tray with the effortlessness of a man who had never once felt unwelcome in a room.

“Leave him alone.”

“I wasn’t going to do anything. I was going to go introduce myself and tell him you’re actually very nice and once cried because a dog died.”

“I did not cry.”

“Your eyes were wet.”

“And it was a movie,” Reid said, appearing at my right, drink already in his hand, his brown eyes scanning the room like he was mentally filing every face, every exit, every potential problem. Which he was. “Ashvale’s here. Northeast corner. Isolda and her two daughters.”

I didn’t look. Looking meant interest and interest meant invitation and I wasn’t ready to be cornered by a woman Reid described as “soul-sucking leach”.

“The eldest is the one in green,” Reid continued. “Rowena. She’s who they’re pushing.”

“Is she—”

“Not your mate.” Reid said. “You’d have reacted by now. And Alcide would’ve put you through a wall to get to her.”

Right. The bond. Scent-triggered, instantaneous, undeniable. If my mate were in this room, Alcide would’ve already dragged me to her by the metaphorical scruff. The fact that he was restless but not frantic meant she wasn’t here.

Alcide stirred at the thought — a prick of attention, ears up. I pushed him down.

“Not now,” I told him.

He huffed at me.

“Just do a lap,” Chase said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Shake hands, look scary, try not to compare anyone to furniture. I’m going to go find the food.” He was already gone, weaving through the crowd with the kind of easy grace that made people assume he was charming and harmless, which he was, right up until the moment he wasn’t.

Reid and I moved into the room. The crowd parted. It always did. I nodded to the alphas I recognized — Theron of the Western Valleys, Marcus of Stonefall, a handful of others who had the good sense to look alert but not threatened. Handshakes. Brief pleasantries. The kind of clipped, efficient political theater that Reid could do in his sleep and that I could fake well enough to pass.

“You’re scowling,” Reid said between introductions.

“This is my face.”

“Your face is scaring the omegas.”

I made an effort to soften whatever my face was doing. Based on Reid’s expression, I was not successful.

An hour passed. Then most of another. I danced with no one. I drank very little. I stood where Reid told me to stand and spoke when Reid nudged me and generally performed the role of Alpha of Thornhollow with the enthusiasm of a man being slowly buried alive in small talk.

Alcide was restless. More than usual. He’d been pacing in my chest since we arrived, and the longer we stayed the worse it got—not aggressive, not threatened. Just... searching. Pulling toward something I couldn’t identify. Every few minutes he’d surge forward and I’d push him back and he’d settle for thirty seconds before surging again, and it was getting harder to keep my expression neutral while my wolf acted like he’d lost something in this ballroom and was systematically sniffing every corner.

Chase found me near the west wall with a plate of food that should not have been physically possible to balance on one hand. “You look like you’re having the time of your life.”

“I want to go home.”

He ate a cupcake off his plate. “Alcide still doing the thing?”

“Alcide is always doing the thing.”

“Maybe your mate’s here and you’re just too stubborn to—”

The scent hit me mid-sentence.

Not the wall of blended wolves I’d been breathing all night. Not cologne or champagne or candle wax or the hundred other layers stacked into the air of this room. Something underneath all of it. Something that cut through the noise like—

I didn’t have a comparison. I didn’t have words. It was sweet and clean and so faint I almost missed it, almost dismissed it as imagination, except that Alcide didn’t imagine things. Alcide dealt in certainties. And right now, every nerve in my wolf’s body was locked onto a single point in this room with a focus that bordered on religious.

“Cal?” Chase’s voice, somewhere far away. “You good?”

I wasn’t good. I was standing in a crowded ballroom with my heart slamming against my ribs and my wolf pressing forward so hard my vision flickered gold at the edges and something in the air that I needed to find the way I needed to breathe.

Honeysuckle.

That was it—the scent. Faint. Buried under hundreds of other wolves. But there—unmistakable, singular, mine in a way I couldn’t explain.

“Cal.” Reid’s hand on my arm. Firm. But I barely felt it. “What is it?”

The room was too loud. Too full. She was here. Somewhere. I just needed to find her.

“Mate.” Alcide howled.

“I need to move,” I said, and I was already walking.

***

Lark

I shouldn't be doing this.

But I couldn't stop myself as I pulled the pale blue dress from my bag. The silk was smooth against my skin, slipping down my body. It hung off my frame, made for someone bigger—someone who'd been cared for and fed. Mama. Back before she met my father. I grabbed a few safety pins from my bag and stuck them on each side to keep the dress from falling off me. Not perfect, but it didn't need to be.

All I needed was an hour. Less, even. I wanted to stand in that room filled with unmated wolves and warm candlelight while the music washed over me without holding a tray or serving anyone. I didn't need a dress that fit to do that.

I just wanted one night to not be me. Wolfless. Someone who bowed her head and kept it down, because looking up meant pain. Looking at someone's shoes was safer. But my neck was aching to turn to the sky where I could see the moon.

My fingers brushed across the delicate white lace of the mask I'd found near the buffet tables earlier. Someone must have taken it off and forgotten about it. Lucky for me. It wasn't intricate or jeweled or obnoxiously feathered, vying for attention like some of the other females out there. Plain. White. Lace sewn across its surface. Understated.

I tied it in place with trembling fingers. No one could know it was me out there. If Rowena recognized me or worse—if Isolda saw—

The scars on my back burned. It wouldn't just be a few days locked in my room. I'd suffer for this. But some things were worth the pain. And this place, this night—that was worth it. I tightened the knot in the ribbons. It couldn't fall off or shift.

Grabbing a handful of extra bobby pins I'd packed for Rowena, I pinned my hair up where it didn't look like I'd been sweating and running around all night. No makeup, but the mask would cover most of that anyway. I ran my hands over the smooth silk. My heart thumped against my ribs. There wasn't a mirror in the back corner of the storage room I'd squirreled away in, so I took inventory. Mask. Dress. Hair. There was no way I'd look like myself. I pocketed my sprig of sage and left my little corner behind.

Be invisible. Stay near the east wall. Don't draw attention. All of Isolda's rules flooded back to me as I grabbed the door handle leading to the main ballroom.

One night. One chance to feel like someone instead of something. One song. One sip of champagne that I'd been buzzing around all night giving to others. That's all I wanted. Then I could go back to the storage room, take off the mask, and go back to being me. A life sewing Rowena's dresses. Making breakfast for Isolda and the girls. Scrubbing the floors until my fingers bled. Sleeping in my cold room with the cracked window.

The music thumped through the door. Now or never. I pulled the handle and stepped inside.

The ballroom was loud and hot and full. Hundreds of wolves in their finest, masks glittering under the chandeliers. The music wasn't the muted hum I'd been hearing from the corridors—it was real in here. Strings and drums filling the whole room. I pressed my back against the nearest pillar and just stood there. Breathing. Looking.

No one looked back. Good.

I found a spot along the east wall between a fern arrangement and a column. A waiter passed and I grabbed a glass of champagne before I could talk myself out of it. The first sip fizzed on my tongue and I almost laughed. I was drinking champagne at the Lunar Ball. If anyone here knew who I was, they'd—

They'd nothing. No one knew. That was the whole point. In this room full of wolves–alphas from powerful packs, betas, and gammas and their daughters draped in silk and jewels–I was no one. A plain white mask, a too-big dress, a scuffed pair of flats I’d been serving in. No one would notice how wrong I was for this occasion in a room this crowded. That was the hope at least.