My vision swims.
I walk.
I don't know where to go, but my feet keep moving.
The camp moves around me wrong, tilted and too bright. The generators are loud, and the PA system cuts in and out in sharp bursts that lance through my skull. Nurses and techs move past me on the dirt path, all of them oblivious to the chaos brewing inside me.
I keep moving, my legs feeling like liquid.
Every step shifts the slick soaking through my padded underwear, and I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste copper, using the pain to keep myself moving in a straight line.
Then the scent of dozens of omegas hits me.
Sweet and dense and coming from everywhere at once, pouring out of the holding tents in layered, overlapping waves. My teeth set. It should soothe me. Every biological instinct I have says an omega scent means safety, means pack, means calm down.
But it does the opposite.
It makes me want to claw something, because underneath every honeyed wave of it is alpha, thick and muscular and possessive, and my hindbrain reads that combination the same way every time.
Someone else is going to take what's mine.
The rage is so sudden and so irrational it scares me. I press my back against the side of a generator and dig my nails into my own forearms, hard, and the pain cuts through for exactly two seconds before the next cramp rolls through my core and takes everything with it.
I have to get out.
My feet move. The hot wind shifts.
And then I catch it.
Rich dark chocolate and something sweet like sunflowers, all laced with a thick, intoxicating alpha musk.
My pussy clenches, then opens, a sudden, desperate surrender.
A fresh, overwhelming rush of slick soaks through my padded underwear, a wet, undeniable proof of my body's betrayal. And just like that, my mind seems to slip away, the last threads of my control snapping like an old thread.
But instead of moving toward the dense crowd of alphas near the main barriers, my feet carry me away from the chaos, toward the edge of the meadow, following the delicious scent on the far side of the clearing.
The generators fade. The PA system cuts to nothing. The diesel and pine and canvas baking in the sun are gone. There’re only chocolate, sunflowers, and musk, pulling me forward like a hand pressed to the small of my back.
My breathing slows.
My fists unclench.
The cramps don't stop, but I don’t care about them any more. Even the rage drains out of me, replaced by something quieter and infinitely more dangerous. A calm, absolute certainty settling in my bones like warm water.
My stride evens out. My chin lifts.
Whoever that scent belongs to is about to be mine.
In the Van
Perrin
The logging trailspits us out into a clearing, and I ease the cargo van through a gap in the tree line, following the hand signals of a guy in a reflector vest who looks like he'd rather be literally anywhere else. Same, buddy.
The van lurches over the uneven ground and something shifts in the back, crates of medical supplies we picked up from a warehouse three hours south. I check the side mirror and spot Cliff pulling our SUV in beside me.
He's got one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the open window frame, his forearm tan and corded with muscle. His dark hair is pushed back off his forehead, damp at the temples from the heat, and when he catches me looking through my mirror, he grins. Just a flash of white teeth and those sharp, dark eyes crinkling at the corners.
