“Working the carnival week.”
“Mm.” She stares at the river. “I came for the week too. There’s a pack visiting from the north valley. My friend bonded with their Alphas two years ago. I’m visiting.” A pause. “It’s a lot of Alphas for one carnival.”
I think about how crowded it was on Saturday night and what happened to my nervous system. I make a sound that is deeply involuntary and entirely expressive.
She turns to look at me and what’s in her face is the exact mirror of what’s in mine, which isyes, that, precisely that,and something about the recognition—of being seen in something that specific, by someone who knows from the inside—makes me laugh.
She laughs too, and it’s genuine. We sit on the bench behind the food stall laughing at the shared experience of being an unbonded Omega at a carnivalpacked with Alphas and what this does to a nervous system.
“The scent,” she says, when we’ve calmed down. “At peak hours—”
“The crowd compression—”
“And then there’s four of them in one place—”
“All at once—”
We look at each other.
“It’s a lot,” I say.
“It’s a lot,” she agrees. “My friend says it gets easier. When it’s yours, I mean. When the bond is set.” She pauses. “She says it stops being overwhelming and starts being grounding.”
Grounding.
Ryan’s hand at my waist.
I’ve got you.
“Your four,” Dee says, and there is nothing but genuine curiosity in it. “They’re—” She tilts her head. “They’re really oriented toward you. I couldn’t help but notice.”
“They’re a pack, they orient toward—”
“I know what pack orientation looks like. My friend’s pack has it.” She looks at me plainly. “That’s not what this is. That’s…” She pauses, searching for the word. “That’sspecific.”
I look at my hands. “I’m passing through,” I say.
“Sure,” she replies. Again with the math-having-been-done tone.
We sit in the warm morning together. She doesn’tpush, and I don’t explain. The comfortable silence of two people who understand the same thing from the inside settles around us like something familiar.
“The guitar one,” she says, after a while.
“Archer.”
“He played on the stage. I was in the crowd.” She pauses. “That was something.”
“Yes,” I say, without intending to say it with the weight it comes out with.
She looks at me sideways and I look at her sideways and we are both quiet for a moment.
“You’re in a lot of trouble,” she says. Gently. No edge. Slightly teasing.
“I know,” I reply.
“Is it bad trouble or good trouble?”
I think about Amber. I think about three states and a bank heist and a borrowed car. I think about four men and a pack house and a couch with a blanket in the corner that has become, in the space of two weeks, mine.
