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“Hop up in my chair at the mirror and we’ll get you all set,” Tulla said.
Avery reopened his eyes as he stood, and the world tilted on its axis. That sick sensation returned with a vengeance. A low roar filled his ears, his skin tingling as if there was an electric charge in the air. Perhaps it was the drug in his system, or perhaps it was the simple fact of knowing his world would never be the same.
He carefully took a step forward, praying he wouldn’t tumble over and make a fool of himself. After sitting, he slid back into the chair and glimpsed himself in the lighted mirror. His skin was too pale, his eyes wide. It was as if he looked at a stranger, and after a few snips of the scissors, he’d be stranger still. He watched as Tulla moved in close behind him.
“Out of curiosity, what’s all this for? Why do you need the scent blocker?” Tulla asked as he gathered all of Avery’s hair into a pony at the nape of his neck.
“College,” Avery whispered. He coughed to clear his throat before speaking again, this time with a little more confidence in his voice. “I want to go to college.”
Tulla met his stare in the mirror for a moment, and a look crossed the omega’s face. Pity? Sorrow? Avery wasn’t sure.
“You’re taking the hard way…Itook the easier one.” Tulla lifted his stare and met Avery’s in the mirror again. The sadness in his eyes almost made Avery want to weep. For who, he wasn’t sure. “Easier? It doesn’t feel very easy most days.” A faraway glaze came to his eyes before he refocused on Avery’s image. “I can tell you from experience…don’tfollow in my footsteps. Stick with your plan, hon. Prove that an omega can be of worth more than simply being a sexual object.”
That was an added pressure Avery certainly didn’t need—the weight of all omegadom. “I’m going to give it a good try.”
They both grew quiet. Tulla brushed out the length and tied it into a few pony tails, then grabbed a gold-plated pair of scissors from the table. Avery sat there helplessly and watch. The cut was necessary. Unavoidable. He couldn’t become something else without it. Tears stung the backs of his eyes as the scissors chopped away the hair he’d grown since he was a small boy.
“A travesty,” Tulla whispered.
Avery held on to his control and refused to shed a tear over something as simple as hair. But it was a part of him… part of his omega identity.
An omega identity he was actively shedding.
“I had to sell off some of my locks on the streets a decade or more ago… wigmakers will pay decent money for good hair, not that mine was as fine as yours. But it was good enough, and I needed the cash,” Tulla said before cutting through the entire mass. He handed a thick ponytail to Avery.
Avery stared down at the locks in his hands, filled with the sense that he’d just lost a part of himself.
He had.
The world would no longer see him as an omega. Lifting his stare, he saw Tulla watching him in the mirror. The man rested both hands on Avery’s shoulders, an expression of concern on his face.
“You okay?” Tulla whispered.
Avery nodded, incapable of words.
Tulla ruffled his remaining hair. “I’ll trim this up a little more and make you appear official. You need to look like a college boy, right?”
“Thanks,” Avery murmured before lifting his stare. It was then that he saw an old picture of what appeared to be a younger Tulla hugging two small boys. They all wore broad smiles and looked so happy. He glanced at the boys—both alphas, if he had to guess—their smiles were almost identical to Tulla’s. “Who’re they?”
Tulla’s stare whipped up in the reflection before following Avery’s to the picture. A flash of pain seemed to cross the omega’s face before he finally spoke. “That was a lifetime ago.”
“Your sons?”
Tulla was silent for a few heartbeats. “Not anymore,” he murmured.
Avery frowned. Had they passed? The thought only ripped open his own wound, not yet healed. “I know how hard losing those we love can be.”
Tulla met his stare in the mirror again, his gaze flat. “Yes, you do. But trust me when I say that losing the living is more painful than losing the dead.”
His eyes widened as Tulla looked back down to his hair. Avery wanted to ask more questions, but he’d already likely crossed a line and gone too far. What had happened to this man… what had he lost… what had brought him to that point?
Tulla finished the quick trim. When he was done, Avery indeed looked more beta-ish. The short hair looked so odd and made him appear… completely changed. How odd that a simple haircut would do that. Tulla brushed away the stray hairs and then collected the pony from his grip. Avery almost didn’t want to let it go, but he had to.
“Let’s settle up and get you out of here. I need to go back on stage in a few minutes.”
Avery stood and took the folded stack of money from his pocket. He took away the money for his hair and handed the rest over. Tulla took a quick accounting and then nodded. “We’re good.”
He walked over and collected the bag with the scent blocker and the envelope with his new identity before turning to Tulla.
