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I sprayed myself down before Claire helped me lace into the costume. Pain pulsed in my gut, and I was already beginning to go hot. “Sloane,” she said.
“I know. It’s my own fault. I forgot my suppressant this morning.”
She gasped. “You’ve been taking suppressants?”
“I didn’t want to be filling the studio with perfume while dancing with Ash.”
Meeting my eyes in the mirror, she didn’t have to tell me how bad this might be. Being scent-sympathetic already made everything in Omegas go haywire. Pushing it down made our body snap back with intensity. The show was a little over two hours. I could make it that long.
“If you need something you tell me,” she said. “Got it?”
“I will.” I didn’t have the energy to tease her or protest. Just enough to get my shoes on and head backstage, because it was time. Then I paused. “Can you tell Dion?”
“Absolutely.”
He needed to know so he wasn’t blindsided the second we began to dance.
I went stage right and placed my hands against the wing wall, flexing my feet and stepping in and out of the rosin box. Behind me, the comforting warmth of chocolate chip cookies wrapped around me. Was it better? How the fuck was itbetter?
Oh, because you’re an Omega in heat and one of the Alphas you want to fuck the living daylight out of you is wrapping his arms around your waist.
Heat and pain spiked through me. “Shit.” I placed my hands over Asher’s where he held me, unable to stop my body from bending forward to fight the pain.
“Sloane?” He sounded panicked. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be okay,” I said quietly. “I have to be okay.”
Like my body was determined to betray me, a whole new wave of perfume decided to ignore the metric ton of scent-canceller on my body and clothes. No shit, since Ash held me, the source of exactly what it wanted so close.
He turned me in his arms, examining me for where the pain was. I breathed through it and it faded. This was doable. It was.
Itwas.
Asher’s eyes went wide as he inhaled, scenting the stronger scent of my heat. He backed me against the wall. “You’re going into heat? Sweetheart, we have to get you out of here.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You want to dance through your heat?”
I dug my fingers into the brocade of his costume. “Like hell am I going to throw away all of this fuckingtorturebecause I forgot to take a pill, Ash. I am going out on that stage and I am going to fucking dance this part. I have to.” My voice broke, and I blinked back tears. If I started crying I might not stop, and I couldn’t cry as Giselle until the end of act one.
It was my debut as a principal. You only had one, and I wasn’t going to bail on it. On an opening weekend of a show? This was important, and he knew it, no matter how much pain I was in or had been in for the last week.
Asher’s jaw was tight. I saw it work, like he was grinding his teeth. “Okay. But the other two performances? You can’t white knuckle your way through those.”
“I know. I know.”
He nodded. “Then we’ll get you through tonight. And when it’s over, we’re taking you home and giving you the heat you deserve, Sloane. I fucking swear it.”
Out in the house, the cacophony of a crowd was growing. The orchestra was warming up. No one paid attention to us in the corner.
“Three more days,” I said. “If I hadn’t forgotten, I could have made it through our cohort. Now Skylar and the rest of them will have to scramble.”
“Skylar is an Omega too,” Ash whispered. “She’ll understand.”
I looked up at him, sinking into his eyes. “Don’t hold back, Ash. Please. Dance like it’s the end of the world.”
He kissed me, soft and chaste, not messing up my lipstick. “I’ll leave everything on stage, blue. Promise.”
