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“Are you questioning my chia pet mothering skills?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Not at all, Little Omega.”
“Is there something wrong with it?”
“No. I just want to make sure it’ll live until tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?” I asked.
He just gave me a sidelong look that sent a little prickle up my spine.
Damn.
Whatwasgoing to happen tomorrow?
I opened my mouth to pry, but he tugged my bottle of scent suppressants from his pocket.
“What are you doing with that?”
“Checking it over,” he said. “I was looking through your meds. You used this to suppress your scent?”
Uh… “Yes.”
“Every day?” he asked.
“When I was with you, yes. But before that just some days.”
“Where did you get them?”
“I know a guy.”
“I looked it up,” he said matter-of-factly. “Bad scent suppressants can be dangerous—”
“They’re clean,” I snapped, tugging them from his hands.
He narrowed his eyes. “Aguy?”
“I’m serious. These are good. What is this? I know how to take care of myself.”
He raised his eyebrows, and I glared.
“Why didn’t you use the heat clinics?” he asked. “I help fund them.”
“You think I didn’t want to?”
He cocked his head, clearly unsure.
“There’s two, Ebony. In the whole city of millions of people. There’stwoclinics. Even with a cab, if it wasn’t rush hour, the closest one was half an hour away. Where I lived in the Gritch District, sometimes I had to wear scent blockers just to leave my house—even with Aisha. My hormones have been out of balance for years. If I’m lucky, I get ten minutes warning and I can take a pill to delay it by another hour—and it’s agony. Sometimes omegas get caught because the amount of pain they’re in is a walking beacon. So I have to get somewhere safe, I have to do it fast, and I have to pretend I’m not in pain the whole time. If I’m slow, then I start losing my mind—all the drugs and heat turn my brain to soup.”
There were protections and programs, but not ones that gold packs qualified for. Another move in the incentive game the government played to dissuade omegas from avoiding the injection.
He considered that, cocking his head. “What about the pill you took the other week? Delay it by a day, a week, a month? Then you know—?”
“Do you know how expensive those are?” I asked. “And even then, it’s just the same thing again. It comes on fast with no warning.”
He blew out a breath. “But if youcanget to a clinic—”
“Have you ever been to one?” I asked.
