Knot Your Damn Omega (Slate City Omegaverse)

The design in front of me wouldn’t fully resolve itself. I’d been staring at it for what felt like hours, searching for that intangible thing which made a tattoo sing. It was good I still had a week before the client needed to see it, because this wasn’t working.

With a sigh, I clicked off the tablet I was sketching on and went to the kitchen to grab a beer from the fridge. It wasn’t likely the beer was going to magically fix the design, but a man could hope.

The front door burst open and then closed again. Not quite a slam, but hard enough for me to pay attention. There were heavy sounds of equipment being dropped, followed by thumping, determined footsteps. Bennett strode into the kitchen looking absolutely wild and snagged the open beer from my hand. I hadn’t even taken a sip yet.

“Why yes,” I said sarcastically, “that was for you.”

“Thanks.” He tipped the bottle back, emptying half of it in one go.

“Fucking hell, Ben.” I grabbed another beer and popped the cap off. “It was just a party. Couldn’t have been that bad. And didn’t they have alcohol there?”

The glass bottle hit the kitchen island, and he stared at me. “Bad was the last thing it was. It was…” He ran both hands through his hair and huffed a breath. “I need you to smell me.”

I chuckled. “Why?”

“Just do it,” he said. “Now, before it fades.”

Taking a sip of my beer, I circled the island and leaned in, doing as he asked. We’d done weirder things in our pack life.

It hit me all at once. Sweet floral fragrance lined with a deeper tartness. Powerful and heady—in no way should a scent be that strong when it was just a remnant. I blinked and inhaled again. It was there, a gorgeous thread which made my Alpha stand up tall and pay attention.

Omega.

“Holy fuck.”

“Now you get it.”

I’d never scented anything like that before. Omegas always smelled good, but that? That was something else entirely. A scent which told me it was mine and I needed to claim it. I needed to bury my nose in it and never stop breathing in.

“PACK ASSEMBLE,” Bennett called, stripping the shirt off over his head.

I raised an eyebrow. “You couldn’t have done that before you asked me to smell you?”

Bennett snorted. “I’m barely keeping my focus together long enough to talk to you all instead of finding her again right now, Luke.”

I knew what he meant. If this was my secondhand reaction, being in her presence must have been incredible. More than incredible. We walked to the living room, footsteps clunking from elsewhere in the house. “You going to tell us why her scent is all over you too?”

“Yes.” He glared at me and tossed the shirt onto the coffee table. “I will.”

Rylan came in, shirtless and mussed, clearly blinking sleep from his eyes. “Pack Assemble? What are we, superheroes?”

A growl rumbled from Bennett. “You might feel like it in a second.”

“Probably not in the same way,” I muttered. Rylan was a Beta. The only Beta in our pack. I didn’t doubt the scent would be good for him, but it wouldn’t have the same impact as it would on the rest of us.

I took another sip of beer in an attempt to keep myself from snatching Ben’s t-shirt off the table again to inhale the scent which was already imprinted on my brain.

Kade and Avery entered together, looking at us expectantly.

“Is this where Bennett spills his feelings about being invited to a fancy party and how awful it was?” Kade asked. None of us really liked the party scene. At least not that party scene. But it was a good opportunity for Ben—for all of us—so he’d reluctantly agreed to go. Now I was fucking grateful he had.

“Smell the shirt,” Ben said.

Avery raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Do it,” I nodded. “And be grateful he took it off for you first. Practically had my head in his armpit when he had me scent it.”

Even as crazed as he was, Ben laughed once. “Asshole.”

Kade leaned forward and snagged the black shirt. He didn’t even get it all the way to his nose before I saw the change. He went rigid, suddenly inhaling deeply. When he looked up his eyes were dark, pupils wide and the same blank, wild look Bennett had on his face. “Who?”

“I’ll get to that.”

Avery stole the shirt and started to purr. “Holy shit.”

“Okay, let me see.” Rylan stole the fabric and scented it. His eyebrows rose. “Damn. Whoever’s scent that is, it’s incredible.”

“She literally ran into me,” Ben said. “I was tattooing Carson’s wrist, and she crashed into me from behind.” All of us cringed. “Luckily, I was reaching for ink when it happened.”

“Thank fuck,” I laughed.

“When I turned around, she was extremely upset I wasn’t a cupcake.”

All the air sucked out of the room at once. Bennett’s scent was distinctly vanilla. Cupcake wasn’t a far stretch, and if she scented him from across the room at a party where they sprayed industrial strength scent neutralizers…

“Holy shit,” Rylan said.

“Now you’re getting it,” Ben said. “She was flustered and ran away. I finished Carson’s wrist and packed up my equipment. By the time I’d done that, she was on the dance floor, which is how her scent is all over my shirt.” He glanced at me. “It was… I don’t know how to describe it. I was practically drunk on her scent, and she started perfuming.”

My eyes widened. “Really?”

“Really. I think it freaked her out, because she left the party entirely.”

“Seems like a theme,” Kade said, eyes still on the shirt in Rylan’s hands. I knew the feeling. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Esme Williams.”

“The twin?” Rylan said with a grin.

Ben nodded in confirmation. “The twin.”

I blinked. “Help me out here.”

“Eva May Williams, the actress, is an Omega, and is bonded to that band Mindless Delirium,” Rylan tossed the t-shirt back to Kade. “She has a twin sister who’s also an Omega. The papers are pretty hard on her since she’s not bonded and hasn’t found a pack.”

I frowned. That wasn’t fair. Finding a pack was hard at the best of times for Omegas. Doing so in the public eye would be even harder.

“People know it too,” Ben added. “Carson said as much. She also seems to think everyone prefers her sister to her. When I approached her on the dance floor I had to tell her I was there for her and not for Eva.”

I took a step backward so I could lean against the wall. “What do we do about this?” I said. “If she ran away from you—”

“I don’t think that was it,” he said. “I think she… I don’t know. It seemed like she spooked herself. Both times. And frankly, I don’t care if she’s jumpy. I’ve never had this kind of reaction to a scent before. Have any of you?”

It wasn’t even a question. We all knew we hadn’t.

“I can’t,” Ben hauled in a breath and shook his head. “I can’t walk away from that. If you’d been there, you’d feel the same. She’s fucking beautiful, and her scent feels like you’re inhaling fire in the best way. It lights you up under your skin. I want you all to meet her because I think she’s ours.”

My breath went short in my chest. It was a dream every pack had: to find their Omega and bond with them, creating the intangible bond you could always feel. Even Rylan could bond with an Omega if he was bitten. Right now we didn’t have that, and we’d talked more than once about wanting it.

“How do we do it?” Avery asked. “If she spooks easy, the five of us aren’t going to put her at ease.”

“First, I need to know if you guys are with me on this.” Ben looked around at each of us, and it was easy to say I’d never seen him like this. We’d all had flings at one time or another, but we’d never found an Omega who called to us, and my pack brother looked nearly haunted by the idea of losing this one.

“I want to meet her. Hell, I want to fucking bond her on scent alone.”

“Agreed.” Kade still held Ben’s shirt, staring at it as if it would transform into the woman in question.

Avery smiled and said “Of course,” at the same time Rylan was saying, “Hell yeah.”

“But wanting to meet her still doesn’t solve the problem of how,” Avery pointed out.

Ben was smiling now. “For that? I have an idea.”