POV: Aurora
Omega.
The word hangs between us, heavy.
It doesn't sound medical or like a diagnosis. It sounds like those news stories about "pheromone regulations" that you pass by thinking they're for other people.
"No..." I murmur. "That doesn't make sense."
Dante doesn't move.
"It does," he replies. "Even if no one has bothered to explain it to you before."
I cross my arms. I don't know if I'm shivering from the cold or from that strange heat rising up my neck.
"Explain it," I say. "Until yesterday, I was just an intern with anxiety. Now I have a label of... what? Species? Defect?
His amber eyes don't blink.
"It's not a defect," he says. "Omega is not less. It's different. Your body responds to things that others don't even notice. You smell more, you feel more. And if no one intervenes, there will come a point where no stress report will be able to cover it up."
He doesn't say "jealousy," but I hear it anyway.
I laugh dryly.
"And you decided on your own that it was your job to come to my street and tell me this?" I ask. "Is 'visiting poor employees to tell them they're not normal' in your job description?"
One corner of his mouth tenses.
"It's not in any description," he admits. "But I am responsible for the tower, for the project you're working on... and for the consequences of what they did to you using Seraphim."
The phrase sticks with me.
"What they did to me?" I repeat. "I thought Seraphim was a dirty social project, not an experiment."
Dante takes a second.
"Seraphim was used by some clans for more than just philanthropy," he says. "They were looking for profiles like yours: intelligent, without a network, sensitive. The scholarship was the bait."
My stomach churns.
"Are you saying they knew I was... this?" I whisper. "Omega. Before I did."
"They suspected," he corrects. "Your history, your sensitivity, some tests. I'm not the first to see your potential. I'm the first to see it and decide not to hand it over."
"Potential." "Hand it over."
"Hand it over to whom?" I ask.
"People like the Valcourts," he replies, lowering his voice. Clans that use omegas as currency. Your name was on their radar long before you knew they existed.
I want to say he's exaggerating. That this sounds like a bad TV series. But I remember the guy in the elevator who looked like a vampire from a magazine talking about "fresh air," the heavy surnames that are repeated in Seraphim, the doctor saying that my results were going "straight" to someone else.
I can't accuse him of inventing ghosts when I myself have been feeling something on top of me for days without seeing it.
"And you?" I ask. "What do you do with 'my potential'? Do you keep it in a safe? Do you use it as a weapon? Do you put me in a display case?"
The anger makes me feel hotter than any symptom.
Dante takes a step toward me.
My body registers it as if he had crossed an invisible line. The smell of storm and amber reaches me, dense.
"I protect it," he says. "This morning I prevented them from turning your blood into a human experiment. Tonight I'm here, telling you the truth, instead of letting you hear it from someone who wants to buy you."
"I'm not something to be bought," I spit out.
"I know," he replies. "They don't."
"How long have you known?" I ask. "About the 'omega' thing."
"Since the elevator," he says. "Your scent doesn't leave much room for doubt. The tests just confirmed it."
A mixture of shame and anger washes over me.
"So you classified me from day one," I summarize. "Omega." "Resource." And I was worried I had signed an abusive contract.
"You signed much more than a contract," he says quietly. "And you didn't decide it alone. That's why I'm here."
I look at him.
I want to hate him. To fit him into a single box: villain, savior, controlling boss. But none of them fit him alone, and that unsettles me more than if he were yelling at me.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" I ask. "Go to the tower tomorrow and say, 'Good morning, I'm an omega, where do I register'? Hide? Quit?"
He shakes his head.
"I don't want you to run away," he says. "Running away would leave you at the mercy of whoever finds you first. And I don't want you to register under just anyone. Not while there are clans waiting for you to make a mistake."
The word 'register' grates on me.
"Then what?" I insist.
Dante looks at the door of my building for a second and then back at me.
"Tomorrow you're going to work as usual," he says. "You're going to stay with Seraphim. I'm going to make sure no one touches your file without going through me. And we're going to make a plan for when your body crosses a point where you can no longer pretend this is just stress."
My heart stumbles.
"And in the meantime?" I ask.
His eyes lock onto mine.
"In the meantime," he replies, "you won't be alone in this. Whether the others like it or not, you are already under my protection."
The word "my" lingers in the air.
My body responds before my head does: something in my chest, in my stomach, lower down, tenses in a way I don't want to analyze. As if a part of me had been waiting, without knowing it, for someone to take that position.
"Protection usually comes at a price," I say. "What's yours, Mr. Noir?"
For the first time that night, a real smile touches his mouth, briefly.
"That's the right question," he says.
He takes another step. He doesn't touch me. He doesn't need to.
"I'll tell you," he adds. "But not here, in the rain, in the middle of your street. Some things aren't discussed where anyone can hear."
"Then tell me when," I whisper.
His amber eyes shine in the light of the streetlamp.
"Tomorrow," he says. "After your shift. I'll wait for you at the tower."
He doesn't say the floor.
He doesn't say the price.
And yet, as I watch him turn and walk away down my street as if he's always known the way, I know I've just accepted a debt that wasn't in any clause...
And that, of all the things that could scare me, what makes me most dizzy is that part of me doesn't want to escape that promise.