What?!
I pull myself back, away from the animalistic griffin taking over. My jaw itches, like it does right before I grow a beak, and my jacket tightens around my chest, as if I’m trying to grow wings. Luckily, I manage to break out of it before I start shifting.
Cyra doesn’t need to see me like that, suddenly shifting and all. And that thought clears the final wisp of the animal instinct from my brain. I don’t want to frighten Cyra.
With a shock, I realise that next to me, Zack is fighting the same impulse, his hydra shimmering under his skin as he looks around wildly. He meets my eyes and I see the desperation in his hydra’s gaze. His skin starts to grow dark scales and one of his hands has turned into a claw. What’s going on?
As I look to the other two shifters, the other two Alphas, I notice the same things with them. The cerberus’ skin is turning into fur, his body bulking up more, and the centaur doesn’t look that different, but the shocked look in his eyes tells me enough. They’re also seeming to come back to themselves.
Then my eyes finally come to Cyra. I expect her to be confused, confused about what four Alphas are suddenly all acting weird for, or maybe scared, scared that we’re going to be shifting around her, putting her in danger. But she looks heartbroken, tears in her eyes, as she’s clutching her dress closer around her.
“Fuck,” she quietly curses as she looks around. “Of course, like it could get any worse. Fuck.” She sounds tired and sad, like her world is falling apart around her.
“Cyra?” The cerberus is first to speak. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything is wrong.” She wraps her arms around herself tighter and when all four of us step closer, all wanting to help her, she holds out her hands. “No. Don’t. Bad idea.”
The wind picks up again, and this time I’m better at fighting the impulse, when I realise what’s going on. Cyra isn’t human, she’s Omega. We’re all reacting really strongly to her feromones, all four of us. Fucking no.
Max takes his jacket off and quickly puts it around her shoulders, and I growl at him, together with Zack and even the centaur. We all take a step closer to him and he bares his teeth, growling our way.
Then he quickly raises his hands. “I’m just trying to make it easier to focus.” He glances around. “I don’t think this is a chat we should be having here. And this should hopefully prevent others from scenting her too.” He reaches out to her carefully, and this time we don’t immediately growl, even though I want to rip him away from her. “We should leave. My place is closest.”
“Why do you get to—” Zack takes a threatening step in the cerberus’ direction, but I stop him.
“You can fight him when we’re away from here. He’s right. We don’t want to do this out in public.” No matter what this is.
Because I’ve got a feeling that whatever Cyra is going to say, it’s not going to make any of us very happy. If she’s an Omega, she’s very good at hiding it. And if she’s been hiding it so carefully, there has to be a reason for it. A very damn good reason.
“Yeah, we should go.” The centaur nods towards the side of the building. “Let’s sneak out that way. We don’t need a car to get to Max’ place. It’s pretty much right around the corner.”
Cyra glares at the cerberus, Max, apparently, who shrugs with a smile. “You don’t think I was going to let that guy pick you up all on his own? Let him see you in that dress first?”
That doesn’t seem to really make her glare any less, and it’s good to see that she’s exactly the same with others, that she doesn’t seem to take shit from anyone. That should be good. Should be...
Maybe?
16 Cyra
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I want to escape, disappear, or whatever, be anywhere that’s not here. I wish I could flee, run away, but the four Alphas are not giving me any leeway. They’ve surrounded me, like four bulky bodyguards... How could I, in my human form, outrun any of them? Especially when they can change into their shifter forms and just hunt me down in a single swoop.
What went wrong? Where did I go wrong?
When Max and Liam picked me up, I thought their reaction to me was because of some lingering scent traces on the dress, but now I’m not so sure. They shouldn’t be able to find my Omega scent on the dress anymore. We’ve been at the party for too long for that, any lingering scent should have disappeared by now, mixed up with the scents from the people around us, no longer noticeable. That means it’s me. That means I’m the one they’re scenting, the one they’re reacting to. That no matter how much I tried to hide, my methods have failed. Methods that have kept me safe for years...
Which is, of course, my crappy luck. Everything has started to fail me in the last week, and I don’t know how much more could go wrong... Which is, of course, inviting more trouble, so I quickly put that out of my mind.
Liam was right when he said that Max doesn’t live very far away. We’ve not even walked for ten minutes when we stop in front of a pretty sizable, but not a huge, house. Bigger than my parents’, but not as big as most houses in the area.
Max looks all of us over for a moment before he takes out his key. “No shifting inside the house. No breaking stuff, if you do, you pay to replace it. If you have to fight, you take it outside, I’ve got a big empty area out back. Understood?” He mostly focuses on Zack
