Milo
Ican smell myself, and that's a massive fucking problem.
I'm standing outside Byrne's, clutching the door handle, my thickest, most oversized sweater pulled all the way up to my jaw, and I canstillsmell it. Callum's scent is layered into mine like someone stitched it there. Pine smoke and brown sugar woven through my usual baked-goods smell in a way that screamsbonded omegato anyone with a working nose. I've showered twice today. I used my own soap. I even avoided the nest this morning, which was physically painful and entirely pointless because the scent isn't on my clothes. It'sinme. It's in my skin. It's what happens when you spend weeks sleeping in your alpha's shirts and building dens out of his laundry.
Ava's unanswered text buzzes in my pocket like a tiny, persistent guilt bomb.We should talk soon.I've been staring at it for three days. I've drafted eleven replies and deleted all of them.
One crisis at a time. I push through the door.
The booth is already full. Jude is talking with both hands about something that clearly requires violent gesturing. Benji has his phone out, scrolling with the bored intensity of someonepretending not to listen. Shay is leaning back with a whisky, looking like he'd rather be literally anywhere else, and Soren is tucked into the corner with his sketchbook. Rhys is at the bar—I can see the back of his head, broad shoulders, the calm anchor to Jude's chaos even from twenty feet away.
Normal. Completely normal. My best friends in our usual booth at our usual bar on what should be a usual Thursday night. Except I'm carrying approximately three massive secrets and the biological equivalent of a neon sign above my head that saysCallum Hayes was here. And I'm about to sit within sniffing distance of Jude Park, who is mated and whose nose has been upgraded to military-grade since he bonded with Rhys.
I'm going to die tonight.
"Milo!" Jude spots me first, because Jude spots everything first. He waves me over with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever who's been told the mailman is coming. "Where have youbeen? You look alive! I was starting to think you'd been murdered by Anonymous Alpha and I was going to have to file a report."
"I had the flu," I say, sliding into the booth next to Soren. He scoots over without comment and gives me a small, knowing smile that I pointedly ignore.
"You've had the flu for over two weeks," Benji says, not looking up from his phone.
"It was a bad flu."
"Must've been." Benji's eyes flick up to mine for exactly one second. "You look...different."
"I don't look different."
"You look different," Shay confirms from behind his whisky, not making eye contact with anyone.
Declan appears at the table with a tray—Soren's tea, Benji's dark and stormy, and something for me that I didn't order. "Your usual," he says, setting down an oat milk latte. I didn'tknow I had a usual here, but apparently Declan tracks these things.
"Thanks," I mutter.
He gives me the bar-dad nod—the one that saysI see you and you're fine and your drink is correct—and heads back toward the bar. On his way past, he sets a drink in front of Shay without stopping.
"I didn't order yet," Shay says to Declan's retreating back.
"You order the same thing every Thursday," Declan calls over his shoulder.
Shay rolls his eyes, takes a sip, and says nothing. I file that interaction away without knowing why.
Rhys materializes with a round of something for the table and slides into the booth beside Jude. His hand goes to the back of Jude's neck automatically—thumb against the nape, possessive and easy, the casual touch of a mated alpha who doesn't even have to think about it anymore. Jude doesn't pause his rant about a professor who doesn't understand "creative interpretation" to acknowledge the touch, but he leans back into Rhys's palm.
The sight of them—loud Jude and steady Rhys, the post-mating version that's somehowmorechaotic, not less—makes my stomach turn over. I wonder if Callum and I look like that from the outside. If the bond is that visible. If everyone can see it the way I can see it on them.
The conversation rolls on. Benji dissects his KnotMe disaster of the week—a guy who showed up twenty minutes late, ordered for him, and then asked if Benji was "one of those assertive omegas" like it was a disease. Soren talks about a museum exhibition that just closed. Shay refuses to engage with any topic that involves feelings. I laugh in the right places, sip my latte, and angle my body slightly away from Jude because his noseis working even when he's not conscious of it. A mated-omega radar picking up bond-scent like a satellite dish.
Twenty minutes. I make it exactly twenty minutes before Jude goes still.
It happens mid-sentence. He's in the middle of a rant about his psych project, and his head turns toward me in slow motion. His nostrils flare. The recognition lands on his face like a bucket of ice water.
"Milo." His voice drops from Jude-volume to human-volume, which is how you know something serious is happening. "You smell like bonded alpha."
Benji's phone hits the table with a clatter.
"Oh, thank God someone said it," Benji says. "I've been sitting here for twenty minutes trying to decide if I was imagining it or—"
"We all noticed," Shay says, staring at his drink.