Good Girl by Sam Hall
Chapter 3
The Omega Ball, not the Alpha or Beta Ball. It all centred on us. Every major city had one, and most rural born omegas flocked to the city as soon as they discovered their designation. To live with family, to be swept up into elite boarding schools, sponsored by rich and powerful alpha families. No omega was going to moulder away in some backwater. We were rare, we were desired, and at the ball, we were to present ourselves like prize calves to market. They stopped short of checking our teeth and hooves. Well, mostly.
“Cyn, your fitting,” Mum said, bustling into the kitchen. We still lived in the house by the forest, despite my mother’s very impressive climb of the corporate ladder. Always underestimated as a beta, she’d left the company she’d been working for when I was a teen and then started her own. Having to prove herself rather than rely on old alpha connections, she was nimble, responsive, and could pivot with the market like no one’s business.
Or so I was told.
Being an omega, nothing like that was expected of me, but I read the financial pages and the magazines with my mother’s face on the cover anyway.
“Because she has transcended the limits of her designation, or the perceived limits,” my therapist had said.
“Maybe.”
Maybe it’s because she was strong and capable and had the fucking world at her feet, I’d thought, but of course, I could have some of that. If I just—
“We’re going to be late,” Mum prompted, bringing me back to the here and now. Back to the kitchen, the peanut butter toast in front of me, the coffee she was pouring in her travel mug. Black, of course.
“OK, I’ll put some clothes—”
“Breakfast first, Cyn. You know that.”
And so I sat and ate the toast that now felt like sticky, gooey cardboard in my mouth. Make sure you eat regularly, Cyn. Take your vitamins, Cyn. Don’t stay up too late or sleep too long, Cyn. The balancing act of an unmated omega felt so fucking oppressive sometimes.
But if you don’t, someone else will take over your care, I thought furiously, swallowing and then chewing through the rest of my breakfast. You’ll be at someone else’s beck and call. Theirs to control, theirs to make sure you—
“Get a wriggle on,” Mum said, and being a good little omega, I did.
“Ah,madam, we’re quite booked up for the upcoming Omega Ball,” the receptionist at the dressmaker’s told us. A new receptionist, one who might not have her job for long, if the look my mother was giving her was anything to go by. She was a beta, so she had no way to smell my scent and confirm what I was. All she could do was look me up and down and make her decision—beta.
I looked into the mirror behind her, saw the long dark brown hair, a tall, slim figure like my mother’s, and understood. I should’ve been a beta. Mum and my erstwhile father were betas. There hadn’t been an omega for generations, and then there was me. Lacking all the soft, small, sweetness of an omega, like Mum, I looked like the sharp edge of a blade, something she directed at the poor girl.
“And my daughter is an omega. The booking was for Rhodes. Cynthia Rhodes. Look it up.”
Beta to beta, you couldn’t rely on physiology to make sure your orders were followed, but Mum had channelled enough bad bitch energy dealing with dickhead alphas that she wasn’t going to let a silly receptionist get in her way. The girl clicked onto the booking screen quickly enough, then her face fell.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” Mum replied, cutting her off short. “I’ll need a long black and a quiet space. I’ll need to work through the fitting, Cyn.”
“Of course,” I said as we were herded over to the fitting rooms.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, was why I hated the whole season. Like something out of a fucking Jane Austen novel, omegas and their mamas clustered around the centre of the circular fitting room area. There, Madam Colette—pretty sure her real name was Mrs Colleen McDougall, but whatever—stood in the middle of that, gushing over omegas, chatting with the other mothers, and barking orders at her staff as they held swatches of fabrics up to their models’ skin, twisting swathes of it around their bodies.
I was low-key fascinated by her. She was an alpha, no two ways about it, with the appearance of an omega. Soft, shorter than normal, and always wearing voluminous gowns in shades of purple or pink, she couldn’t have seemed less alpha if she tried.
But only if you weren’t really looking.
The way the beta seamstresses all rushed about to do her bidding, the place run like a well-oiled machine with her at the centre.
“My dear Miranda,” Madam said, sweeping up to Mum and kissing her on both cheeks. I always liked that bit, the totally awkward freeze up Mum did each time, emerging from the shop owner’s embrace wide-eyed. Well, right up until Colette descended on me.
“And my pretty little omega.”
Not pretty. Not little. Not… Oh fuck.
“I have just the thing for you. When you emerged unmated, I searched my brain. How are we going to help the lovely Cynthia find her mate this year?”
“Cyn,” I prompted out of habit.
“Come, come, see my vision board. I think you will love it.”
Every omega had a little alcove in the fitting area, somewhere she could retreat to, seek the closed space and reduced scent burden she craved. I didn’t, having blasted through my olfactory response young by staying at public school until I turned eighteen and enduring the many competing scents of the classroom. Really awkward when you started scenting the desire coming off the teachers in waves. But when Madam pulled the curtains, creating a little nest for the three of us, I had to admit, my shoulders did drop a few inches.
“As you know, this year the theme is ancient Greece, so I searched and searched through countless tiresome books of marble sculptures and came up with this. Et voila!”
With a wave of her hand, the big monitor in the cubicle flashed a series of images on the screen, and I sucked a breath in.
It didn’t happen very often, that I felt actually seen. Not ‘little omega,’ not my mother’s daughter, just me. Cyn. The dress was veils of midnight blue chiffon, bound to the body by a series of gold cords, and across the back, a decorative quiver made of gold leather. It was beautiful, but in a way that didn’t offend me like it normally did. This wasn’t bustles and push-up bras, something, anything to make me look more traditionally omega. This was much more like a beta dress—fierce and unapologetically gorgeous.
“For Artemis, the virgin goddess,” Colette said with a beaming smile, taking that moment and stamping her dainty little foot on it.
“Well, what do you think, Cyn?” Mum asked. “That shade of blue with your eyes and colouring will look stunning, and I think the quiver is a lovely touch.”
Sure, let’s send a message to the entire fucking world that I’m an old maid and haven’t been dicked before.
I had, but one wasn’t supposed to acknowledge that. I’d had one-night stands, only with betas, but alphas were caught up on this whole ‘undiscovered country’ bullshit, so hence the inspo.
“It’s beautiful,” I agreed, because it was. I did like the colour and the quiver, wondering if it would be too much to chat to Kai about showing me how to use a bow and arrow. Going into the ball armed would go a long way towards making me feel more comfortable.
Groping hands as I passed.
Pew!Shot in the mitts with an arrow.
More sliding up my thigh at the dinner table.
Pew! Pew!Take that you skeezy motherfucker!
Dragging me into a darkened room, locking the door behind him. Forcing me down onto my knees and—
Fuck, I needed a nuclear bomb to go into this fucking thing, not a goddamn quiver.
“This will, of course, be the gown for the big event, but you’ll need a range of new pieces for the entire season. Summer dresses for luncheons, some smart separates for more casual affairs, and lingerie…”
Madam Colette was transported off into a rapture, her eyes glowing because she was seeing a stream of dollar signs or she really loved all this shit, I didn’t know. My gaze slid to Mum, who bore all of this with equanimity.
This wasn’t what she’d wanted. Part of me wondered if some of her drive to succeed in business came from my surprise designation. She’d expected to have a beta daughter, for her to get good grades and follow her into the corporate world, going to university and getting a degree, then onto financial and social independence. Instead, she’d been saddled with an omega.
My school had put her options to her, about the various private schools that would take me on, paying her a substantial stipend in exchange for introducing me to the eligible alphas in the family, forming connections before I could legally decide. It was a way to get an inside track on what was a rare commodity, and most families of omegas, outside those born to affluent families, jumped at the opportunity. Better that than to attract unruly neighbourhood alphas to your door, ones who wouldn’t take no for an answer. But Mum, she’d shaken her head at all of this. If being part of the elite was what would protect me, she’d punch through the glass beta ceiling, and she had. She met my gaze, reaching out and squeezing my hand before shooting me a little smile.
“We’ll get what Cyn feels comfortable with,” Mum replied, cutting off Colette’s laundry list, the woman’s mouth snapping shut, but those sharp brown eyes arrowed in on me quick smart. I was the prey, and she the predator.
“Of course, my dears.” She moved over to the screen, swiping until she pulled up the omega season calendar. “Which of the events were you intending to attend?”
And there it all was, the battlefield all young omegas were thrust into, where males and females of our designation met those alphas with enough power, influence, and money to warrant the opportunity. I looked at the parties and soirees and the boating events and the polo and found my jaw tightening further and further, but I forced a long breath out. This was it, until I chose, this was my life. I could be forty years old, and I’d still be expected to present myself for the season.
“All of it,” I said, feeling everything Mum had done for me as an almost tangible weight. This was going to cost a small bloody fortune, and I couldn’t keep doing that to her. “Outfit me sufficiently for all of it.”
Mum’s eyes jerked up from her tablet, surprise writ large there.
“Can’t be the virgin queen forever, can I?” I said with a smirk, but Mum wasn’t fooled. Her eyes narrowed, letting me know we’d be having a conversation about this later. That was OK—she’d talk, I’d listen. It’d be good practise for what was to come.
“Well, we better get started then,” Madam Colette said.