1. Aria

1

ARIA

Scaredy cat.

I'm not scared. I've faced down a grown ass alpha in what he believes is his prime while feeling death cramps from daring not to fall pregnant after a heat.

I'm not scared…mostly.

However—and that is one strong however—it's sunset in Puritan City, and my last client is being a picky bitch, demanding I get her hair as light as possible before she walks out of the salon.

It's fine. Everything is just super-duper freaking fine.

I'm so not afraid of the dark, except when it's dark out. That isn't the same thing as fearing the dark.

Shit, I'm afraid of the dark.

Oh, and my trusty car decided to take an impromptu nap on the way to this urban jungle they call Puritan City, so now I get the pleasure of taking a leisurely stroll home after dark.

Lucky me.

"What about this color?" she asks, blinking at me with big blue eyes and overly tanned skin.

Looking up from my phone, I blink at the Pinterest picture she is showing me. It's clearly a filter, but it isn't just impossible to tell a client that I can't achieve that color, it's inconceivable. They always think I'm lying. Not even Mother Nature can whip up that color.

I smile politely at the woman who I'm sure is actually the same age as me—twenty-eight. "Ice blonde," I say, barely concealing the slight squeak in my voice. She walked in here with clearly box-dyed black hair, which she lied about. "We can probably achieve that color after a few visits, but it will take a while."

She stares at me as though the words coming out of my mouth are absolute gibberish. I'm pretty sure I just spoke the same language, but just in case, I sign the words to her.

Nothing.

"Right," she drawls before releasing a full-blown belly laugh. She throws her head back, dislodging a few well-placed foils. Fuck it. She laughed, so that's on her. When she settles, she swipes a bright red fingernail under her eye. "And I'm an omega."

I resist the urge to pretend not to hear my timer go off and let her hair fry. It would be such sweet revenge. Alas, my moral compass says to get off my ass and rinse her out.

I giggle a little with her, because what does she even mean by that? Is she implying that being an omega is a bad thing? Rare, sure, but her tone suggests otherwise. We are just a stinky bunch, and I just happen to smell like an orange Creamsicle on a hot day. Luckily for me, I have the unique ability to control my emotions, so I don't fling my scent to any unsuspecting passerby.

Also, I work in a salon. I lather myself in chemicals all day long so no one can really catch my scent. To keep from swooning in public, I keep my trusty scent plugs in my nose. They are little magnetic clips that settle right inside my nostrils, and they filter out all scents.

Thank the sun baked beaches of the coast, because I don't want to smell an alpha. I'm so done with men and alphas that I won't even look at a beta for a booty call.

"Let's see what that bleach looks like." I pop an orange candy, push away from the comfy chair, and lock the front door as I walk by. Like I said, I'm not scared of the dark, just aware of my surroundings, and I'm not about to play roulette with my life.

The click of the lock echoes through the almost empty salon, and I take a moment to inhale deeply. The air carries the faint scent of hair dye and the lingering aroma of the coffee I gulped down earlier. The dimming light from outside casts long shadows on the walls, adding to the eerie silence that fills the space. My pulse quickens a notch.

I approach my client, deftly undoing a foil in her hair. The chemical laden strands cling to my fingers, surprisingly soft despite the harsh treatment. The bleach has done its job well—better than I expected, given the box dye debacle. The strands gleam a pale yellow under the harsh salon lights, a decent base for the ice blonde she desires.

"Oh." She slaps her magazine closed. I barely resist glancing at it, but I do. I'm nosy, but the news lately has been, well, depressing. "Can you believe that Chris what's-his-name just revealed as an alpha?" She shakes her head, losing yet another precious foil.

It makes my blood boil—the foils, not the alpha. It took me forever to get them in there because she wanted her hair as light as possible, thinking I'm a miracle worker.

I'm not.

I'm just a stylist in Puritan City. Well, among other things.

"Did he?" I ask, feigning surprise. "I mean, it isn't like it was a huge shock." I tap the bowl for her to sit. He's a big guy with big muscles and a deep voice. It really isn't that hard to guess.

She settles into the chair, chattering away. Clients use us stylists as sounding boards and therapists.

I wish we could still perform surgeries like lobotomies. I'd be damn good at that.

"If you ask me, he had to have known he was an alpha. I mean, all those delicious muscles, and they shine like he oils them every night." She pauses before turning to me. "Do you think he oils his muscles?"

"I do, actually." Honestly, I think he's that self-absorbed.

"Alphas like him never look at betas like us." She sighs wistfully, settling back in the bowl as I continue to pull foils out of her hair. "Isn't that right?"

If she only knew…

I bite back a sardonic laugh, focusing instead on the task at hand. "For sure," I agree mindlessly, my fingers working methodically to remove the foils. The metallic sound of each one being pulled free fills the air. Why does it take so long to get them all in and a millisecond to pull them out?

"I think it's bullshit," she states with more vehemence than I anticipated from her. "The recent reports are saying that only an omega can take an alpha's knot and that if a beta wants to reproduce, they have to do so with another beta."

I pause, my fingers buried in her hair. The heat from the bleach has warmed her scalp, the smell sharp and pungent. "Yeah, well, the world loves its labels, doesn't it?" I murmur, my mind wandering to my own complicated existence.

She tilts her head, looking at me with a curiosity that borders on suspicion. "What about you? Do you have any alpha or beta prospects?"

My heart skips a beat. The question feels invasive, hitting too close to the secrets I've buried. "Not really," I reply smoothly, forcing a smile. "I'm too busy with the salon to think about dating."

Or rather, I'm too busy masking my natural scent.

She hums, seemingly satisfied with my answer. "I guess that makes sense," she mutters, flipping to another page. "I feel like being an omega would complicate things. Like slick, it feels invasive." She points at her magazine. "Look at this, panties that absorb slick. What is this world coming to?"

I don't engage with her. It's easier this way, letting her assumptions mask the truth, which is that being an omega isn't just a label for me—it's a life sentence. Plus, those panties have saved my hide on more than one occasion.

I hum at her in encouragement, though I already knew all this.

About twenty years ago, the world as we knew it changed forever. They called it the Omega Virus, but it wasn't like any disease we'd seen before. It rewrote human DNA, creating a new social hierarchy. Most folks stayed the same—we call them betas now. But others? They changed. Alphas emerged, strong and dominant, while omegas became rare and highly sought after. It's like mother nature decided to play a cosmic joke on humanity, and we're still figuring out the punchline.

The other teenagers are now known as omegas and alphas.

Scientists still don't completely understand what triggered the change in evolution, just that it happened. If they asked me, I'd call it devolution, not evolution. Alphas go absolutely berserk if they scent an omega they want to rut.

"Anyway," she carries on, "I got tested four times." She stares directly at me as I wash her hair out. Why do clients do this? Babe, look away. "And each result said I had latent omega genetics. I just need to find the right alpha to wake me up."

I really want to tell her not to wish for that. She doesn't want that kind of attention, but the world is still far too new to this evolution and too full of hormones to make the right decision, and by right decision, I mean not hoping to be something you aren't. Instead, they celebrate alphas and omegas.

I don't say that though, because if she has the omega genetics and the right alpha walks through the front door, then she's fucked, literally and figuratively.

Betas are romanticizing it.

Not a single one I talk to wonders where all the omegas are. Oh, we're here, but we're just hiding because we easily get dick drunk.

"I want to go to the alpha and omega gathering for the East Coast that's coming up," she remarks. "Have you been tested?"

Her question throws me off completely, so it takes me a whole minute to realize she is talking to me. "Yeah," I tell her, which isn't a lie. I have been tested more times than I can count, because unlike my client, I wanted the results to be a lie.

"And?" she drawls, her eyes wide, then she snorts when I don't answer her in the millisecond she gives me. "Beta, right?"

Why does she have to say it like it's a curse?

"I'm actually proud to be a beta." Oh, now that is a bold-faced lie. I don't even want to exist in this new world. Send me back to the eighties and leave me there to live in peace.

As I work on her hair, I can't help but think about how different the world is now. Alphas, betas, omegas—labels that didn't exist when my aunt was a teen, but now define everything.

"How's my hair look?" she asks, because she loves to talk about herself, and inquiring about my life shows far too much empathy. Or is it sympathy?

"Honestly?" I ask, because I don't know how to tell my mouth to think before speaking. "It looks amazing." I almost got all the black out in one sitting. "But you'll need a treatment."

"Oh, just do it now." She waves her hand like it's no big deal.

It is.

"You'll have to schedule a treatment," I tell her with my best manager voice—the very one I've been practicing in my mirror. I'd like to think I'm getting damn good at it.

"Just do it now," she states.

"Can't." I tap her shoulder. "Sit up slowly."

"Why the hell not?" She whips her head around.

"Because you've already run two hours past your allotted time, and a treatment goes outside of your quoted cost," I say as politely as I can. My boss gave her a quote, and she is sticking hard to it, trying to milk that quote for all it's worth. There is no way I am hanging around another hour.

"You're telling me I can't get a treatment tonight." She does that little head bob all the girls from Puritan City do when they are about to throw down.

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I walk over to my station. I already cut her hair after her first round of foils. This is the second, and if I do anything else to her hair, it is literally going to fall out. Also, I'm not budging on this.

The client is not always right. Actually, more often than not, they are so wrong, it hurts. I love telling clients just how wrong they are, but I need this job, and my boss is the only one willing to pay me under the table, no questions asked. I need that more than the air I breathe.

"I'll leave you a terrible review," she says as she flops in my chair.

I take a deep breath, the familiar scents of hair dye and shampoo mingling with the underlying metallic tang of the city beyond the salon doors. "Go ahead," I reply calmly, picking up a clean towel to pat her hair dry. "But remember, a review goes both ways. I can leave a detailed note on your file here about how difficult you are to work with. Do you think another stylist will want to touch your hair after that?"

I will blacklist her ass so hard, she will never get an appointment in this city again.

She narrows her eyes on me, but I see the moment she realizes she's not going to win this battle. "Fine," she mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Great," I say, not bothering to hide my relief. "Let's finish up here."

I blink at her with disdain while I wait for her to come up with another reply. Thankfully, she doesn't. "Okay." I grab my creams and begin to work it through her hair while she glares at me in the mirror.

That's fine by me. She doesn't have to cross the train tracks to get home. She has a driver. She isn't risking her life after sunset. I am.

I'm pretending, obviously. A bad review would likely put me on the internet, and I can't have that either.

"That's it?" She tries to turn around to glare at me again, but I manhandle her face forward. "You don't care if I give you a bad review?"

I tried so hard to be nice. I really did.

"I'm going to level with you, Christine?—"

"It's Destiny," she corrects.

Right. "Destiny." Who the hell names their kid Destiny? That's a stripper name if I ever heard one. "We're on Newbury Street, Destiny." I slur her name. The sun has set, so that means my last fuck just rode off into the sunset. "I live over in Hyde Park. I don't have a car, and I already missed my bus."

"The thirty-two runs?—"

"Ah!" I point a finger full of hair serum at her. "Female." I wave said finger around my body.

She snorts. "You'll be fine."

"And, Destiny, you can schedule for a treatment." That is me putting my foot down, because if she continues to argue with me, I might give in and stay. To keep myself from talking any more shit, I turn the blow dryer on and begin her blowout, which she prepaid for, thank my stars.

I love my job, and I'm even luckier that my boss helped me get my license in this state when I broke down right off the expressway. I didn't want to do it at first, because every time my name hits the papers, it sends a small flare of panic through me, but that's me being dramatic. Getting my cosmetology license didn't mean my name went in the paper, but it is in a public database because it has to be.

I would prefer to change my name, but I worked so damn hard to get that license, and it almost didn't happen. I deserve to see my real name on that little piece of paper.

Dammit, I shouldn't let my fear get the best of me.

I swear some days, I live in constant fight-or-flight, all thanks to my ex-mistake, but he's a whole trauma dump I don't have time to let my mind drift into right now. In fact, I need to think about how I'm getting home.

I could splurge and take an Uber, but logically, I should follow through and just take the late bus. I don't want to, but I will.

I am not overreacting, not by a long shot.

Everyone thinks I'm a beta. Hell, I'm damn good at playing the part. After all, both of my parents were betas, and I'm an only child. They raised me the way any millennial post-pandemic did. Even after I perfumed, they never treated me differently, though my mom did homeschool me just in case, which is probably why I ended up in the situation I did—thousands of miles across the continent, pretending to be a beta. I'm good at it, and no one suspects otherwise. In here, the scent of chemicals keeps me under the radar.

Out there? Not so much. There is only so much hunter's wash can do to remove my scent. Every day, when I walk out of my apartment, it's a risk, and it's one I have no choice but to take.

A girl has to eat.

I had so much hope that some rich scientist would come up with a magic pill I could pop, and boom, faux beta.

Alas, that's a no, and nothing will ever hide the fact that I'm an omega. At least nothing legal, and I'm not desperate enough to go the dark web route, so while little miss prissy pants here thinks it's no big deal, it very much is.

An omega who has been sweating all day riding public transport isn't a great thing. One whiff, just one, and I'm fucked .