So, this chapter has a lot of weird in it. But bear with me. It gets better at the end.
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Danneel Harris, female alpha?
In an exclusive interview with PACK! Magazine, Danneel Harris dropped the bomb that she's an alpha.
Excerpt:
DANNEEL: Yeah, it was kind of awkward. I was a pretty late bloomer, which made it even more embarrassing when I was just - OMG, omega.
PACK!: Did you ever act on those feelings?
DANNEEL: (Raises an eyebrow) I was a teenager.
PACK!: So, yes?
DANNEEL: Yes. I had some... very close omega girlfriends in high school.
PACK!: But now you're married, we hear.
DANNEEL: Yep. It's great. We wanted a beta ceremony so we could invite or friends and family. Mating's great, but I think the betas really understand how to build community.
PACK!: So, you and Jensen are mates then too?
DANNEEL: It was kind of crazy, you know, because I met him, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I mean, I like beta boys as well as anyone, and I had had my omega girlfriends - well, that probably shouldn't have been the past perfect tense - but Jen was something else. He smelled amazing, and he was super cute, and to be honest, I had no idea how much my hormones were reacting to him until he disappeared for a couple of days and I chased him down, finding him in the middle of a heat, and well, that was that. I just knew that I wanted him - for more than right then, though I wanted him right then too. (She grins.)
PACK!: There aren't that many male omegas.
DANNEEL: There aren't that many female alphas! No, I know just how lucky I am. But I also know that, well, it's Jensen, it's not the omega thing. I've met a few other male omegas in my charity work, and they're just people. Some I like, some I don't. I liked Jensen. But if he had been a female omega, or a beta, I think I would have liked him just as much.
PACK!: How do you deal with security?
DANNEEL: Ever since Jensen came out we've had to be careful. Luckily the sets up in Vancouver are tightly closed, and he has a driver. When I told my agent I was planning on doing it too, she kind of flipped, and I've been jammed by security ever since. But I think it's worth it. What Jensen does for other male omegas, trying to get the rumors and myths out in the open and debunked, I think that's even more important for female alphas.
PACK!: Do you have something you want to say?
DANNEEL: I'd like to say that you don't have to be afraid, but a lot of times that isn't true. People are scared of what they don't understand. They're scared of things that aren't 'normal,' but it's so important to find a safe place to be yourself and to have people who accept you anyway. If no one ever knows that we actually exist no one will ever stop being afraid. Secrecy isn't the answer, but I'm coming out so that other girls, trapped in the tangled hormonal mess of high school, might have the chance of being able to be honest and not get hurt for it. That's all I want.
PACK!: Very moving. Thanks Danneel!
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Trina, who had come to pick Tori up from the party, was entirely unimpressed. Her mother was also less than thrilled at her swollen hands and swelling eye. Her father, on the other hand, was clearly trying not to be obviously totally proud of her. He bopped around, trying to be helpful, and occasionally giving her a slap on the shoulder. Finally, her mom hustled him out of the room so she could tend Tori's wounds in peace.
"It's been a long time since I had to do this."
Tori's eyes widened. "You had to do this for dad?"
Her mom twitched a smile. "As I said. It's been a long time. Want to tell me what happened? Was it your friend?"
What? Tori blinked. Her friend? Did her mom mean Jade? "Uh, no. I saw Jade earlier tonight. She, um, helped me with the detention. But she didn't want to go to the party."
"It seems like she made a smart decision."
"Maybe." Tori wanted to duck her head but she had to keep the ice pack on her eye. "I just... There were these girls, and they were a couple, and one of the alphas was getting pushy. And then the little one spat in his face! He was going to punch her. What was I supposed to do?"
Her mom rubbed her shoulder. "Some people might not feel like they could make a difference, even if they weren't afraid to get involved."
"I probably would have gotten squashed if this big alpha, Doug, didn't step in. But... I'm not sorry I did it."
"That's my girl!" her father was sticking his head in the door. Her mother threw a wet rag at his head.
She spent the rest of the weekend with her dad. He bought her ice cream and they hung out in the park. "Is this what alphas do?" she asked, lifting the ice cream cup, which had a pleasant numbing effect on her throbbing hands.
"Smart ones," he remarked. "You've never really been interested in what it meant to be an alpha." He looked at her. "Are you interested now?"
Tori tried to flex her hands. "I dunno. I guess. I mean, I'm not sure how much it matters. I'm not an alpha."
He raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not one of the guy alphas, and knowing what they do and how they think isn't really going to help me. I'm not even part of that group enough to get kicked out of it.
"If word gets out, they're going to be interested in you. And that could be a good or a bad thing, depending on who you have on your side."
"I don't have anyone on my side."
"You've made friends."
Tori made a face. Andre, Robbie, and Cat were great, but against a pack of pissed off alphas they were going to be as useful as a wet piece of cardboard. Beck had tried to help, introducing her to Doug, getting her 'protection' or something from him. And Doug didn't seem to be the worst alpha she had ever met. He was a jerk, but he had fought on the right side. If things got bad she might be able to ask him for help. But if things got bad it might already be too late. If she had managed to out herself last night, she had to be really careful not to piss anyone off.
Tori made a face. There were probably a thousand ways to piss off an alpha. Number one was looking like you were making a claim on an omega. Alphas always thought they had first dibs on any omega girls around.
That was luckily not going to be a problem.
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At school on Monday, Jade kept looking at her. Tori knew she shouldn't have let Trina do the makeup for her eye, because she was terrible at it (not to mention the great pain that Trina had managed to bestow while doing it.). But Jade had mocked her for kissing Beck and Cat - though neither of those things had been her fault! - and she had let her alone about the fighting.
It was... vaguely unnerving.
And Jade was smelling really good today. There was a new overtone to the familiar scent. She wanted to ask what it was. Maybe essential oils, or something? It didn't have any of the horrible chemical odors that artificial scents usually did. What was it?
Tori leaned closer, and then realized that she had just started to sniff Jade's neck in the middle of class. Jade turned and glared, and Tori shoved her chair backward. Bad plan. Bad plan!
Three foot radius, they had agreed on that.
She was scrupulous about it for the rest of the morning.
The party was on most people's minds that day, and Tori felt a few more sets of eyes on her than usual. But so far she hadn't heard any whispers of the 'female alpha' kind. At lunch she moved slowly through the tables, ears open, checking to make sure.
There were a few alpha tables, each with a rank. The top alphas, who tended to be graffiti artists and breakdancers, were mostly chill, a couple with clingy omega girlfriends; the others hooked up with betas. Second level alphas clustered in the trumpet section, trying to blow the French horn's brains out through their ears. The perfectly coiffed auditions-for-commercials every week hair gel crowd was mostly betas, with a few leading-man alphas mixed in, but they mixed in with the alpha crowd, and seemed to get a bit more respect than the serious drama-geeks or the conservatory musicians.
There were more alphas at Hollywood Arts than there had been at her old school. But that made sense. Alphas knew they belonged in the spotlight. No male alpha was ashamed of being an alpha. They never tried to hide it. She had heard of some beta boys trying to fake it, to get the roles and the other benefits, but apparently the male alphas had certain locker room rituals which weeded out the pretenders.
There also seemed to be fewer omegas. As a new student, Tori hadn't been there during all the first heats, when the rumors were going around like crazy, so she was out of the loop. She could only spot omegas by the way they behaved, or by seeing who missed school for a few days every month. The ones who hung onto their alphas for dear life were easy enough to identify, but the others tended to disappear into the background. The only real clue was that they got bullied more than other girls.
After much consideration, Tori had decided that probably the entire viola section of the orchestra were omegas - or maybe you just got bullied for playing the viola. But even when Tori counted all the violas and a few of the cellos, there still seemed to be too few omegas.
25% of the population was supposed to be omega. There had even been a male omega at her old school for a little while, who had been found out when he had gotten knotted in the locker room, been bullied mercilessly, and then disappeared. Tori just hoped he hadn't killed himself.
But at Hollywood Arts, there were barely a handful. But that made sense, right? Omegas weren't supposed to seek attention. Beta girls tended to get all the roles, including the ones that were supposed to be omega characters.
Tori wended her way through the outdoor cafeteria, skirting the alpha tables widely. But as she passed the lowest rank alpha table, the wind picked up and caught the page of the tabloid they were reading and blew it up and right into her face. An alpha got up, laughing, and peeled it off of her. Tori only got a glimpse of it, but it was enough to see the image of a busty, confident redhead actress and the line in huge print - "Danneel Harris - Female Alpha?"
"I'd knot that shit."
"Yeah, totally. Give me a half an hour with her and she won't be crying alpha no more. Well, she'll be crying 'oh, alpha, alpha, give it to me!'"
"You think alpha girls have a knot? That would be gross, right? You think they'd cry like beta girls do sometimes when they take a knot?"
"There aren't any alpha girls. They're just lesbian betas who want omega pussy."
"But the article says she mated with Jensen Harris. That's a dude."
"A dude omega. I didn't say they just wanted female omega pussy."
"Uh..."
Tori fled.
Jade was sitting alone at the lunch table, glaring death in the direction of the alpha table.
Tori swallowed and sat down across the table from her. Three feet. The truce had been going well. Keeping her distance was fine. She felt more stable, less like she was going to go crazy. It was funny, because she liked the way Jade smelled, while she hated the way the alpha guys smelled, but the response to it was the same: tension, nausea, headaches. "Alpha guys are such jerks," she offered.
The glare of death swung around and fixed on her. "I hate alphas," Jade said.
Tori winced. Was that comment actually or just incidentally directed at her? "Yeah," Tori said weakly. "Me too."
Jade snorted.
"I mean," Tori prodded her salad with her fork. "Not all alphas. You don't have to be a jerk to be an alpha... like, my dad is an alpha, and he's nice. Alphas are always like - oh, our hormones mean we have no self-control - but really! It's not that hard! It's totally possible to control your hormones and not throw yourself at every omega you see! It's important to really like someone."
Jade was giving her an incredulous look of the 'are you seriously still talking' type.
"My dad doesn't act like a stupid alpha," Tori finished weakly.
"Your mom's an omega."
Tori felt herself turning red. "Yeah."
Jade raised an eyebrow ironically. "Then he's probably mated. Mated alphas don't usually act so much like stupid alphas."
Tori stared at her. She hadn't really been listening. There was something distracting about the arch of the eyebrow and the slight eyeroll. She shook it off. "What?"
"Don't you know anything?" Jade rolled her eyes. "Everyone always talks about knotting and breeding," she made a face. "But mating isn't sexy, I guess. It's just disgusting."
She stood up, tossing her hair over her shoulder, and left the table. Tori sat by herself, a little stunned, possibly by the boots. Jade had really awesome boots. She swallowed down the extra spit that had gathered in her mouth, and frowned. Mating was disgusting? Now she was even more disgusting, and she didn't know why.
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The thing was, mating wasn't supposed to be disgusting. It was supposed to be nice. Like, if people really liked each other, and, well, hooked up frequently, they might end up mating. In most of the alpha/omega romance movies it was part of the payoff: alpha and omega go to bed together and come out mated, and isn't that romantic? Though in real life, people who decided to do it had to fill out a ton of paperwork and get blood tests before they were given the serum that made it happen.
She had sort of picked up that it made alphas not that interested in other omegas and omegas not so sensitive to other alphas. It also changed the omega's scent, so that for most alpha/omega pairs it counted as a marriage license, essentially. But her parents had gotten married like betas. It made sense that they'd be mated too. But she still didn't know what was supposed to be disgusting about it.
Tori asked the internet.
Wikipedia, as always, knew all. "Mating, once considered apocryphal, has now been discovered to be a glandular effect. In certain situations - low stress, stable prospects, high-nutrient diet - an omega will release particular hormones while in heat which activate the scent glands, making her available for mating. Contact between a breeding-age alpha-omega pair at this time will cause an adjustment in the chemical production of the scent glands of the omega, making her scent less appealing to other alphas [Johannsen and McGill 2009] and more appealing to the alpha involved [citation needed]. This adjustment increases fertility in the omega, and possessive, defensive behavior in the alpha, supporting the formation of monogamous family units."
The biology of it was sort of weird, and really, TMI. But she still didn't know why it was disgusting. Tori glanced at the outline of the rest of the article.
"1.1 Etymology
2.1 History of the Scientific Discovery of the Biological Basis of Mating
2.2 Biological function
..."
She clicked on 2.2, saw a diagram of a knot with an arrow pointing to the base of it, with the caption "prolonged glandular contact" and felt ill. Quickly she scrolled down and blinked as a title announcing "Abuses" appeared on the screen. She read it.
"After the mating process was discovered and the method standardized, chemicals were synthesized to induce a mating heat. These chemicals were intended to make it a matter of choice, rather than natural accident, to form long term bonds. Certain parents, however, wishing to make bonds between their children, would force mating contact at early ages. Unscrupulous alphas have used these chemicals to build harems, and/or facilitate rape.
"Omegas as property: In the years before omega rights became active and also currently in many less developed civilizations, the mating bond is considered a mark of ownership rather than partnership. Mated omegas found alone were prosecutable, and if found with a man not their mate-pair they could be stoned to death.
"Laws: Since the omega was assumed to have to be receptive to the alpha, evidence of a mate-bond was used to deny many claims of rape. The expanding black market for mating-heat triggering chemicals has made the legal community begin to question this attitude, but it is difficult to combat widespread prejudice. Even naturally mated or consensually mated pairs are not free from conflict. Yet many cases of domestic violence of a sexual or non-sexual nature have been ignored due to the existence of the mating bond."
It went on, and on. Tori put her hand to her mouth. This was awful. How could everyone say mating was so super romantic when stuff like this happened? Jade was right. It was disgusting.
It was also unpleasantly arousing. Sometimes she hated being an alpha. She rubbed the base of her wrist. Just because her kind threw their weight around like idiots, it didn't mean she had to. She wasn't a stupid alpha who thought with his knot. She didn't have a knot. That meant she probably didn't have the mating glands either, so this wasn't even her problem. She scrolled upwards, carefully keeping the picture of the knot hidden at the top of the screen, and read what came below it.
"Mating is most frequently instigated through sexual contact. It involves stimulation of the alpha preputial mating gland, which will secrete fluids. These fluids, coming into contact with an omega in a mating heat, will be absorbed through the skin and trigger the alteration in the scent glands."
"Oh gross," Tori said. Secreting fluids. She was done now. Jade was right - being an alpha was wildly disgusting, and she was back to wishing she had been born a beta.
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Jade woke up from a highly explicit dream and swore. It was fucking Wednesday. She had told her teachers that she would be missing on Thursday. But no, her body wanted to get things moving a little earlier this time. It was just the first day. Not too bad yet. She could go in, get her homework, grab Beck and bail. She popped about six heat suppressants and got into the shower.
She showered twice. It was necessary.
Luckily, the spiking hormonal levels from her dream started to calm and she managed breakfast with only one small comment from her mother about taking her pills. Great. Even after six pills and two showers her mother thought she smelled like a brothel. Lovely.
It wasn't bad yet. She just thought about Beck. She would have him soon, and it would be okay. She would be okay.
That was her mantra. It was a big fucking lie, but it had worked well enough until now. And it worked, right until she walked into school, and spotted Tori, standing at her locker, facing away from her, and saw her freeze.
Jade didn't move.
Tori pressed her hand to her mouth and nose, covering them, and then slowly, slowly, turned.
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Tori had to grab her locker when the waft of air came in from the open door. It smelled like someone's first heat. It made her knees give out.
What the hell? What was a girl on her first heat doing here?
She glanced to the side, spotting an alpha at his locker. He had glanced up, but then went back to sorting through his books, as if it wasn't the strongest scent he'd smelt in his life.
She had to look.
Carefully, not wanting her knees to give up on her and send her crashing to the floor, she turned.
It was Jade. Jade was watching her. Jade was filling the entire hall with scent. Her eyes were dilated. The tip of her tongue peeked out of her mouth, and she licked her lips.
Tori could do nothing but stare. She couldn't even think. She couldn't move.
"Tori?" Was that Cat? It sounded a thousand miles away.
She could smell Jade. She could smell heat. She could smell the wetness seeping down her thighs. And Jade was moving - moving toward her.
Jade grabbed her arm and jerked her away, down the hallway, and into the Janitor's closet. She half-hurled Tori across the small room, and Tori stumbled backwards until her back hit the wall.
"What are you staring at!" she snapped.
Words were not really working for her today. Tori could only stare, at Jade's lips, at the pale skin of her neck, at the smooth slope of chest and the slight rise of breasts. Her face felt hot, breath short. Her mouth was wet. It had never been this wet.
"So you're just staring? That's it? Did I break you? God. I've never met a more defective alpha!"
She shoved her. Tori's head snapped back, connecting with the wall.
Jade's hands balled into fists, she raised them and clenched in exasperation. "Goddammit!"
Her hand slid around to cup the back of Tori's neck. The tips of her nails left divots in Tori's skin. Tori had forgotten how to breathe.
Jade surged forward, pressing against her, hip to hip, belly to belly, chest to chest, and lifted her head to kiss her.
Their lips met.
Tori let out a whimper.
Jade's mouth was hot and wet. Her nails raked lines into her skin. Tori let her hands settle at Jade's waist, let her eyes flutter shut.
For a moment, time stalled, the world faded, leaving nothing but heat and scent and desire.
Jade jerked back. Tori's lips tried to follow her.
"Damn you." Jade shoved her off and swung toward the door. "I put it right in your hand and you can't even take it, like a real alpha."
The door slammed behind her.
Tori's knees finally gave up the ghost and she slumped to the floor.
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Jade stormed out of the closet. What the hell did she have to do? She would have given it up in the god damned janitor's closet like some kind of whore.
Beck was across the hall. She grabbed him by the collar.
"We're getting out of here now."
"What? Already? I've got to get work from my classes-"
This seriously wasn't going to wait.
"NOW."