Page 105 of The Price of Ice

Except obviously he’d somehow lucked out and got it right, because they weren’t a backup plan, they were— Or was it him? Surely if all omegas experienced this numbness, they wouldn’t keep using them, would they? At least not in such overwhelming numbers—he’d read stats once that about twenty percent of all adult omegas of reproductive age took them.

But then again, what if the other option was risking your freedom? If most omegas didn’t know about lure, if they were truly as helpless as Kallen had always believed himself to be during heat... Maybe this numbness that made him want to peel off his own skin was the best alternative they could find.

A passing waiter shot him a startled look and he realised he’d sworn aloud. He grimaced an apology, then signalled for the check.

HE’D TYPED UP THE LISTthe lawyer had suggested right away, and he’d had the phone appointment booked with a therapist, just like he’d told Mr Evans. It wasn’t his fault the woman had cancelled over some emergency.

In the meantime, all he knew was that he had to dosomething.

Taylor was openly pleased when Kallen asked if they could talk. Kallen wasn’t, because he still didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. He’d thought he was stuck in a shitty situation in exchange for playing the sport he loved and making a fuckload of money, but now he was starting to suspect thatFair Sportwas just looking at the tip of a very fucked up iceberg. Normal people would readily admit having a team omega forced to share his heats with the team alphas wasn’t healthy, but how many people knew about the effects of the pills? And Nouri had been lovely, but if the Nouris of the world were an omega’s only alternative to chemical imbalance—he just knew what he’d felt, and he was really praying the effects would simply fade—then why were private organisations the ones in charge of them?

It was as if the moment he’d allowed himself to look, the iceberg had started emerging from the depths. He was terrified that it wouldn’t stop any time soon, and he couldn’t handle that. At least not without taking some bloody action.

“So you wanna try it?” Taylor asked after some back-and-forth. Kallen hadn’t mentioned the pill, much less his whole situation with the White cats, just that he’d been thinking. He didn’t remember anyone mentioning them in the meetings, butbetter safe than sorry. Like Taylor said, there was no point in judging if you didn’t offer a better alternative.

“Well, I mean... I still don’t know what I’m doing. But if you want to learn, maybe we could try that?”

He could hear the smile through the line. “I’d love that. Honest, even if I can only get a little bit better.”

So there he was, stuck waiting for Taylor to finish with a real customer—he was something akin to a social worker, though Kallen thought he hadn’t quite got the nuances of the role.

“Hello, hello!” Taylor greeted him.

And Kallen startled so badly he couldn’t blame him for asking, “Something in your mind?”

“I’m fine!” he said at once and grimaced at how fake it sounded. He sighed and got to his feet, offering his right hand.

Taylor squeezing it instead of shaking it, but he didn’t ask again. “Thank you for waiting.”

“Sure, no problem.”

And it wasn’t, other than hang out with his friends—the majority of which lived off-city—training for no purpose and helping his parents with chores, Kallen had absolutely nothing to do with his time.

At first, he hadn’t minded so much, but at some point in the last few days after spending his heat with Nouri, he’d lost all the joy of a holiday. Now, he was just restless.

But this was important, a job no one else could do and it turned out years of discipline were very much a transferable skill. “So, the principle is that you are calm. ‘Magnetic’ is a great word, really,” he summarised. “And everyone wants that, deep down. Because if you are angry you don’t want to be, but if you are super hyped, at some point you also want to come down, right? Otherwise, it goes from happy to manic.”

That got him a nod, and it was a little bit nuts because it was just coming to him on the fly, as if the words had been there allalong and all he’d had to do was listen for a moment and pluck them out of the air. “So let’s try breathing in and out a bit, and then see if you can become the oasis. I’m just going to sit here and see if I can feel you inviting me.”

When he’d thought about doing this before, he’d convinced himself that maybe he was some sort of natural, but that didn’t translate to teaching. In fact, the easier something came to you, the harder it tended to be to put it in a way someone else could get. But now that he was here across from Taylor, having done his own breathing to centre himself, it came as no surprise when he found himself turning his head towards the older man and smiling.

He'd definitely felt something there, a little warmth maybe. Taylor’s eyes popped open, brow furrowing but mouth curving tentatively upwards. Kalen nodded, biting back on his own smile. Taylor closed his eyes again and now he could hear it too. It sounded, of all things, like the ocean—peaceful and deep, a promise of long summer days and easy games with his family and the kids he’d called his summer friends.

Taylor couldn’t get him to move or do anything just like that, but then he spoke in his soft mellifluous voice, “Can you pass me the water?”

And just like that Kallen was on his feet and reaching for the fancy decanter. Only then did he realise what he’d done. He turned around to shoot Taylor a mock glare. “That’s cheating.”

“Is it?” Taylor asked, grinning smugly now. He shot to his feet and stepped closer to clap Kallen on the shoulder. “Damn! We did it!”

“You really couldn’t do that before?” Kallen checked once they’d sat back down to sip at some water. Lure wasn’t exactly tiring, but he did feel a little more sleepy than he’d expect late in the afternoon like this.

The older man shook his head vehemently.Hedidn’t seem sleepy. “I— I have used it before. In bars, years ago,” he clarified with a self-deprecating smile. “But it didn’t feel like this, it felt a little bit like, well, batting my metaphorical eyelashes.”

That was the same thing Analisa had said, and Kallen had also equated lure with seduction. But of course, if only omegas could use lure and everyone had bought the bullshit that sex was the main thing omegas had to offer anyone... It would make perfect sense if they had focused on it as a tool of seduction.

But Kallen had felt it, and there was nothing sexual about the oasis.

“I don’t think it’s for... Well, sex.” Given how much of it he’d had, it felt a little absurd to be unable to meet Taylor’s eyes, but he sipped his water and kept talking to the carpet between them. “I mean, it can be used for getting someone to notice you, sure. But that’s sort of how you could dress up nicely, show off the—” He waved, cutting himself off before he mentioned Taylor’s very shapely arms, for example. And how come he’d evennoticedthose? He cleared his throat. “But really, that’s like the basic stuff, because when we like someone, we don’t really want to attract them by being hot, right? It doesn’thurt, sure,” he admitted, managing a small smile. “But we want them to get to know us, to valueus, not our...” He glanced down at his own body to illustrate. “Assets, or whatever.”

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