Chapter 6

Finding the club had been an accident. I had gone into a bar down the street, but it only lasted a few minutes before the overwhelming scent sent me back outside, my head swimming and my skin crawling as if I had been submerged in something too thick to breathe through.

I wanted the smell out of my nose and off my clothes, so I walked. I had always loved walking at night. The crisp air usually calmed me, and the city felt softer after dark. Strings of lights lined the streets. Voices drifted out of open storefronts and half-lit windows, a low murmur of other people’s lives continuing on without me. It had always been comforting.

It used to be comforting, anyway.

Being an omega changed that. Walking alone at night was dangerous in a way I had never known before. I’d been hit on plenty of times in my life, but now the attention felt sharper, uglier, the words stripped of even the thin veneer of charm.

“Hey, little omega, I got a knot over here for you,” a man shouted from the mouth of an alley, his laughter rough and ugly as it followed me.

I crossed the street without looking back and kept going, zigzagging through unfamiliar blocks until the city no longer felt like mine. I was just about to call for a ride when I saw it.

Music bled into the street through a narrow doorway tucked between a closed bookstore and a nail salon. Both shops were dark, their windows reflecting the streetlights, but this one glowed faintly from below ground. A short flight of steps led down to a red door guarded by a large man in black, and I could feel the soft pulse of the bass through the concrete beneath my feet.

The sign above the door was discreet, almost apologetic, as if it didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.

It read: Taste.

The security guard checked my ID, and for the first time since presenting, he didn’t say a word about my omega status or ask where my alpha was.

“Make sure to check in at the front,” he said, opening the door for me. “Be safe.”

Inside, the light shifted immediately. Red and shadowed, not dark enough to hide in but just dim enough to give people confidence they didn’t have under bright lights. The entryway was small, almost intimate, with a tall desk directly in front of me. Behind it stood a petite beta woman with sharp eyes and a posture that suggested she missed nothing. One door behind her read Coat Check. The other, marked Enter, throbbed with music.

“Hello,” she said, her voice firm and warm at the same time. “First time at Taste?”

I felt a little flustered under her gaze. “Am I that obvious?”

Her smile sharpened. “A little. But they’ll love that.”

I wasn’t sure who they were, and I didn’t like not knowing things, but I let it go.

“What do you identify as?” she asked as I stepped closer to the desk.

Disappointment flickered through me before I could stop it. For a moment, I had thought I’d found a place where being an omega didn’t matter.

“What,” I asked, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice, “do I need an alpha to get into this stupid club too?”

Her brow lifted. “Not your presentation. Your identity. Are you dominant, submissive, or a switch?”

My mind went blank. I knew what the words meant, at least in theory, but I had never thought about them applying to me. Images flickered through my head, tall men in leather, women kneeling, scenes that felt both distant and strangely intimate.

My mouth answered before my brain caught up. “Sub.”

She studied me for a moment, unconvinced, then nodded. “And are you here to observe, or are you looking for a partner?”

“Definitely looking for a partner.”

She took two wristbands from a drawer beneath the desk and motioned for my hand.

“This one means you’re a submissive,” she said as she slipped the white band around my wrist. “And this one means you’re available,” she added, fastening the black band beside it.

She scanned my ID, slid a disclaimer toward me to sign, and then, with a small, knowing smile, gestured toward the door marked Enter.

And just like that, I was inside Taste.