What the fuck. What the fuck?! Brent walked the two blocks back to his car mostly silently, his head whirring, his sense of the ridiculous making him laugh aloud in short bursts at apparently nothing, which got him a few odd looks from passersby. 

He had been imagining this experience for his entire life. One day, he’d take his seat on a flight to Bora Bora, and next to him would be seated some gorgeous Omega, and Brent would scent him, and the Omega would scent him back, and suddenly they’d both just know. They’d spend the rest of the week enjoying getting-to-know-you sex under a palm tree on a white sand beach and then they’d live happily ever after. 

Every Alpha and Omega grew up wondering whether they'd meet a true fated mate, and if so, how. Brent, a romantic at heart, was no exception. As a kid back in high school, he used to imagine meeting his mate on campus–his mate would have just transferred in from a new school. He'd appear in the classroom door on his first day and Brent would look across the room and he’d just know. He’d offer the quiet new kid the desk next to his, and glare at every other Alpha in the room to warn them off. Later, one or the other of them would claim to be struggling in science class and they’d meet up after school to study together before the big test. Naturally, they’d end up frantically reviewing the parts of the body together on top of a jumble of books and papers in some private corner of the school that the teachers never visited. 

Sometimes, after a long day at work, Brent would be rubbing one out and he’d close his eyes and imagine meeting his mate in some other chance encounter. They’d both be looking down at their phones, for example, and they'd bump into each other on the sidewalk. They'd laugh and stop to help each other pick up the items they’d dropped. Then they’d make eye contact and scent each other, and they’d just know. At that point, they’d head to the nearest bed and have insane sex and then live happily ever after.

Two things were consistent in all of his imaginings:  the just knowing, and the unforgettable sex. Never once, never ONCE had he imagined this. 

When he had jokingly bent to sniff Will for childhood trauma, he had caught a whole scent-receptor full of wake-up call, and very suddenly a lot of things fell into place for him.

Will's very subtle scent had produced an unmistakeable, almost crippling pyrotechnic display in his brain and it had made both Brent's heart and his dick start pounding hard enough that he was afraid Will would notice the sound of the first or the sight of the second. All indisputable signs that Will Adams was his mate. His fated fucking mate. Will Adams, who didn’t particularly like him, who, as a Beta, could not possibly scent Brent and as a result ‘just know’ a damned thing, was his mate. He’d been raised on the idea that if you ever met your fated mate, your coming-together would be more or less automatic. That did not seem to be the case here. Brent, totally at sea, had needed a good, long moment to regain his composure and stumble back into the conversation.

Looking back, a few things had gone the way they were supposed to– when he’d seen Will for the first time at that party, for example, he’d certainly found him excessively beautiful even if he hadn't just known. You didn’t really need pheromones to find someone who looked like Will attractive, however, so that hadn’t been revelatory. Dark hair, light blue eyes, face like a fallen angel, body like he fell out of the pages of Men’s Health. Pure symmetry. Total smoke show. Obviously. To anyone. So that hadn’t exactly tipped Brent off regarding compatibility.

As they'd spoken, Brent had also taken an instant and unusually intense interest in Will as one might expect, but again, who wouldn't have? The fact that Will had been manifestly eager to get away from him wouldn’t exactly have helped him figure things out either, because that wasn’t supposed to happen, period. Will’s abrupt departure that night had meant that Brent hadn’t been able to get close enough to really scent him at the fundraiser. He remembered noticing that Will smelled good at the party, like some nice cologne. Probably the cologne had drowned out Will's relatively faint Beta scent signature and delayed all of Brent's just knowing. Alphas and Omegas rarely wore perfume or cologne for this reason, out of concern that it might prevent them from scenting their mates if they met them. 

Everyone had pheromones, even Betas, and everyone responded to them on some level. Only Alphas and Omegas, however, were anatomically equipped to consciously detect other people’s pheromones. Nature had done compatible Alphas and Omegas the further favor of making their scent signatures distinct and clear to each other, a nice reproductive advantage. Especially clear in the case of genetic hypercompatibles, also known as "fated mates". In other words, generally speaking, only the brains of Alphas and Omegas got utterly curb stomped by their reproductive systems when they first scented their mates, which was exactly what had just happened to Brent.

When Brent had really scented Will at the courthouse today, though? He had not been lied to on that score– he’d known deeply and instantly. Apparently, someone was seriously either your fated mate or they weren’t. It had been clear-cut. Unmissable. There had even been a moment there when Brent thought he was about to be granted his instant HEA as foretold in the Legends of RomCom. Immediately after he'd identified his mate, his mate had extended an invitation that was clearly intended to end in a hook-up… seemed right! He’d thought Will must be feeling it, too. Right? Wroooong. Mostly wrong. Brent had been all optimistic and enchanted as they got their coffee and walked and conversed and Will steered them towards his place and oh-so-casually suggested they head inside. Yes! Perfect! It had been all he could do not to scoop Will up and crash through the front door like a cartoon, leaving a perfect cookie-cutter outline of himself in it. Ah, but then had come that little speech. The ‘one-off’ speech. Ego puncturing, that’s for sure, but since Brent had given that speech a time or two, he could acknowledge some justice in being on the receiving end of it. That wasn’t the universe’s last laugh, however.

The way Will had kissed him had absolutely turned Brent inside out. God-tier kissing. No one could possibly kiss someone that way if they had no feelings for the kissee, could they? Brent had to believe that no one was allowed to move through the universe with the power to kiss innocent people like that and then walk away from them, unaffected. At this point, it was not really possible to separate the fact that Will was his mate from the way Will kissed, but Brent had a strong sense that even if he hadn’t scented Will, those kisses alone would have made him aware that he’d found his once-in-a-lifetime person. Holy shit. He needed to be kissed like that again. Immediately. Continually. Exclusively. 

There was no point even thinking about life before he had been permitted to go down on Will Adams. None...God. Everything in Brent’s spank bank had just lost its value completely. Like Confederate Dollars, his memories of previous sexual experiences were now a doomed, worthless currency created to empower an unjust cause. The only thing of worth left in the vault was that blow job. He wasn’t mad about this. The sight of Will’s body, stripped and draped over the couch cushions…the taste of his skin… the feel of his hands roaming over Brent’s body…Will's gorgeous, heavy cock… his lack of shyness, for what in the name of God could Will possibly have to be shy about with his Hollywood Hearthrob-looking self?… the pretty blushes…the way he had allowed Brent to look and touch and taste to his heart’s content…the way Will had held Brent’s head in his hands, gripping it as he’d come, making those sounds. 

For the rest of his life, Brent would be self-abusing to those memories.