Scents and Sensibility | An Omegaverse Why Choose

This story is inspired by Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. I use the word “inspired” in the loosest possible sense — as in, I read it, I loved it, and then proceeded to do something with it that Miss Austen would almost certainly find both perverse and alarming.

Our protagonist owes a debt to both Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, but she lives in an omegaverse: a world in which biology sorts people into alphas, betas, and omegas, complete with scent matches, bond marks, heats, and creative interpretations of reproductive anatomy that have no business appearing in literary fiction.

If you’ve never read an omegaverse novel before: things will hopefully make sense as you go.

If you are a devoted Austen scholar who wandered here by accident: I admire your adventurous spirit. I’m sorry.

As always, this is a first draft. Please excuse my typos and dyslexia.

The mark on my throat should have faded.

Or, rather, I hoped it would.

I touch it absently as the train rattles toward the countryside, my fingers finding the raised tissue by habit. Harlan’s mark. A bond that should have faded and disappeared within months of his death, the way most bond marks did when the alpha who made them passed. But mine remains. Unmistakable proof that Harlan and I were truly and eternally matched.

Fated.

Or, proof that I could not have possibly murdered him, depending on which tabloid you believed.

The beta woman across from me—who smells like clean laundry—avoids meeting my eye, but I notice her gaze on the two battered bags at my feet, the frayed hem at my trousers. Judging from the flat line of her mouth, she knows exactly who I am.

Everyone knows who I am.

The Scandalous Omega. Lord Beaumont’s Widow. Lady Not-So-Holy Sunday.

I drop my hand and stare out the rain-streaked window. Let her look, I tell myself with practiced stubbornness. Let her judge. In a few hours, I’ll be miles from prying eyes, tucked away in a cottage at the end of civilization where no one will know anything about me. Where no one will chase me with cameras in order to sell evidence of my misery to the highest bidders. Where no one will have seen the photographs—the ones Harlan had taken, the ones that somehow had leaked right before his death, the ones that had ensured I’d never be accepted into polite society ever again.

My reflection stares back at me, ashen and hollow-eyed. Twenty-seven years old and I look like an old woman. Or at least I feel old. Centuries old. Like there’s nothing left in this world that can possibly surprise me.

The train lurches. I catch my bag before it slides off the seat. Tucked away is the last of my savings: forty-seven crowns, six silver sovereigns, three marks. It’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

Heat suppressants have completely depleted my accounts. Three hundred crowns per month for the last sixteen months, obtained through increasingly questionable means because no reputable physician would prescribe them any longer. The standard grieving period for a widowed omega is half a year—long enough to mourn, society says, before returning to the bonding market. Before finding a new alpha. Before becoming useful again.

I’d taken them nearly three times that long, and I sold everything that wasn’t nailed down to afford them. My jewelry first, then my clothes, then Harlan’s things. Or at least the things his family hadn’t claimed were Beaumont family heirlooms and therefore not left to me. I’d pawned the books Harlan had once bought for me, a few pieces of furniture, anything. Everything.

Because the alternative is heat.

Heat means alphas.

Of course, if I had bonded to a pack, I wouldn’t need suppressants at all. I’d be cocooned into a nest, consoled by a collection of bite-marks, knot-drunk and deliriously brainwashed by the omega instincts I’ve been heroically suppressing.

Alphas might complain about scent sensitivities and rut and primal urges, but their biologic imperatives are nothing compared to the simpering mess of omega hormones. Taking heat suppressants has given me, for the first time since my childhood, freedom: no heats, no slick, no overwhelming scents, no voice in the back of my head begging me to bear my neck and spread my legs for every jutting knot-head with a hint of dominance in their voice. I’ve been my own person.

This morning, I swallowed the last pill. A silly, pink little tablet that had become the only thing keeping me from descending into an involuntary hormone whirlwind. Four weeks, maybe five if I’m lucky, then my body will demand what I’ve been so desperately denying it.

The conductor calls the station. Lowmoore/Blackwood Estate. My stop.

I gather my bags and step onto the platform into driving rain. No else gets off. Why would they? There is nothing out here save the Blackwood Estate and the tiny village that serves it. The estate’s visitors arrive by private conveyance, naturally, so that their omegas are safely sequestered and their alphas free from the cacophony of odors and dominance battles of the public compartments. Visitors to the area, I imagine, prefer the warmer months when they can tour the idyllic scenery and take photos of the ruins and enjoy a hearty meal at a public house before returning to somewhere less… remote.

Lowmoore is in fact so remote, that there is no bus, and one taxi in service is far too expensive for me to afford. I suppose it doesn’t matter for the local villagers. They largely all live in town: a few minutes from the station. But for me? A fifty-five minute walk has never sounded so unappealing.

The cottage sits at the edge of Blackwood land, a fact the lawyers at mentioned with barely concealed contempt during our final meeting.

“The property is legally yours, Lady Beaumont, as a true bond mark stipulates that you be provided reasonable shelter from your mate’s estate. However.” That however should have given me more pause. “The land itself has been contested by the royal family for some time. Both the Beaumonts and the royal family are generously allowing you to occupy it for now. Until other arrangements might be made.”

Generous. The word still tastes like ash.

Other arrangements—sixteen months later—did not appear.

The Beaumonts have taken everything else. The townhouse in the city, the country estate, the investments, the accounts. They’d frozen me out of Harlan’s assets with a viciousness that would have impressed me if it hadn’t doomed me. Gold-digging Aetherian whore, the tabloids had quoted. Manipulative Omega who’d trapped our precious son into marriage and then driven him to his early death.

Never mind that I’d been a scholarship student when we’d met, that Harlan had pursued me, and that he’d insisted on no prenuptial agreement because, “there’s no need for this sort of thing, darling. Not when we’re a true match.” Never mind that I’d dropped out of university to be his wife, given up my degree and my dreams because he promised me a different kind of future.

Never mind that he made my life hell.

The cottage appears through the rain like something from the dark chapters of a fairy tale.

I stop on the muddy path, rain streaming down my face, and stare.

It should be charming. The bones are good—stone walls, Gothic arched doorway, leaded windows with diamond panes and a sturdy looking chimney covering in moss and ivy that has a sort of magical quaintness. Someone had built this with care. Someone had loved it.

And then it was clearly abandoned.

Ivy and thorny vines choke the walls, so thick in places I imagine its compromised the structural integrity of the mortar. The slate roof sags in the middle, with gaping holes like missing teeth. The chimney leans slightly to one side, as if considering whether to collapse. The door hangs crooked, the wood so warped and weathered its more gray than brown.

It’s worse than I imagined. Worse than the lawyers had implied. Worse than the single blurry photograph I’d been shown in an office that smelled like overbrewed tea and wet newspaper.

This is where I’m going to spend my heat. Alone. In a structure that looks like it might collapse if I sneeze too hard.

The misty rain has soaked through my thin coat, my sweater. My bags feel impossibly heavier as I stand there staring at the heap of stone and ivy and rotten timbers. Somewhere in the misted trees beyond, a crow calls. Mocking.

You have no where else to go, I remind myself. It’s this or a heat clinic where they’ll drug you senseless or let random alphas—

No.

I’ve survived heats alone before. The last years of my marriage, Harlan had made a habit of leaving me mid-cycle, claiming business called him away. You’ll be fine, won’t you, darling? There’s my girl. And then he’d stopped showing up at all.

I endured. I survived. I locked myself in our bedroom with water and sheer stubborn will and made it through. Days of fever and pain and desperate need that went unanswered because my husband, my fated mate, couldn’t be bothered to—

If I could survive that, I can survive this.

I force my feet forward. The path to the cottage, beyond the broken gate, is overgrown; brambles catch at my slacks. Rain drips down my collar, cold and insistent. I’m well-past shivering by the time I reach the door.

The key given to me is large and iron, heavy in my palm. And laughable.

The lock is completely rusted shut, the bolt corroded through.

Of course.

I push the door instead, and it takes three tries using my shoulder before it opens with a groan that sounds almost alive, revealing the darkness beyond. Damp, rot, abandonment. A shape, small and quick, skitters into the shadows cast by the gray light behind me.

Home Sweet Home.

I can’t get the door to shut now that it’s open.

The interior is somehow worse than the exterior. Not for its ruin, though it is certainly that, but for what it must have once been. The narrow entry is barely wide enough for me and my bags; a rotten staircase curves upward into darkness. Perhaps sixteen feet long, the parlor is the largest room, with a stone fireplace dominating the wall. Even through the decay, I can see the craftsmanship: the stone mantle is carved with flowering vines, an iron grate sits below that might still be salvageable. A few pieces of broken furniture remain arranged around it, draped in cloth so thick with dust and damp that they might as well be burial shrouds.

The windows are disasters. Most of the leaded glass is shattered, rain pouring through into floors already warped beyond recognition. Water damage darkens the walls, spreading up from the baseboards in ominous stains. The plaster is cracked, chunks missing expose the stone beneath. The small door beside the ominous staircase reveals a tiny bath. Just a toilet and basin, both stained with rust and time.

Beyond the stairs, next to a tiny nook of a dining area, is the kitchen. Or what once had been a kitchen. Perhaps scullery is a better word. I can make out the bones of a workspace—half-rotten counters and shelving decorated with spider webs, an icebox with a missing handle, the cracked sink with a dripping hand pump. The window overlooks what might have once been a small, open deck that faces out to an overgrown garden.

I imagine that there’s another bath and a bedroom upstairs, but I don’t trust the stairs enough to explore further. I can’t afford an injury out here with no one to help.

Hell, I can’t afford anything. Much less restoring this place into what it used to be.

My fingers absently trace the mark at my throat. The scar is cool, a void, as it always is. Empty. Everyone says that a true mate’s mark stays warm, even after death. That the bond persists beyond the grave, glowing proof of eternal love.

I’m not sure mine had ever been warm. From the moment Harlan had bitten me during that first heat together—when I’d been too far gone to think clearly, when my omega had begged for bonding and my conscious mind barely existed—the mark had felt like this. Strangely hollow whenever I was alone.

But it hasn’t faded. Which means Harlan, for all his flaws, had been my true mate. Despite the way his love changed to something cruel, despite the way he looked at me like I was his greatest disappointment. True mates’ marks don’t fade.

So the problem must be me. My omega instincts had begged for him, chosen him. My omega chose wrong.

I swear can almost scent him.

Spicy tobacco.

I shiver.

The rain is getting heavier. I need to make a fire.

I kneel before the hearth, clearing the years of debris. My hands are already numb with cold, fumbling as I pull out handfuls of rotten leaves and twigs. Something wriggles in the mess. I fling it away with a gasp, my heart hammering.

Get hold of yourself.

When the hearth is mostly clear, I arrange the driest twigs I can find and pull out the matches I brought with me. The box is damp, the matches inside soft and swollen. I strike one. It snaps without lighting.

I strike another. A third.

Fourth match. Fifth. Sixth.

On the ninth try, one finally catches, sputtering weakly. I cup it with shaking hands and lower it to the kindling. The flame touches them, flickers, and dies.

I try again. And again. The match box is half empty, and I still have no fire.

My hands are shaking so hard that I can barely hold the matches. My teeth chatter. I almost laugh for lack of any other option. I came to this forsaken cottage to weather out my heat, and instead, it seems I’ll freeze to death.

“This is private property.”

I scream and spin, falling back onto the rotted floor.

A man stands in the doorway.

No. An alpha.