Chapter Text
The summer she turned sixteen, an American sociologist came to see her grandfather.
His name was Michael Steers and he was a research professor in Vrije. A short, stout man with a lisp and a snow-white goatee. He would have been completely forgettable — another in a string of golden-haired lickspittles, vying for a piece of her family’s generosity to artists and academics — if not for his specialization.
They’d been seated together at dinner, and she’d assaulted him with a barrage of questions about what she’d just presented as, before moving on to the scent lock, an old belief from the 1500s.
She'd rattled off what little she knew: There is an Alpha made for every Omega, a clear pair in scent and physiology. The initial match is made once the two scents lock, hence the name. It quickly progresses to mating. Do you think there’s any truth to it?
Dr. Steers had laughed. The scent lock. My, that’s a very old theory. How did you learn about that?
She’d told him, Old bloodline, old libraries.
Of course.
So — do you? Think it’s possible? That there’s only one Alpha meant for every Omega?
He’d said, Alphas are built differently than the rest of us. Steel, where we would be water. They are evolutionary marvels, miracles of mutation. More wolf than man if their DNA sequencing is any indication. I’ve studied thousands of them, and their morphology is worlds away from betas, close but still nothing like Omegas. Even their throats are designed differently; that’s how The Voice is possible. If I had any say at all, I’d have Alphas declared a different species altogether.
So, no, he’d pressed, I don’t think the scent lock theory is completely true. Alphas are not a clear match to anything, physiologically. An olfactory match, however, does have some evidence to support it. A good reproductive mate tends to smell good. That is a truth even to betas. I’m afraid you’re not as special as you think, Ms. Starccovo.
She doesn’t remember if Dr. Steers had received a grant from her grandfather — she never saw him again after that.
I.
The girls, despite being women now, still aren’t privy to museum decisions and so, over the years, they’ve cultivated a quietly manipulative method of sweet talking the orchard hands for clues about Nonno’s fling. The fling — it's their vaguely disrespectful but ultimately innocuous nickname for the dull, process-obsessed, vainglorious artists that take up residence in the house every summer.
Alina and Ana, they don’t like surprises — especially when it comes to house guests — and they aren’t above using feminine wiles to assuage their worries. It helps that Alina is an Omega, that her wiles are coded in blood and bone and genetics. She bats an eyelash at any of the sunburnt betas in the area and that is usually enough to get them a peek at the newly acquired, obsequious art that will pepper their walls for the season. It’s a famous gift of flattery that is often unnecessary, but Tommaso Starccovo does nothing in half measures.
The art is never hidden down in the museum’s basement, not the newer canvases less vulnerable to wear. They are stowed away behind lock and key at one of the abandoned chalets around the property, impossible to discover without the help of at least one orchard hand.
That July, however, the fire blight descended upon the Annurcas.
The apples that line the southern end of the property — the ones by the river — were the first to go, and then it had been swift, spreading like wildfire in the surrounding trees.
What was once green swallowed by shadow — leaves shriveled with death, tips of shoots wilted, amber sap oozed out of shrinking barks, all the fruits blackened and blistered.
It would have been a disaster had the orchard been what it once was: a real business, not just a summertime retreat for their family. Instead, it had simply been an inconvenience. Something for Nonno to complain about that wasn’t postmodern contemporary art, and something to keep all the orchard hands out on the field, hacking at infected trees under the sun’s unforgiving study.
It wasn't without its glorious, sweaty, bare-chested, apple-fragrant silver linings, but the cost had been heavy: the girls had to find out about the fling along with the hoi polloi. Through the press, no less.
It’s their first surprise in years and it burned bitterly in Alina’s chest, not unlike a defeat.
They’re having breakfast alfresco by the pomegranate line, dark heads mussed with sleep and still in pajamas, when Whitehot's pickup goes live, prompting an alerting ping from Ana's phone.
A gasp, a wiggle of the brows, and Alina's out of her seat, bare feet slapping against the warm stone tiles in her rush. The headline: Palazzo Starccovo names its 107th artist in residence. Under it, a photograph of a gargantuan 11 x 25 on display, depicting the overly dramatic death of a stag as it is attacked by a pack of dogs. All high contrast; shadow and light — whites and creams against a dark-cured canvas. Baroque in style.
The Wrath of Artemis (2016) by Aleksander Morozov.
Alina's chin tucks on a frown.
Aloud, with a mouth half-full of soft-boiled egg, Ana reads, “Soviet-born, New York-based painter, Aleksander Morozov—”
“Never heard of him,” Alina says, standing upright, feeling particularly prickly.
“—is heading to Trentino as the new artist in residence of the old and venerable Starccovo collection.”
“Old and venerable?” She walks back around the wooden table to her half-demolished oranges. “They always make us sound like such snobby assholes.”
“Be generous,” her older sister scolds. “Last year, they called us august, it was horrific. Venerable has a certain gravitas, don’t you agree?” Takes a sip of espresso and continues reading. “Morozov, a tenebrosi — oh, of course, Nonno wouldn’t be able to resist some obscure, Baroque revivalist — whose innovative adaptation of impasto a corpo is a breath of fresh air—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Alina harrumphs, angered by the pretension. “A fresh shadowist?” Ana is already laughing. “Porca miseria, spare me. I’m trying to eat here.”
It takes Inej and her loyal band of gallery attendants a single morning to replace all the art in the two floors of the main residence. Alina joins them, of course; watches as the gloved sycophants ooh and aah at the priceless treasures they’re removing from the cracking limestone walls.
Her grandfather spent quite a bit of time entertaining in the spring, had hosted several parties with affected American aesthetes and a couple of friends from Aalto, and as such, the Modiglianis had gotten air — all three of them; Nonno does love to brag — flanked by stunning blues: a Monet, a Sisley that's supposedly missing, the priceless Chagall a great-great-grandfather famously won at cards, and the oft-borrowed Aivazovsky.
Beauty and color. Replaced by the darkness and poison of Aleksander Morozov’s mind.
Outside her grandfather’s room, an overwhelmingly large panel will hang. Inej tells her it’s named A Myth of Innocence.
It takes five of the attendants to even lift it up to the hooks, and as the protective glassine is removed from the grand 8 x 10 canvas, Alina sees, inch by ripped inch, the accuracy of the title.
It’s a field of green that reminds her of childhood summers in the orchard. Beautifully rendered details in spectacular color, wild grass and towering trees, wildflowers bathed in the bright darkness of moonlight. Off to the right, a woman made of soft pinks and purples pulls a man made of grays and majesty on a run. She’s holding his hand — leading the charge.
Alina smiles. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Yes, but it’s not all like this, trust me,” Inej says, noticing the expression on her face. “Morozov is not known for his feminist ideas—”
She doesn’t say — Morozov isn’t known at all — because the last few days of press attention have disproved that. She'd simply been in Europe for too long to have any knowledge of controversial American painters.
“—but your grandfather wanted some of the kinder pieces for the residence. For his girls, he said. So, you get the captivity and torture. And you get the romantic Hades and Persephone panel.”
“Nonno does love us,” Alina says, grinning at Inej, who returns it.
“That he does.”
“So, where are they? The unkind pieces?” she asks, reaching up to scratch her nose. She’s craving oranges; can smell them, oddly.
“A lot of the sexual assault—” Alina’s eyebrow lifts, oh, “—is in Giacomo Hall, already on display.” Inej says it with such vitriol. “The murders are on Vincenzo. You should probably see them before the reception. Get the full measure of the monster you’re about to live with for two months. Would you like to?”
“We’ll see. I’m finishing a portrait of Ana,” Alina gestures to the panel, nonchalant despite the thread of curiosity running through her. “And I’m not seeing anything here worth walking to the museum for.”
Inej flattens her fingers over her mouths to hold in the laugh. Once she calms, “In my defense, this is your grandfather’s fault. He just wouldn’t hear sense. I’ve voiced concerns about this artist—”
“—but he can’t help himself with Baroque revivalists,” Alina goes, a bit distractedly. The citrus scent is getting stronger. “I know. Ana said the same thing. God, do you smell that?”
Inej sniffs the air. “No. What do you smell?”
Alina takes a deep breath. It’s oranges, she’s sure of it. “It's — oh, nevermind,” she says, turning to look at the painting. She takes one step forward, and another, eyes widening more and more when she realizes where the smell is coming from. “Maybe it’s just Sofia, cooking lunch.”
Her sister joins them as the last of the paintings are hung, hands covered in acrylics from a few hours in the second-floor studio.
She falls madly for The Bee-Keeper, a piece named after its subject. Aristaeus holding chains around Proteus, prophet turned fire, turned flood, turned beast. It finds a new home above the headboard in the guest room. The room of the flings.
Once the attendants follow Inej out, the girls climb up the bed and just stare.
After a long stretch of silence, Ana says, “There is such brutality to his work.”
And there is. The chiaroscuro of the Baroque masters, only with new depth, new hunger. Blood and delicate helplessness in the stretching of flesh, the tension between figures. Degradation hiding just under the shadows.
It’s the most sensual work Alina’s seen in years.
Still, she keeps her tone dismissive, bare feet staining new sheets with orchard dust as she shifts her weight. “His technique is rudimentary,” she says. “The brushwork is too thick, too savage. And the subjects he chooses are a little cheesy.”
She doesn’t mention the absolutely delicious smell emanating from the oils, or how each inhale burns citrus in the back of her throat.
She presses, “He’s a Caravaggio fanboy and it shows. Nothing special.”
She is ignored, of course, in favor of rising star hero worship.
“Can’t wait to meet him,” Ana murmurs, reaching over to right the framed canvas, hanging crooked on the hooks. “My friends at Yale say he’s an Alpha—” Alina’s eyes widen, head turning to look at her sister, who’s still looking softly at the piece, “—ever met an Alpha who can paint like that?”
That must explain the scent, then.
“Oh, because he’s an animal who can barely control his urges, we’re supposed to praise his control of the brush? If you can even call this control.” She sounds defensive, she knows. It’s the smell — it’s too good of a smell. Too desirable. It’s fucking with her head. “Artistry transcends designation, anyway. You shouldn’t say things like that.”
Ana’s eyes snap to hers. “I’m so sorry,” she rushes to say.
Alina shakes her head, “No, it’s fine.”
“I wasn’t thinking, stellina. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound offensive.”
She rolls her eyes. “It didn’t.”
Ana sighs and still believing she may have caused harm, wraps a comforting arm around Alina’s shoulders. Alina welcomes the unnecessary apology. Leans into it. The movement makes both of them bounce minutely on the feather-soft mattress.
“Lunch?” Ana asks, softly. “I can make you that salad you like, with the oranges.”
She almost laughs at that. “Alright, sure.”
Before following her sister out the room, she casts one last look at The Bee-Keeper and fills her lungs with a breath as deep as she could take.
“I’m being devoured by flies.”
“Ana,” she says after tucking the thin filbert behind her ear, and grabbing the bristle round loaded with blue that she’d shoved between her teeth. “I’m using oils on linen. I need you to shut the fuck up.”
“I am covered in blisters.”
Alina gives her back a small stretch, eyes darting back to the patch of teal on the rightmost curve of her sister’s left eye. Ana’s hazel-eyed, and the greens always jump out clear and true under sunlight. So bright, they are almost blue, are blue. Beautiful. She adjusts her grip on the brush, turning it sideways for a finer point.
They’ve transformed the breakfast nook out by the pomegranates into a makeshift studio. Alina needed it — the open air. To focus. She’d woken up that morning with citrus spice on her tongue and a cunt wet with slick; the fling’s scent had doubled in intensity overnight and she knew that if she kept her hands idle, she would have used it to fuck herself. And that just wouldn’t do.
She isn’t some knot-hungry girl in a film — adult or otherwise.
She’s been with Alphas before — that this one smells so strongly of oranges doesn’t matter. I’m no animal. I’m a woman.
“Alina.”
“Linen,” she presses, as calmly as she could, afraid her voice might disturb her hands. “Oils on linen. Suck it up.”
Ana makes a sound of frustration but does as she’s asked anyway. Shows her support by sitting as still as she could. Alina smiles at her sister, who scowls in return.
The table is relatively clean, considering how messy Alina can be when painting. She’d only grabbed the primaries off the studio oil rack, and didn’t bother with the linseed oil bottle, instead settling for a conservative pour on a paint-destroyed glass cup. She’s using the back of a ceramic plate as a palette, much to Sofia’s frustration, who made a point to tell her off before returning to the latkes frying in the kitchen.
Alina can only ever paint realist portraits in Italy.
Landscapes are reserved for less familiar places, perhaps. Homes she has yet to make.
The round goes back in her mouth; hand reaching for the filbert to begin the other eye. She mastered the mix of her sister’s brown irises when she was eleven. It takes three quick swipes before she’s reaching for the round and its greens again. Really, she could probably paint Ana by memory, but there’s something comforting about a sitting; something lovely in the image of Ana’s boredom against green leaves and bright red yields.
“You have beautiful eyes, Ana,” she says. “Stunning. Even your tear ducts are pretty.”
“I know,” Ana says, tone lilting, flattered. “You’ve told me millions of times.”
Alina would laugh if she were not perched so carefully on her stool, all to be at perfect height for the easel. She dips into paint. The plate is sitting on her left thigh.
“Good,” she grins, watching the tap, tap, tap of bristles into green; uses the lift as an opportunity to scratch the side of her nose with the butt-end of the brush. “It’s good to know these things because you were told.”
As days pass, leaving the house becomes the only reprieve.
She takes her traitorous biological urges and goes to the river every day, the fresh water a welcome cool under the early morning light. Lovely before breakfast, before painting, and lovelier still before the orchard hands come marching, bringing with them a sharp sense of dissatisfaction.
Morale is low, as most of the trees by the riverbed have been cut down. There are stumps where there was once shade, silence where there was once birdsong. It would be depressing if not for the softness of the sun, smudging gold on the petals of wildflowers.
Alina imagines she could smell the rot hiding under the soil, but it isn’t true. The earth smells like the earth, despite the onslaught of the blight — a hint of her, a hint of darkness, a hint of everything, everywhere.
She swims until her legs grow tired and even then, she stays for half an hour longer, body floating just a brush below the surface, fresh water trapped between her eyelashes, relishing in the quiet.
She inhales, filling her body with the clean scent of air unmarred with the tempting citrus spice that has invaded every single inch of their home since Aleksander Morozov’s paintings were hung.
Breathes in and blows it out, this air that doesn’t tempt.
Her bedroom was given the smallest a piece. A painting called The Wedding of Dionysus.
At first glance, it is a deceptively simple painting of an island. Lush vegetation, the Aegean glittering with moonlight around it — all directional brushwork; immense control that transforms a static medium into a living, moving sea. It takes a long, determined stare and perhaps a mind predisposed to filth to realize that there is a couple rutting on the shoreline. More ferarum.
In the evenings, when she’s supposed to sleep, Alina doesn’t lick its gloss varnished surface, doesn’t even think of it.
She certainly doesn’t touch herself to the bright, heady scent it holds.
She teeters at the edge of doesn’t and privately congratulates herself for being a paragon of self-control.
II.
Alina doesn’t bother coming to the reception until well after eight, well past fashionably late.
No less than a hundred guests were invited, and it seemed as though double the amount attended. Academics, artists, politicians, aunts and uncles in the area. Sports jackets and cocktail dresses. It’s the family’s version of a modest affair.
She heads straight into Giacomo, grabbing champagne off a waiter’s tray, cleverly hiding her face behind her hair as she passes a pack of photographers milling about by the entrance.
In the moodily lit hall, it's a chaos of scents — an overabundance of unobtrusive society. Inej's team of organizers are gushing blood-rust stress out into the air; the rushing waitstaff, the salt of labor. There’s anxiety and disquiet in the betas — too strong perfumes on too warm necks.
All of it tastes so acrid on Alina’s tongue. Just a touch of repugnant.
Ugh. She takes a long sip of champagne to swallow it down, and walks further in, weaving her way through the free-standing incarnadine red walls, never stopping for too long, smiling and tipping her glass at guests instead of making conversation. Her phone is buzzing in her hand — a call from her sister — but she ignores it in favor of perusing Aleksander Morozov’s orange-scented paintings, gulping in their tempting, comforting scent despite the monstrous violence they depict.
Inej was right. This is a lot of sexual assault.
A lot of mirrors she cannot ignore.
Hades and Persephone make another appearance. Titled The Goddess in the Underworld, the painting, unlike the one hanging on the residence, is decidedly anti-feminist. The goddess is in chains, her dark hair sprouting dead flowers while her husband — uncle — buries a bite into her neck and buries his hand between her legs.
Morozov’s take on the Leda and the swan myth — a favorite among artists — surprises her for its resemblance to Veronese’s, which itself bears a striking resemblance to a missing Michaelangelo which she knows for a fact is hiding in the deepest pits of the museum basement, only accessible to two members of the family.
Her father had shown it to her for her seventeenth birthday.
This is a secret, her father — named after the very hall she’s standing in — said to her, we don’t tell people about the Michaelangelo.
When she’d asked why, her father laughed. Oh, piccino, the trouble we would get into.
“Alina, hello.” It’s a man — pudgy and weak-chinned, someone who definitely works for an aunt and has probably come by for dinner once or twice. A beta who smells of sewer. “How are you? It’s been forever.”
“I’m great.” She flashes him a stunning smile and resumes walking, talking as she does. “Champagne is by the door.” Leave me alone. “Have fun!”
A quick learner, Alina breezes past a depiction of a woman and a bull — definitely Europa and Zeus — twisted in a position, engaged in an act that makes her nearly laugh from discomfort; Danae, reclined and naked in her cell, posed in the odalisque, covered in raindrops made of gold — it reminds her of the Gentileschi take, the deep jewel-toned blues and reds, the curves of the woman’s thighs, her rounded stomach; Alcmene, crumpling in tears between two men who look exactly the same — again, referencing Gentileschi, if not in subject then in a composition that calls to Susanna and the Elders.
Stunning work, she thinks, but derivative, destructive work.
She takes a sip of champagne as she rounds the corner to the back side of the standing wall furthest from the entrance, blessedly free of people. It’s only when she looks up to the painting hiding in front of it that she figures out why.
On the curator note, two headlining words: The Rape.
It's a painting of a beautiful, golden-haired woman melting into a snake-headed monster. Her legs are thrown wide, held open by the moss-tinged hands of the man — the god — defiling her. There is nothing of him but the corded muscles of a flexing back, a profile of a face, mouth open on a gasp, and a crown weaved through with water.
Of her, there is everything: the loss of innocence, of dignity. She is screaming, eyes filled with fear and tears and helplessness. She's holding his shoulders, nails digging into his skin, drawing blood, pushing.
It takes Alina’s breath away, recognizing imagery from her darkest, deepest fantasies.
She has never seen anything so explicitly sexual — nearly pornographic rather than artistic — in a museum.
And it’s massive. 12 x 26, at least, it takes up an entire wall. It seems colossal in front of her, larger than Guernica, larger than life.
It must have taken years for Morozov to accomplish. Years thinking of debasement and painting it with oils. What kind of man can do such a thing?
Oh, yes, a voice in her head mocks, what kind of person can fantasize about rape so much?
Morozov kept the brush strokes thick, thicker even, compared to the rest of his work that she’s seen. It’s as though he wanted to leave his mark on this, wanted his presence known and felt.
That, with his scent on the canvas — overkill.
She’s so lost in the work, mind rushing, mouth open — cunt slipping with slick; an unfortunate consequence — that she misses the tall figure who moves to stand next to her. Or at least, she does until he speaks—
“You like it, don’t you?” a low, deep voice asks.
Alina’s head snaps to the side, ready to rebuke such a question.
A beautiful man is staring at her.
She inhales, and — no, not a man. An Alpha. The Alpha.
Her blood trills of certainty. Nothing in the hall could hide the straightforward match between art and artist. The oils do not lie.
Aleksander Morozov really does smell of oranges.
Real oranges, plucked from the earth. Bright and burning sweetness shot with spice.
Childhood and summer and coming home — scent that is memory, that is future, that is silence, ringing in her ear, cutting off the sounds of the crowd.
This close, his underlying spice reveals itself as something akin to frankincense — sap of wood, honey of the earth.
A fragrance she’s been sniffing off her own wrists her whole life.
It’s a blood rush realization, puzzle piece scents, locking together with conviction.
It’s light under her skin, heady under her nose, slick — more slick — between her legs.
She tries to blink through it, to fight its resolute weight as it surges up her nose and drips syrupy thick down her throat.
Each inhale, a sooth to a burning she didn’t even know lived inside her, spreading calm to the tips of her fingers, the sides of her neck, the soles of her feet; explodes at the very center of her, where she, too, is warm and fragrant. Slithers into a simmer from her cunt to her back where her mating gland pulsates, chanting to the tick of a heartbeat that isn’t hers.
It feels ancient, the immediate tranquility she feels.
Her body seems to understand what is happening faster than her mind, so it’s all mindless — the way she shifts closer without thinking, without invitation or encouragement.
He smirks, tilting his head — a gesture of recognition.
Wait—
Head swimming too pleasantly, she fights for a modicum of control. Starccovo first before she is Omega; knows she’d draw eyes if she fell apart, hidden though as they are. She can almost see it — the photographs, the headlines. Starccovo Scandal: Royal Scion, an Omega Slut! Sobering things.
With resolve, she straightens her spine and takes a step back. Reverts to her public baseline: a bored, dead-eyed affect she perfected in boarding school. One arm around her body to protect it, the other hand delicately holding the glass flute.
It’s such muscle memory that her hands don’t even shake, not even when she takes a drink and finds that she can barely feel the fizz.
Her mind cries: Alpha is here, Alpha is here, Alpha is here—
"I think you have a dangerous imagination, Mr. Morozov,” she says, slowly, carefully, through the burning of her throat.
He shrugs his broad, powerful shoulders. "Thank you. It's nothing compared to the Greeks, but I do try.” The playful tone, Alpha is flirting. “You know who I am then?"
"Your paintings are hanging in my house and in my museum,” she says this, and delights in the surprise that floods his eyes. “The oils reek of you. It’s been a nightmare to live with.”
“Good. I could smell you from the fucking airport.” He takes an inhale so deep, it’s audible. His chest expands under the pristine white of his button down as he pulls. He doesn’t hold it, his breath — exhale is punctuated by the smallest, gentlest growls. Barely audible, a rumble in his chest. “So, I suppose that makes us even.”
Alina is vibrating.
He turns away from the painting, gives her his full attention, the full weight of him. He’s a large man, frighteningly mesomorphic, corded in muscle that is less vanity than it is power. Black haired and bearded. Beautiful. Menacing.
“Tell me your name,” he asks, softly.
“You already know my name.”
“Your family’s name.”
She turns her head to look into his eyes — slanted eyes of fiery hunter’s focus; liquid regard — and gives him a fuck you smile. “The only name that matters.”
“Do you really believe that?
“Do you? You’re the one moving to Italy for two months to capitalize on that name.”
His hand rises to massage knuckles over his heart as he takes another lingering breath. Makes a show of it, slut; watches her, waiting and unwavering. “Are you always this difficult, little Omega, or is this little act specifically designed to drive me crazy?”
She doesn’t fight the smile it triggers; doesn’t fight the pet name either because it feels so good to hear it out of a mouth she can taste without touch. “A little bit of both. You can’t let me have my fun?”
“You have a point—” he says, after clucking his tongue, “—I am about to spend a lifetime giving you whatever you want. The beginning is as good a starting point as any.”
She waits to feel offended by his assumption and finds only comfort. I have him. He found me. “You talk to every fragrant girl like that or is that specifically designed to fool me?”
“Wasting time is a beta’s errand,” he shrugs his powerful shoulders, locking his hands behind him. “We already know what we know — why dance around it? You already smell like me, little Omega. You know what that means, don’t you?”
She blinks, remembering the books she’d read from when she'd first presented. Old tomes in the library above the residence. Dr. Steers, God, when was the last time she thought of him? “The scent lock is a theory.”
“Breathe, then—” She does, filling her chest with the bright scent of him; the plain truth of what he’s saying, right there, in the air. Orange citrus, frankincense heady, his scent is his scent. His scent is hers. “—does that smell theoretical to you?”
She hums, body swaying closer. “We’re strangers, Mr. Morozov. We just met five minutes ago, I don’t know anything about you except that you’re here to give Nonno some of the most fucked up, ill-made paintings—” that makes him grin, “—I have ever seen. So, yes. It does smell theoretical. In fact, it smells irrelevant.”
“And we’re not animals, you know,” she presses on, digging in. “We can choose who to love.”
“Yes,” he nods, taking a step back, amusement clear as day in his face. “We can choose. You can choose me, because I was made for you."
Alina's heart — stops.
Having made his point, he steps away, blinking away the ardor.
“You know where to find me when you’re ready,” he says, glancing up briefly to something behind her head. He takes another step back, and gives her whiplash by dropping his smile, eyes hardening with detachment.
“It's Tommaso,” he murmurs. “Hold your breath now, little Omega.”
He’s an incredible actor. All wide-eyed with faux surprise when her grandfather says, oh, I see you’ve met our Alina. He laughs in a self-deprecating manner, oh, no, Christ, I didn’t even realize you're her.
They are introduced, going through the motions of pleasantries. Welcome to Trentino, she says, and he nods at her without any playfulness, shakes her hand briefly as if he’s only doing it because he has to. A gaze without a trace of desire, no odd breathing patterns. Unmoved. Civilized. Turns to Nonno and begins a conversation about Balthus, whom they both, ironically, despise.
Alina can barely think, much less participate.
When Ana finds them, she’s relief and disappointment. Jesus, I’ve been calling you all night. I was worried sick. You couldn’t answer your phone once? But she, too, is pulled into the conversation. All wide-eyed; a puppy dog yapping, talking a mile a minute, espousing her complete misunderstanding of Barthes’ The Death of the Author, “Shouldn’t that be applied to art? Can we not be immoral in our creations?” Suck up fare. Ana, the perfect one, always aware of what needs to be said to impress.
Inside, Alina is reeling.
She prays that the way her eyes drift outside their circle looks like disinterest. That the deep breath seems like that of ennui. That she’s blinking too quickly to hide eyerolls at the art world pretension of the conversation instead of the blistering heat of want boiling inside her.
You can choose me because I was made for you.
The blessed silence from the Alpha’s scent has turned sharp, the ringing quiet after a slap. In the parts of her mind not overtaken with oranges and spice, she recognizes that she’s having a completely irrational thought process; that perhaps he’s being a touch manipulative. The possibility of it is there, and she scolds herself: He’s a stranger. A fragrant stranger, yes, but a stranger.
They are pulled out of hiding by Inej, who asks them to pose for a photograph. The flash of a camera, one, and two, and another one, smile, please, Miss Starccovo. Drinks are refilled and a few people come for the gladhanding spree these events always devolve into. Networking. Every single time Alina is touched, she holds a grimace; the ancient thing inside of her recoiling. Still, she minds her manners; pushes through the wall of possession. She can’t let herself slip for a single second in front of all these people. If she does, she’d be on her knees, a mess of wet, a mess of tears, yes, Alpha, I am yours, and you are mine—
“—isn’t that right, Alina?”
Her eyes snap back to her sister, whose eyebrows have pulled together. “Hm?”
“I was just telling Mr. Morozov about you and MoMA,” Ana says it gently, with a hint of oh, you fondness.
“Oh,” Alina turns to the men. Attention touching briefly on Alpha whose eyes hold too much nothing for comfort, before falling to her grandfather’s beaming smile. He’s waiting for her to contribute. “I would love to say those pieces were acquired on merit,” she says, airly. Be normal, just be normal. “Unfortunately, that won’t be true.”
Tommaso grins at her public display of humility. “Ah, piccino, you always give me too much credit.” He winks at Aleksander. “Don’t believe her, Morozov. She’s a much better painter than anyone in this room, including you—”
“Nonno,” Alina warns, flushing. “For God’s sake, he’s our guest—”
“Well, you can’t deny the truth,” Ana says, without malice. Matter of fact kindness, sisterhood above competition.
“Don’t encourage him,” Alina tells her. Ana grins.
“Let us brag, please, piccino,” Nonno gives her a sparkling look, an excited shut it. To Aleksander, who doesn’t smell offended, “She shares your affinity for maximalism, loves to use these large, large canvases—”
She tuts. “Oh, please, they’re seven by nines—”
“—for wonderfully eccentric, dream-like, surrealist landscapes.” He laughs at Alpha’s surprised expression. Alina looks away quickly, hadn’t even realized she’d been staring. “Yes, well, I still don’t love abstract expressionists, of course, except if they’re my granddaughter.”
Alina, too deep in reining in her self-control, doesn’t have the energy to remind her grandfather that she isn’t an abstract expressionist. She doesn’t really know what she is.
Right now, her mind supplies unhelpfully, you’re an empty cunt.
Tommaso laughs, sensing that she’s giving him a free pass, green eyes sparkling with so much pride, “It’s my fault anyway, we exposed her to too much Miró as a child.”
“Pitfalls of owning a museum,” the Alpha drawls.
Ana laughs too loudly, and Alina tries, she really does, but the edges of her mouth don’t quite reach where they need to be.
Nonno is about to launch into another speech when an orchard hard comes and saves Alina from more embarrassment. A new hire, someone she doesn’t recognize, rushing and covered in mud from the fields, all red-faced, bitter anxiety.
He whispers something frantic in Nonno’s ear — kickstarting a flurry of activity that draws everyone’s attention: her grandfather clicking his tongue, white hair shifting silver under the soft light of the chandeliers as he tells them scusa, scusa, una piccola emergenza; Ana, endlessly curious, throws questions at retreating figures: what the hell is going on? Is it the apple trees?
Out of her mouth and in everyone’s ear.
A blink and a touch-warmed glass is being shoved in Alina’s hand, Ana is walking off; just like that, she’s being left alone again, with the Alpha she desperately wants to climb. Alina watches her leave with wide-eyed confusion, both hands holding flutes. “Wait, Ana—”
Her sister throws out a command she can’t help, older and used to being followed: “Stay with Mr. Morozov, I’ll be back.”
Stuck in the aftermath, she inhales deeply, and nearly groans at the air’s still delicious punch. Fuck.
She presses her lips together, struggling to snap back into impassivity. You can choose me. Too aware of the curious looks from the guests, she forces herself to more conversation.
“I’m sorry,” she tells Alpha on the turn, “I’m sure it’s nothing, my family just loves the dramatics.”
He’s looking at her with the same cold gaze. Alpha has a public baseline, too.
“What’s wrong with the apple trees?” he asks.
“Fire blight.” She takes a drink, mouth tasting of only the brightest summer days. “It’s been wreaking havoc on the orchard.”
He nods. “All the trees will have it by the summer’s end, then. Spreads like a virus, that fire blight.”
That surprises her — that he knows that. “The apples and the pears, yes.”
“The apricots and the cherries, too. I can smell them from here.”
Her cunt squeezes around nothing and she thinks, what else can you smell? Can you smell how wet I am for you? “Yes, I suppose so, but it just started by the riverbed and they’re trying to keep it contained. It's not going well, as you can see."
He reaches over and takes the champagne flutes off her hands, palms brushing against the back of her fingers. She closes her eyes briefly, as though it were a more significant touch. Alpha, Alpha, Alpha—
He downs one glass, before he sets both down on a nearby cocktail table.
“Fire blight is quite hard to stop once it starts,” he tells her, mouth slipping into a smirk. “Not unlike other things.”