Lost in Arcadia

Vicious Cycle

Seventeen years later.

…

…

…

The beat of the music was deafening. Under the trippy brightness of multicolored lights, which flashed from the dark crevices of this large and open space, countless moving bodies mashed together in time with the pounding of the base that they could feel inside their ribcage.

Even to the average person, the mixture of scents in this place—of alcohol, tobacco, perfumes, sweat, and other bodily fluids that were best not mentioned in detail—could be noticeable if they focused on it.

To an alpha’s sharper sense of smell, it took a lot of conscious effort not to get nauseated from the sickening combination.

It had barely even been an hour since Kade Harker arrived here. But even though the tall and muscular man was smack dab in the middle of the dance floor, moving and grinding along with everybody else, he already wanted to leave.

Everything was the same.

In the past two years, he had already been to so many different places. He had practically made a career out of volunteering, and he had done a lot of good work and attained many satisfying accomplishments.

Because he knew it was for a good cause, he had even decided early on that it was worth it to sweat and bake under the hot sun for hours at a time, resulting in his skin becoming tanned and in his dark blond hair, which now fell nearly to his shoulders, getting coarse and bleached to a lighter shade.

If he got paid for his labor at all, the amount was not something to write home about—just enough to get him by for a while, then he would have to rely on the allowance his parents sent again, sometimes on the loans his older sister would deign to allow him to borrow.

Mostly, everything was all good during the daytime. Focusing on the tasks at hand while interacting with his fellow volunteers was more than enough to take his mind off of other things.

Once the nights set in, however… that was when the trouble would start.

Try as he might, he could never seem to get used to being all alone.

And so, over and over again, he would go out like this. Whenever he had the time and the money, he would travel to the bustling city centers in search of crowds he could while away the hours with.

But in every country, regardless of the culture and the type of people he interacted with, nothing much would be different.

He would still feel lonely and unfulfilled by the end of whatever encounter he had just had, and when the sun rose again, he would find himself wondering what the hell he was going through all of this for.

What was it he was after again?

Oh, yeah—that’s right. He wanted to find his fated mate.

A person who might not exist in this world at all.

As he drank and danced with abandon on this dance floor on a foreign land, where most of the other clubbers had already given way to him, Kade could once again feel himself reaching the limit of his frustration.

With every night that ended the same old boring and pointless way, he was drawing closer and closer to just giving up.

Dying alone was really beginning to sound better than failing again and again like this.

At the same time as Kade was trying to wrench his mind away from such defeatist thoughts, he felt a warm body sidle up to him.

'Oh…' he thought, his interest automatically getting piqued. Force of habit. 'Now we're talking.'

While he danced, he had had his eyelids half-closed and was looking unfocused. Now, he opened and trained his light green eyes on the much smaller and darker-skinned woman in front of him.

It was obvious from the looks of envy and regret that others around were throwing their way—she wasn't the only one who had been eyeing this very foreign and very alpha man who had been moving flashily in their midst since earlier.

But thus far, this particular curly-haired and curvy woman had been the only one to act on her desires.

From that alone, Kade's interest in her heightened even more.

He raised one corner of his lips to smile down temptingly at her.

Despite knowing that this encounter would likely end only in disappointment and self-reproach as well, it was especially at times like this, when his mood was at its darkest, that Kade couldn't help himself.

It was a freaking vicious cycle if ever there was one.

The woman too didn't try to talk and simply smiled back in subtle invitation.

Then, while Kade was distracted by the soft feeling of her hip between his legs, a much larger, much warmer body came up behind him, also grinding in suggestive ways.

Kade turned his head in surprise and found a man who was shorter than him looking up with heated eyes.

“She and I,” the man said in simple and heavily accented English, “we are together. So—have fun with us two, yes?”

‘Ohhh…’ thought Kade again appreciatively, his excitement rising further. ‘Now we’re really talking…’

…

One advantage that Kade had as an alpha was that he was much, much stronger than most of his beta and omega counterparts. He had no qualms about going off someplace else with these two strangers, despite the danger that they might have other not-fun ideas in mind.

Another advantage was that same sharper sense of smell that was a curse to have in enclosed and crowded spaces. It served its real purpose by allowing him to detect whether the individuals he chose to be with were healthy or not.

And on the off chance that they weren’t and he failed to catch it, his superior immune system meant that he wouldn’t contract diseases so easily.

But of course, even if his partner told him it was perfectly okay not to, he would always use protection—always.

He might be an incurable playboy, but he still had his principles.

In a motel room that looked more or less the same as the countless others he had already spent a good portion of his life in, Kade once again tried to snatch meaningless moments of pleasure with this foreign couple.

Threesomes are always tricky. If not done right, it could get messy and end up unsatisfying for more than one participant.

If nothing else, Kade was a practiced multitasker in this regard.

And he was earnest about making this experience feel good for them both. He always was.

But it seemed, this time around, Kade had really made a mistake in the people he had chosen.

While both halves of him were distracted, the woman whispered something to her partner. The man complied with whatever she had ordered. As he pretended to slump his body forward, he drew something from under one of the pillows.

Kade did not get the chance to sense the danger before the needle of a syringe was plunged into the crook of his neck. Immediately after, the contents entered his bloodstream.

“Yo, what—” he said upon feeling the prick, but by then, it was too late. “What the f*ck did you just…”

He couldn’t help but trail off.

He had felt his body beginning to heat up.

Despite being an alpha who had long ago reached his physical maturity, Kade had never gone into rut. Thus, he didn’t recognize what was happening for what it was. He only assumed he had been injected with some sort of date r**e drug.

It wasn’t until he detected and recognized his own pheromones in the air that he realized exactly what that drug was for.

And then, before he could wrap his increasingly dazed mind around whatever was going on, he detected another person’s pheromones.

The scent was light and sweet, capable of drawing an alpha to it like a bee to a flower. It belonged to an omega.

An omega who wasn’t meant to be his.

“Oh, f*ck—”