Dion’s heart caught in his throat.
A single sentence from you was nearly enough to make his perfectly crafted mask crack. How could you tell? Nobody else had ever suspected that he was a beta. He certainly didn’t look it, and he wore a specific perfume to give himself some sweet omega scent.
You couldn’t realize what he was. You couldn’t.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dion responded, smiling to shake off the heavy pause. “I’m an omega. It’s a requirement to work here. You know this.”
He brushed his fingers against your hand, batted his lashes despite the panic threatening to seize him. The Red Door, a club in a rich neighborhood, only hired omegas—the prettiest, sweetest ones. Omegas who were willing to flirt and entertain whoever came in. Dion was one of the more popular ones. He couldn’t lose this job; he’d be nothing without it.
“Would you like more sake?” he asked as gracefully as he could. Nobody had ever been able to shake him up like this. Dion was an expert in handling the customers here. He could chat and flirt, pretend to be demure and simple. His looks were the only thing he had.
Dion wasn’t particularly talented. His mother had signed him up as a child actor, but that’d failed. Then she’d discovered beauty pageants. The money was what she was after, not that Dion ever saw any of it.
His mother had assumed he’d present as an omega given his pretty face and slight nature, but Dion was a beta. There were no beauty pageants for betas—at least not any with enough cash to please his mother. She’d signed him up, lying about his second gender, only for them to be discovered a few years later.
His mother didn’t live much longer after that.
Dion had spent nearly his whole life pretending to be an omega. His act was flawless. Had he not trained the smile on his face to never slip, you would’ve seen his anger. But he couldn’t afford to mess this up. His boss had warned him you were important. Dion knew that could only mean one thing:
You were yakuza.