8. Seraphina
8
SERAPHINA
T he header of my Classic American Literature syllabus was now decorated with a poor imitation of the pretty wings Hawk had tattooed across his throat. I’d given this drawing more focus than I’d ever given anything inside a classroom at the OFS, but I wasn’t an artist. Where my wings were lopsided and cartoonish, Hawk’s wings had been intricate, symmetrical, and all-around stunning.
I sighed, dejected. Those wings would only exist in my fantasies now.
Paige elbowed me, leaning in to whisper, “Do you want to meet at the library later to get a head start?”
“A head start on what?”
She huffed with the usual mix of affection and exasperation she no doubt felt toward me at all times. “We have an essay due Monday. Two thousand words in the style of Hemingway.”
I snorted. “Figures. Professor Crews hasn’t been here long enough to realize this isn’t a real college.”
“Will you quit it? This is one of the most prestigious degrees in the entire country.”
I bit back a scathing reply, instead rolling my eyes and giving her a playful nudge back. “Sure, Jan.”
Paige was a straight-A student and at the top of our senior class here at the South Texas Omega Finishing School. She was a first-generation student, her parents’ pack being self-made “new money” for which there were only a few slots allotted in the incoming freshman classes. As such, she was thrilled to be here and took it seriously.
No idea why she associated with the likes of me, but she was one of the only cool girls in this place, so I’d made her my best friend.
We were yin and yang, both in personality and appearance. While I was short compared to my extended family members who were not my mother or my sister, at five foot three I was on the taller side of average for an omega female, and I added a good two inches with my favorite boots. Paige was five feet even in her sensible shoes. I was pale with flame-red hair, while Paige was dark-haired and olive-complected, and she sported a deep tan from her summer spent poolside at the Palisades Country Club. I was as athletic as I could force my omega body to be with swimming and working out with Dylan. Paige was all soft feminine curves, like a pinup girl who’d just walked off a beach shoot in the Mediterranean.
My omega scent was cherries and booze; hers was a decadent vanilla cake that most Alphas would want to put straight into their veins.
She strove hard and had an uphill battle. She was here to be the best omega she could be and find the perfect pack, but that pack had to be one that valued intellect and personality over a pedigree that spanned generations. She had some prospects, but not nearly as many as the legacy omegas, despite the wide appeal of her scent.
Professor Crews finally dismissed the class. I peeled myself out of my chair and dutifully followed Paige down the shallow stairs of the auditorium-style lecture hall. Forty-foot ceilings and airy transoms kept the syrupy mishmash of pheromones wafting off a hundred omegas tolerable.
“Where to next?” I asked her as we emerged into the hallway. Girls clustered in the nearby lounge, chattering away about their summer activities and the packs they were talking to and all the usual shit. A few side-eyed me, so I shot them a smile full of teeth.
“You don’t know your class schedule?”
“Um, I am taking all the same classes as you are, obviously.”
Because I didn’t give a shit. I trusted Paige to pick decent classes and remind me when I had an assignment due.
She gave me a smug grin. Uh-oh. “Well then, we have Principles of Genetics next.”
I gasped. “Paige, what the fuck?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “With Professor Hart.”
Kill me now.
She tugged me down the stairs. Our lit class was held on the second floor of the main academic building—a sprawling graystone monstrosity complete with pointed-arch windows and fucking spires. We hit the first floor and moseyed through the grand foyer, which contained another lounge that was better suited for a Victorian palace than a college. We shoved through the back doors onto a stone patio that looked out over a reflecting pool the size of a football field. It was the centerpiece around which the OFS academic quad was situated in a boxy U-shape, the three buildings connected by arched covered walkways.
I trudged along after Paige as she practically skipped across the manicured lawn toward the science-and-math building on the west side of the quad.
“Why on the goddess’s green earth did you sign up for Genetics?” I griped. “With Hart, of all people. That guy can’t even bother to pretend that he isn’t here to just preen in front of a bunch of omega girls.”
She waved a dismissive hand at me. “At least he’s easy on the eyes.”
“Sure, if you think a canister of creatine powder in human form is hot.”
She rolled her eyes as we entered the science building, four stories built in the same style as the English Gothic monstrosity that was the Main Hall. “Stop acting like you don’t find beta men attractive, Seraphina,” Paige said over her shoulder as we climbed the stairs. “You always manage to find one to hook up with at the all-college mixers.”
Always and hook up were stretching it, but it was certainly the image I’d wanted to project in front of the courting packs at those parties. I’d find a hot beta dude who could hold a conversation, and if there was enough spark, I’d herd him back to my dorm room for a quickie.
This had happened all of three times in three years, but I’d let everyone think I was banging beta boys with some frequency.
It was a baseline rebel move for an OFS omega to refuse to save herself for her courting pack, but plenty of Alphas were progressive enough these days that it took a lot more than that to scare them off.
Like taking three scorching-hot Alphas’ cocks in a dirty MC clubhouse, perhaps.
A flock of freshmen omegas passed us on the stairs, tittering amongst themselves. They’d probably just left first-year biology. I’d slept through that class and still managed a B—a fact that I hoped annoyed Hart to no end.
The few girls that didn’t fawn all over him seemed to find their way onto his shit list, and I was likely a headliner.
We entered the lecture hall on the third floor. The midmorning sun blazed through the tall windows, so at least I’d be able to appreciate the view of the sprawling hills to the city’s west while being subjected to advanced science with Professor McDouche.
When I began to shuffle toward the back of the classroom, Paige grabbed my shirt. “Nope,” she said. “We sat in the back in Lit. It’s my turn to pick our seats.”
I blew out a defeated sigh and let her haul me to the middle of the front-fucking-row. Other juniors and seniors filed into the room, and all but a handful snagged seats near the front.
At the top of the hour, Professor Hart strode into the room. Instead of the business casual most professors wore, he was clad in pale blue scrubs and expensive running shoes, like he’d just stepped away from saving lives and simply had no time to change clothes. His breast pocket was embroidered with the logo for West Medical, the city’s largest private hospital and where my father Jonathan worked as a pediatric heart surgeon.
The whole getup was a fucking joke, since he rarely saw patients these days and was mostly a lab dweller.
Paige let out a smitten sigh next to me, and she wasn’t the only one. Hart was in his thirties and somehow found the time to spend hours in the gym between his gig at West Medical and part-time professoring. He wore his scrubs a size too small so we would be unable to miss his carved biceps and broad chest. He was five foot nine-ish—much shorter than the average Alpha male, but he still towered over the omega students. His hair was dark blond, which matched the whirls of chest hair that just peeked out of the V-neck of his scrubs top.
I did not know what the hell any of the girls saw in this prick other than that he was a conventionally attractive, nonthreatening authority figure who probably spiked his morning coffee with horse steroids so that he could look like an Alpha while he pranced around the OFS.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said as he took his post behind the lectern. “I’m pleased to see so many familiar faces returning for a higher-level science class. The right kind of Alphas will view a well-rounded knowledge of both the arts and sciences as a pleasing attribute in their omega, I assure you.”
The class visibly swooned, Paige included.
“Why does everyone think that was a compliment?” I whisper-hissed, leaning into Paige’s personal space. “He’s congratulating us on going the extra mile to be a party trick for Alphas who want to brag that they bonded an omega with a brain.”
She batted me away. “Shh.”
Hart didn’t miss my attempt to pry Paige’s attention away from him, his smug smile slipping into a look of distaste as his gaze bounced off me.
Yes, you dick, I have returned to your class .
Paige shot me a wide-eyed look that said, Don’t you dare get us in trouble , but Hart had already cleared his throat and moved on.
“As such, I will hold you to the standards of a normal university student in a genetics class. There will be no free rides here, and I urge you to do your best even if your GPA is, understandably, not the highest of your priorities.”
The girls nodded like that was a totally reasonable thing for a professor to say to their students, which, in this funhouse-mirror perversion of a college, it was.
“Paige,” I moaned under my breath. “The condescension reeks worse than a horny teenage Alpha.”
She hushed me again. “At least he cares that we actually learn something. Honestly, Seraphina, I do not understand why you hate him so much.”
I slumped in my seat. “I hate everything about this place.”
She hummed in agreement. “Well, that is true.”
Hart fired up his laptop and projected today’s slide deck on the big screen that hung at the front of the classroom. He launched into the fundamentals of Mendelian inheritance, and I took that as my cue to return to my drawings.
I hadn’t been able to really study the tattoos on Blaze’s biceps because he’d rudely decided he didn’t need to take his clothes off to fuck me, but I remembered something resembling a dragon with fire and vines and other fun things peeking out from under his T-shirt sleeve. I’d do my best rendition next to Hawk’s wings in my notebook.
For posterity.
When the hour was finally over and Hart dismissed us, I’d given up on my dragon and had moved on to sketching a little campfire as an homage to Blaze’s cozy pheromones. After stuffing my shit into my backpack, it was my turn to drag Paige toward the door.
“A moment, Miss Hayes.”
Paige froze with a little hiccupping gasp. She extricated herself from my hold and turned eagerly back to Professor Hart. “Me?” she squeaked.
He gave her an indulgent smile. “Yes, of course.”
She shuffled closer to his lectern, and I took up a post against the doorway with a huff of annoyance.
Hart glanced at me. “You may go, Miss Bryce. I only need a minute of Paige’s time.”
Oh, she’s Paige now, is she?
“I’m good here,” I announced.
He glared, putting some weight behind that stare like he was an Alpha trying to put me in my place.
Weak shit. I was raised by Jericho fucking Bryce.
When I didn’t budge, he turned back to Paige. “Miss Hayes, I must say I was extremely pleased to see your name on my roster. You were the best student I’ve had in the first-year biology class in years.”
Paige glowed under his praise. “Thank you, Professor.”
“How would you feel about being my senior assistant this year? You’d be the first-line tutor for students seeking help in my classes.” He leaned an elbow on his podium, his bicep flexing with the movement. “It’s a great honor.”
I made a retching noise, then quickly cleared my throat.
“Yes!” Paige replied breathlessly. “I would love to, Professor. Thank you so much for thinking of me.”
He banged his fist on the podium and grinned at her. “Fantastic. Swing by my office hours when you have a chance, and I’ll get you the materials you’ll need.”
“Okay. Yes. I will do that.” She turned and scurried toward me, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed as she mouthed, Oh my God .
I didn’t share her enthusiasm but wouldn’t burst her bubble. When Paige was happy, I was happy. “Congrats, babe. I can’t say I’m jealous you’ll be seeing more of Hart, but you definitely deserve all the honor.”
“Thank you,” she said primly. “Let’s go to the dining hall. We need to feed you before Omega Senior Seminar this afternoon, or else you’ll be even more of a monster.”
I groaned like I was dying. “What did I do to deserve so much fucking torture this year?”
“You’re so dramatic.”
She didn’t know the half of it.