Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Linus
Imade it through the rest of the afternoon without too many more interruptions. My principal, Olivia, came to talk to me about Eddie Wallace, but she agreed with my assessment of the boy, and that Mr. Wallace was being a jerk. She also said she’d handle it, which took a load off my shoulders.
“You’re out on Monday and Tuesday, right?” Olivia asked as she left the room.
I blushed a little as I stood to gather my things and answered, “Yeah, if my heat shows up on time and isn’t longer than usual.”
Olivia nodded. She was a beta, but she’d had enough experience with omega teachers to know how our biology worked. “I’ll have one of the Ed students doing their practicum take over your class.”
“Thanks,” I said as I shrugged into my coat and hefted my satchel over my arm.
There were good people out there, despite the Mr. Wallaces and Lucases of the world. Olivia was one of them. So were a few of my colleagues, who I waved to or got into little chats with as we all headed for the parking lot and home.
It was early spring and the weather still wasn’t great, so it took me longer to drive home than I’d thought it would. Once I was tucked away in my cozy, one-bedroom apartment, I pulled out my phone to check the directions Lucas had texted me for his interview.
“What the heck?” I said, frowning at the phone when I saw the coordinates. And yes, they were coordinates, not an address. “That’s out in the middle of nowhere.”
Well, out in the middle of nowhere at the foot of Blue Knob Mountain, where Kincade Slopes was located.
I actually knew the area. Two years before, Olivia had arranged for one of our faculty continuing education retreats to be held at Kincade Slopes.
We’d even stayed overnight on the school’s dime.
The staff there had taken excellent care of us.
I remembered meeting Madison and Benny Kincade, the owners of the lodge, while we were there.
They were a great couple and what I aspired to find someday.
My memories of that weekend trip stayed with me as I rushed through an early supper, then grabbed a shower.
They were good memories, which softened me to the ridiculous errand Lucas was sending me on.
I got out of the shower and dressed in one of my nicer outfits, something that didn’t make me look like I was around small kids all day.
Kincade Slopes was a fairly long drive, more than an hour.
I had to hoof it if I was going to get there before eight.
Halfway there, while I was zipping along at exactly sixty-five miles-per-hour and not an MPH more, I got a call from Lucas.
“Are you there yet?” he asked. I could have sworn he was giggling.
“Not quite,” I said. “But I should be there well before the interview.
“Don’t arrive early!” Lucas shouted loud enough to blast out the speakers in my car.
“It’s good form to arrive early,” I told him in my teacher voice.
“Not for this,” Lucas said, something about his insistence making the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “You have to show up exactly at eight.”
“Showing up early won’t hurt.”
“It will,” Lucas insisted. “They have, um, time slots for the interviews. Ten-minute time slots. You have to stick rigidly to yours.”
I huffed impatiently. “Alright,” I said, that feeling of being a doormat growing in me again. “But you owe me for this.”
“Trust me, you’ll be thanking me for the whole thing soon,” Lucas said.
I frowned. Something wasn’t right.
“You’re okay out there at the beach house, aren’t you?” I asked. “Staying out of trouble?”
“Oh, always, always,” Lucas said.
“That’s a huge lie and you know it.”
Lucas laughed. “I have more fun than you do.”
I wanted to snap back with a clever reply, but he was right. Lucas always had more fun than I did. Granted, I wasn’t sure I liked his sort of fun. But then again, I didn’t actually love being a boring, vanilla omega either.
We said our goodbyes and I ended the call so I could focus on the road. I don’t know what it was about my brother, but he always made me feel like I was inadequate, even though he was the evil twin and I was the good one.
Maybe he was right to some degree. Maybe I did need to loosen up a little and have more fun.
Tina had said something similar that afternoon.
It wasn’t like I was against the idea of fun.
And yeah, there had been a few times when I’d caught myself wondering, with all the giddy, naughty feelings that went with it, what would happen if I did seek out some thrills for my heat.
But no, I wasn’t Lucas and I never would be.
I reached the coordinates Lucas had sent only to discover a trailer parked at the edge of a gravel parking lot.
Someone was just backing a car out of the spot next to the one I pulled into.
Instead of turning toward the highway, once they were out of the lot, they turned to drive up the mountain to Kincade Slopes. Lucky devil.
Because Lucas had told me I had to, I waited three minutes until my watch said eight on the nose, then got out of the car, locking it behind me, even though we were in the middle of the woods without another soul in sight, and headed to the wooden steps leading up to the trailer’s door.
“Hello?” I walked into what looked like a temporary and slightly seedy office that took up what must have been one half of the trailer.
There was a flimsy wall with a door in it that must have led to a different office and a desk right in front of me with a young, handsome, and bored-looking beta filing his nails.
“I’m, um, Lucas Cahill? I’m here for an interview? ”
The beta stopped filing his nails and narrowed his eyes at me slightly. There was a laptop on the desk which he pulled closer so he could start typing something. He stared at the screen for a second before the thread of tension there softened into a smile.
“I like your look today. It’s…original,” he said, then cleared his throat and gestured to the seat in front of the desk.
I glanced down at my clothes for a second. I couldn’t figure out what the beta meant. I looked normal.
“Could you, um, tell me a bit more about this job?” I asked carefully.
From the way the beta moved to grab a clipboard with some papers attached to it, I got the feeling I wasn’t supposed to ask questions. “It’s an administrative job,” he said, handing the clipboard over to me. “If you could just fill this out, I’ll let the boss know you’re here.”
“Okay, th-thanks,” I said, uneasiness growing in my gut.
I wasn’t sure what was going on. Was this how job interviews were run these days? I hadn’t ever had to apply for a job, really. I’d gotten my Education degree from Barrington U, and since teachers were in high demand, I’d been placed right after graduating, without having to job hunt or anything.
Lucas had dropped out of college, though. He’d probably been on a dozen weird interviews just like this. He would have acted cool through the whole interview process, so for his sake, I was going to act cool, too.
Until I started reading the questions.
The application had all the normal stuff, name, address, age, gender. I filled in Lucas’s information. Then the questions started getting bizarre. Date of last heat, intensity of heats on a scale of one to ten, amount of slick produced, size of the largest alpha cock I’d ever taken.
“Are these questions really necessary?” I asked the beta as he stepped back into the room from the side office. “They’re really personal.”
“Oh, they’re very necessary,” the beta said, stepping over to my chair and holding out his hand to take the clipboard.
“I haven’t finished filling it out,” I told him with a bristling combination of guilt and growing worry.
“Maybe later,” the beta said with a flashy smile. “The boss is ready to see you now.”
“Okay.”
I handed over the clipboard and got up, following the beta to the office. The whole thing was wrong. Very wrong. What sort of organization had Lucas gotten involved in that interviewed for admins in the middle of nowhere and asked embarrassing and personal questions on their application?
“There’s no one in here,” I said once we were in the office.
“Just wait here,” the beta said, nodding to the external door in the corner. “They’ll be with you in a second.”
It was so, so weird. The beta left, and I was stuck standing there in a completely empty room, nothing going on but—
I nearly jumped out of my skin when the external door flew open and a huge alpha dressed all in black and wearing a ski-masked lunged into the room.
“We’ve got another one!” he called over his shoulder out the door.
Panic swooped in on me. “I’m just here for an interview,” I said, holding up my hands and backing toward the door to the other half of the trailer.
“You got the job,” the masked alpha said, marching swiftly across the room to me.
“There…there has to be some sort of misunderstanding,” I said, my brain starting to short-circuit.
That was as far as I got. The alpha reached me and tugged me forward, throwing me off-balance. I had no idea what was going on at first. I didn’t even think to struggle as he pushed me toward the door.
Until he reached for the bottom of my sweater and yanked it up over my head.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, trying to be brave when I was suddenly terrified.
“Stay quiet,” the alpha growled, grabbing for my shirt.
He was undressing me. I couldn’t believe it. Fear like nothing I’d ever known roared through me as he tugged my shirt off, leaving me bare-chested. That was bad enough, but he didn’t stop there. He went for my trousers next, undoing my belt and the button.
“No! Stop! Stop! Help!” I screamed, trying to fight back and get away from the alpha. “Help!”