Knot Ever (The Oakley-Verse #2)

Prologue

“Quick, before she sees us!” A familiar voice yells over the noise.

One moment I’m drinking my beer, dancing to some techno song I don’t know, in a bar where they don’t even bother to list the drink prices, and the next I'm being yanked through the sweaty pulsing crowd, hands reaching out, bodies pressed against mine.

The bass from the music thumps through the floors, vibrating in a womping motion up my entire body and settling in my chest before we tumble out into the cool evening air.

Laughing as we stumble onto the street and round the side of the building, I pull my arm free. “What? Where the fuck are we going, bro?”

Everyone else we’d come to Crest Haven with was still inside the club.

College students at Oakley University, we’d escaped into the city for a few days of fun.

Zale, one of our other housemates, had stayed behind, but we’d used his girlfriend’s twenty-first birthday as an excuse to go all out.

Partying was a skill, and I was an expert.

Crest Haven was the home of the wealthy and famous. If you wanted to network and meet the right people, this is where you came. By day it was a thriving city, oozing money and opportunity, and after the sun set it became a party town.

Hunter, my housemate, grins at me, his smile practically splitting his face from ear to ear. “You said she wasn’t your girlfriend…”

‘She’ is Sadie. My on again off again situationship.

I thought we were friends, who helped one another out. A way to scratch an itch. That’s it.

“She isn’t.” I grunt. I saw her through her heats and she helped me with my ruts.

Then one day, all of a sudden she started wanting more.

She came to the house. She sat with us during lunch on campus.

Before I knew it, she was at my football games wearing my jersey and her toothbrush was in our bathroom.

But she wasn’t my girlfriend. I didn’t have partners.

I had playmates…well, when they stuck around, which they never did.

Something ugly starts to uncoil low in my stomach. There was something wrong with me, a small voice whispers in the back of my head.

It was like they knew. Knew that as an alpha I wasn’t good enough. Not strong enough. Stop. Shut it down.

Hunter slaps my back, his large hand warm through my shirt as he presses the fabric against my sticky skin. He was an artist, and sometimes he created these tiny, delicate things, but his hands were huge compared to mine. I had no idea how he managed with shovels like those.

He leans back against the wall, the club’s neon sign blinking above him, the light glinting off some of the metal rings worked into his braids. “Well, if we don’t hide now, she’s going to be your wife.”

I blink. The words sinking in slowly, the alcohol making everything seem muted, delayed almost. “What?”

Is that what she’d been twittering about on the plane yesterday?

We’d flown in on my family’s private jet, and the entire flight she’d been extra clingy, trying to show me pictures of little buildings and nice dress shops she’d seen nearby.

I just thought it was for another one of her mother’s charity gala dinners. Fuck. Why hadn’t I listened more?

“I saw her talking to one of those little chapel reps.” Hunter pops open the top button of his shirt, pulling at it to cool himself down, exposing more of his pale skin and ink.

I was surprised he even still had the shirt on if I was honest, he often preferred to be topless, tattoos on show while he mooched around the house.

Paint spatters were pretty much the only thing you could always guarantee Hunter would be wearing.

I watch, still processing through the liquor as he pulls a joint from his pocket and lights it.

In Crest Haven there was a street, infamous for shotgun weddings. It ran right through the party district, with all the famous bars and nightclubs where the elite spent their weekends, burning through cash and willing partners until the sun rose, only to begin again at sunset.

It stated at the top of Grand Street, and as you walked past the gaudy little chapels which alternated with various bars and clubs, promoters would hand you flyers for free shots or a celebrity lookalike to officiate your ceremony, which could be booked in and carried out in less than twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes and the rest of your life would be fucked.

Ruined.

Over.

I didn’t want that. Not after what I’d witnessed my parents go through over the years.

It was called Trap Row for a reason. It was like a beacon for alphas and omegas unable to contain their urges, wanting to lock down the ‘mates’ they met while a bottle of tequila deep.

“It’s like the summer of 2022 all over again,” he laughs.

A few years ago, I’d almost fallen prey to an omega looking for a rich alpha to trap.

I should have known when the woman, dressed as a zombie cheerleader, had asked me for my name, and family history before ordering a bottle of champagne and round of shots.

She’d mapped out my family tree before she’d even given me her name. Charlie? Charlene? Christine?

“No. No way, man.” I stumble backwards, feeling nauseous. My words come out stuttered. “I don’t want–I can’t…”

“So, let’s get out of here.” He shrugs, exhaling swirls of sweet smelling smoke.

The wave of sickness eases, calming as he looks relaxed. Tilting his head back, I watch as his eyes flutter shut and he just soaks in the moment. I’d always been jealous of his nonchalant attitude and the way he always managed to look so cool. It was the tattoos. It had to be.

I was a joker, a playboy, one of the boys. People treated me like I was an idiot, but Hunter…Hunter was effortless. He didn’t give a shit what people thought about him. He used words like ambient and cathartic like everyone knew what they meant.

The background chatter, the sounds of people on the main street that had faded come back sharply when I hear another familiar voice.

“Evans? Evans?! Has anyone seen Evans?”

Hunter straightens, standing upright with his gaze locked on me.

Fuck. Sadie.

She was going to find me.

At the last club we’d drunk whiskey, and I can feel it now, sloshing around inside me as my whole world seems to sway.

“I think he was just here with Hunter…” Someone else answered.

A group of us had come to the city together, but in all honesty, other than Blake and Hunter, I didn’t really care for any of the others.

They just lingered around me because of who I was, who my family were and what our friendship could do to benefit them.

That was what it was like at Oakley U, a breeding ground for powerful networks.

I don’t hear her reply, her words drowned out by a boisterous group of alphas passing by. I know she hates Hunter. And when she catches me, she’ll tell me just how much.

He uses the distraction to grab my wrist and drag me further down the lane, then we make several turns, run down another street and make a right. The buildings blur around me as I let myself be dragged along by him.

When he finally stops, I almost barrel into the back of him, catching a waft of something earthy, sharp and slightly sweet. Turpentine maybe? It often clung to his skin.

“Fuck, that was close man!”

“I’m telling you…she’s the future Mrs. Evans.” He stops in his tracks, a goofy smile on his face. “Hey…are you Evan Evans?”

“What? No!” How drunk was he?

He blinks, pale blue eyes narrowing as he stares at me like his brain is short circuiting. “Dude, what’s your last name?”

“Crawford.”

His nose scrunches up as he looks at me confused. His eyes are glassy, we’d been doing shots at the last bar and it seemed to be the thing that finally tipped him over the edge. His cool, artistic composure slipping, ever so slightly as we morphed into giggling teenagers.

“Evan is my middle name.”

“So, what’s your first name?”

I snort. He’d have to pry my full name from my cold dead hands. I hated my name, and only used it when my father made me. “I’m not telling. Secret.”

I’d even bought the university’s silence with a very generous donation on that front.

Hunter steps closer, his head tilting as he looks at me. “Fucking hell man, how have I know you all these years and I don’t know your name.”

He’s only an inch or two shorter than me, but it sets my alpha instincts on alert when he enters my personal space, a low whisper in the back of my mind warning me to be careful.

I may be six foot five, and built like a brick shithouse, but Hunter wasn’t exactly some tiny waif, and he was quick. Lithe. Built like a swimmer or runner maybe.

Puffing out my chest, I wink. “Well, you don’t know everything about me.”

He raises a brow, smirking. “I know enough.”

Snorting, I punch his arm. Everyone always assumed I was a player with a new omega on my arm every other week but the reality is…I wish I was.

My father had raised me with certain expectations in mind, an idea of me that I tried to live up to. I was supposed to be the star athlete, the heir to the real estate empire and the catch of Oakley University.

But really, I was jinxed. Besides Sadie, all the others ghosted me, vanishing from my life or I did something to ruin it just when it was getting good.

I very rarely got a second date or hookup, so sloppy stolen kisses were pretty much where my expertise lay.

I’d only had sex with two female omegas, the last being Sadie.

That’s why the others thought Sadie had something to do with it, that maybe she was chasing the other interested people away but they didn’t know her like I did. She wasn’t like that, she was just trying to look out for me.