Chapter 5
WREN
Me:
This week is cursed, I swear to god.
Gabbie:
What happened now?
Nikita:
Who am I fighting?
We ride at dawn.
Me:
My first reading assignment didn’t load properly, so I only just found out it’s due tomorrow. Everyone else has had the full week to complete it.
I forgot my laptop charger.
Then, some douche in my eight a.m. asked me how it felt to have a free ticket into year three. He started calling me Monopoly: ‘Get outta jail free card’ Omega. That’s apparently what we are, according to him and his group of pimple-faced frat boys.
Be proud of me for biting my tongue, not his nose right off his face.
Nikita:
You’re a better woman than I.
Gabbie:
Pfft. It’s pathetic behavior. Tell me he’s never met an Omega, without telling me.
While he’s been doing beer bongs for two years, you’ve been interning for the biggest PR agencies out there.
Do these people just not get it?
Nikita:
Give me a name, five minutes with a gallon of bleach, a roll of duct tape, and a pack of red vines.
Me:
Red vines?
Nikita:
I need a snack while I watch his toenails dissolve.
Gabbie:
Don’t worry about meeting us, if you’d rather just go straight home?
Me:
No. I’ll be there, I’m cutting through the quad now.
Fuck that guy. I’m not gonna let some Beta idiot send me running with my tail between my legs.
Tucking my phone back in my bag, I shove my headphones in place and pull my collar up.
The three of us have been doing our best to assimilate into campus life as rapidly as possible, while our heads are on a swivel, catching up with everyone else who has been settled into college routine for months already.
Today, however? It’s tempting to throw in the towel on days like today. Especially when it feels like everywhere I turn, there are judgments about Omegas waiting to give me a jump scare.
Little does limp-dick know, all of us on these scholarships have basically had to work twice as hard.
Not only are we required to set foot on campus for a maximum of two years, but we’ve had to do all the prep work to be ready to hit the ground running for our accelerated degree on our own.
No falling asleep in lecture halls and cruising through the first two years.
Nope. We’ve had to do the hard yards without help to make sure we meet the entrance requirements.
On top of that, we’ve all had to work jobs at the same time. In my case, I’ve been working as a virtual assistant for a top sports PR agency. Unless you’re made of money, Omegas don’t just sit around doing nothing. Despite what so many people seem to want to believe about our designation.
“You know you only got in because you’re an Omega, right?”
“Why don’t you save us all the embarrassment and go to an Omega-only college?”
“Quit while you’re ahead. You’re never gonna make the cut.”
All those little taunts add up over time, reinforcing why I’m here to achieve my goals and stride out of this place with my degree in hand. If I were more audacious, more bold like Nikita, I’d gladly flip them all the bird in the process.
The college library is a big old brick building, with a large clock tower and two massive wings, located at the other end of the campus from where we live. An easy stroll, except on a day like today when the temperature keeps plummeting, and what is that? Rain?
Oh, it would be just my fucking luck.
It’s not cold enough today to get on with it and properly snow, so this is just some bullshit sleety globs of wetness falling from the sky.
Doing my best turtle impression, I sink into my coat and hustle my ass as the fat, soaking drops start plopping all around me.
I’m gonna arrive looking like a drowned rat.
Cursed day: 4
Wren: 0
I’m caught right in the middle of my two possible destinations.
Too far to race home without getting soaked all the way through and equally stranded too far from the library to have any hope of reaching shelter.
Maybe I just need to accept defeat and lie down here on the path and, you know, become one with nature.
Become an Omega icicle. Let the rain consume me. I could use a good cathartic cry.
From out of nowhere, a thump of heavy footsteps comes up behind me, followed by the rustle and thwomp of an umbrella opening.
Blinking, I reach to tug my headphones out, and peer up at the least expected sight of my twenty-three years.
Connor Renfro.
My stomach swoops. Butterflies lurch. Heat blooms between my thighs.
“Gonna get wet out here, lass.” His hoodie is pulled up over his cap today, with a jacket and duffel bag slung across his body.
I’m rendered speechless. What are words?
This man looks like the sort of solid wall you’d hope to bump into if you fell through a mysterious standing stone time portal. With his dark auburn hair poking out beneath his cap, ocean-deep eyes, and crooked grin, leading me to stare longingly at that perfectly scruffy bearded jaw.
He’s handsome in the kind of way that encourages you to consider stripping naked and running across emerald-green moors. The perfect combination of cheeky and cute, where you would undoubtedly say yes to skinny dipping in a lake at night under a full moon, even if you couldn’t swim.
Connor Renfro oozes sex, raw talent, and strength. And doesn’t he know it.
Rain patters against the umbrella, and he quirks an eyebrow at my silence. “That sharp tongue of yours frozen today?”
“Are you following me?” I blurt out. It’s all I’ve got.
That makes his eyes sparkle as he looks down, towering over me in a way that does something to my insides on a primal level.
No. Bad. Stop thinking about how big he is.
Don’t for one second think about his knot.
“Happy coincidence. You need an umbrella, and look at that, I seem to have one.”
“You just so happen to be out here… on campus… with an umbrella?”
“Willow Falls is a small place, huh?” He flashes multimillion-dollar pearly whites. The same smile that pairs nicely with a tailored suit and the front page of GQ magazine.
It might be late winter, but the scent he drags in with him is sweeter. More like spring rain and heather. The kind of soft, sensual drift of raindrops, while curled up reading a book and inhaling the damp earth from the garden outside.
“For a big guy, you’re managing to be very sneaky,” I mutter, trying to shake off the way that makes the cluster of butterfly wings in my stomach flap harder.
“Consider it my job to be light on my feet.” He grins.
“Whatever.” Giving him a shrug, I neatly avoid drifting toward conversations about who he is and what he does, because even though I know… the last thing I want is for him to know that I know.
Ugh.
“Which way are you headed then, Bambi?” His voice does that lilting thing, in that rumbly, deep voice, where the vowels are caressed almost lovingly.
Sucking in a deep breath, I stare back up at him and realize I’m stuck under this umbrella no matter which direction I go. And there’s no way in hell I’m allowing this man to know where I live, because that would become all too dangerous.
Something about seeing him again like this is messing with my silly little Omega brain.
He smells nice, and that’s a terrible thing to admit to myself.