My Freshman Mate (Westbridge Mates #1)

Chapter 2 Braiden

Braiden

Okay, Item seven: Confirm my room location and unpack my stuff. Done.

I tap my pen against the laminated checklist, and the small, sharp thwick echoes in the silence of my dorm room.

The sound bounces off the bare white walls, which are practically screaming for something—anything—to be put on them.

Maybe a periodic table poster? No way. Too obvious.

I'd be labeled as that pre-med omega before I even made it to my first class.

God, I hate that term. Omega. Every time someone says it, I picture myself reduced to a checkbox on a form.

Just another biological curiosity to be categorized and filed away.

My parents, both betas, always tried to downplay it.

"Focus on your brain, Braiden," Dad would say over dinner, pointing a fork at me for emphasis.

"That's what will get you somewhere in life. The rest is just biology."

Easy for him to say. He doesn't have to worry about a heat cycle derailing his five-year plan.

I glance at the small orange bottle sitting next to my perfectly aligned stack of textbooks. Take daily suppressant. I tip a tiny white pill into my palm and swallow it dry, the familiar chalky taste coating my tongue. One less thing to worry about.

"You the new guy?"

A voice from the doorway makes me jump, sloshing the water in my bottle. A lanky guy with neat black hair and wire-rimmed glasses leans against the doorframe, a clipboard tucked under his arm. His polo shirt is so crisply ironed it looks like it could cut me.

"Yes. Braiden Kelly." I wipe my damp palm on my jeans and extend my hand, trying to channel the professional, controlled handshake my mother drilled into me. Firm grip. Eye contact. No sudden movements.

"Toby Song-Gi. I'm your RA." He gives my hand a firm, no-nonsense shake, then his eyes drift to my desk. They linger on the color-coded binder, the tabbed planner, and the laminated checklist. A corner of his mouth quirks up. "Wow. I think you might be the most prepared freshman I've ever seen."

A flush of pride warms my neck. "I like to have a plan."

"I can tell." Toby's smile is small but seems genuine. "Well, the welcome assembly starts in twenty minutes in the Hartwell Auditorium. It's mandatory, so don't be late."

I give a sharp nod, already reaching for my satchel. "It's next on my schedule. I've already figured out the quickest way there."

Toby blinks, then lets out a short, surprised laugh.

"Right. Of course you have." He pushes off the doorframe, giving my room one last scan.

"You'll do fine here." He taps his clipboard against his leg, a gesture that's both patient and a little tired.

"Just… try to come up for air once in a while, okay?

College isn't just about checking boxes. "

I offer a polite smile that doesn't reach my eyes. That's exactly what college is about, I'm screaming inside. It's about checking the right boxes, in the right order, to get into a top-tier medical school. My Plan doesn't have a box for 'coming up for air.'

After Toby leaves, I do a final check of my satchel.

Laptop, fully charged. Three black pens, one blue backup.

Notebook. Water bottle. Protein bar. Laminated campus map.

And The Plan itself, my masterpiece of scheduling and ambition.

I take a deep breath, the sterile air of the dorm filling my lungs.

"Day One: Campus Survival Plan," I whisper to the empty room. "You've got this."

My stomach churns in disagreement.

***

The Hartwell Auditorium is a nightmare of noise and bodies.

A thousand different conversations overlap into a dull roar, and the air is thick with a chaotic mix of scents—perfume, laundry detergent, nervous sweat—that makes my nose twitch, even with the suppressants working overtime.

I find a seat near the front, a solitary island in a sea of chattering groups.

Alone, but purposefully so. It's strategic.

Less chance of getting drawn into a pointless conversation that isn't on my schedule.

A group of omegas drifts by my row, their sweet, floral scents a little too strong for the enclosed space. One of them, a pretty blonde with a silver nose ring, catches my eye. Her friendly smile is as bright as her voice when she speaks. "Hey. You saving these seats?"

"No," I blurt out. Crap, too eager. "I mean, they're available. If you want them."

Smooth, Braiden. Real smooth.

Her smile widens. "I'm Zoe. First year?"

"I'm Braiden. Yeah, first year." My brain feels like it's been replaced with rocks. Why is talking so hard?

"Cool. What's your major?"

"Biology. Pre-med track." I straighten my shoulders. This, I can talk about. This is safe territory.

"Wow, ambitious." She shrugs, a casual gesture that seems totally alien to me. "I'm undecided. Just trying not to fail anything my first semester." Her friends wave her over, and she glances back at them with a grin. "Well, nice to meet you. Maybe I'll see you around campus?"

"Statistically probable," I say, and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. A hot, mortifying blush crawls up my neck. Who says that? I sound like a robot.

To my surprise, she just laughs, a tinkling sound that makes something in my chest loosen a fraction. "I'll take that as a yes. Later, Statistics Guy."

She rejoins her friends, and I'm alone again. I open my notebook to a fresh page, pen poised, as the dean, a stern-looking alpha with a booming voice, steps up to the podium.

The guy sitting next to me, a beta with a nervous habit of drumming his fingers on his knee, leans over. His voice is a low, anxious whisper. "Hey, sorry to bug you, but do you know if this advising session afterwards is mandatory for undeclared majors?"

"It is," I reply, maybe a little too formally.

"According to the freshman orientation packet, section three, paragraph two, all incoming students are required to attend their assigned advising session to confirm their initial course registration.

Failure to do so could result in being dropped from your classes. "

The guy's eyes widen slightly. The drumming stops. "Oh. Uh. Right. Thanks." He slowly turns back to face the front, putting a careful foot of distance between us.

Great. I've been here three hours and I'm already nicknamed "Statistics Guy" and have scared off my neighbor. Fantastic start to my social integration.

I tune out the dean's inspirational crap and focus on what matters.

Ninety-four percent graduation rate. Eighty-eight percent job placement.

A minimum 3.85 GPA for med school acceptance.

My brain kicks into gear, doing the math.

Two years of straight As, then maybe—maybe—I could afford a single B+ in junior year.

No, that's too risky. It has to be straight As, all the way.

Four hours of studying a day, minimum. Plus lab work. Plus—

"—the connections you forge here may last a lifetime."

I glance around at the sea of strangers. My chest tightens, that familiar feeling of being the odd one out, the one on the outside looking in.

Focus on the plan, Braiden. The plan is all that matters.

I check my watch. The assembly will end in twelve minutes.

My advising session is in Thompson Hall, a seven-minute walk from here.

That leaves five minutes to find the room and get a good seat.

Perfect. I ignore the hollow ache in my gut that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with being utterly alone.

***

I'm one of the first people out the auditorium doors, map clutched in my hand like a lifeline. The campus spreads out before me—red brick, ancient oaks, the whole rich-kid, east-coast fantasy I've only ever seen in movies. It's beautiful, I guess, but it feels alien. Impenetrable.

I trace my route on the laminated surface. Left at the library, right at the science building, straight past the student union. Easy. I've memorized it, but the map is my security blanket.

I make it halfway across the main quad when the plan goes to hell.

A pack of frat bros erupts from the student union, a loud, laughing tidal wave of backward caps and the sharp tang of body spray. They're tossing a football back and forth, their voices echoing across the manicured lawns, completely oblivious to anyone else.

"Yo, pledge! Go long!" one of them bellows.

A lanky freshman, clearly desperate to impress, tears across the grass directly into my path. I try to sidestep, but he clips my shoulder hard, sending me stumbling off the sidewalk. My new leather satchel bangs against my hip, and my meticulously plotted route is shot.

"Sorry, man!" he yells over his shoulder, not sounding sorry at all as he makes a diving catch.

I grip my map, my knuckles white. The campus looks different from this angle, a confusing maze of brick and ivy. A frantic rhythm hammers against my ribs. Okay, don't panic. Just find a landmark and recalibrate.

I spot the library's clock tower, but it's in the wrong place. If the library is over there, that means I'm facing… south? Crap. Thompson Hall should be to my left, then. I think.

I check my watch. Three minutes until the session starts. Three minutes. A cold sweat prickles the back of my neck. Being late isn't in The Plan. Being lost is a catastrophic failure.

I spot a girl with a Westbridge lanyard and hurry toward her, my voice tight with anxiety. "Excuse me, could you point me toward Thompson Hall?"

She pulls out an earbud, giving me a blank look.

"Thompson? Oh, uh… it's over that way somewhere, I think?

" She makes a vague, unhelpful gesture that encompasses about a third of the campus.

"Big brick building. You can't miss it." She pops the earbud back in and walks away, leaving me standing there, more lost than before.

They're all big brick buildings.

Panic, cold and sharp, claws its way up my throat. I start walking faster, my eyes glued to the useless map, trying to force the lines and symbols to make sense. Maybe if I cut through this courtyard, I can shave off a few seconds…

The world vanishes in a full-body jolt as I walk headfirst into something solid. Hard.

My map flies from my hand. Papers from my satchel explode across the ground. I stagger backward, the air knocked from my lungs, an apology already forming on my lips.

"I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking where I—"

The words dissolve in my mouth as I finally look up.

And up.

And up.

He's a mountain. A solid wall of muscle stretching a gray Westbridge Athletics t-shirt tight across a chest and shoulders so broad he seems to block out the sun.

Sun-streaked blond hair, a little messy, falls across a forehead that looks like it was carved from stone.

His jaw is sharp enough to cut diamonds.

But it's his eyes that stop my heart.

They stop me cold. Blue. Not regular blue—impossibly blue, like someone took the sky on a perfect day and cranked the saturation to maximum. The kind of blue that doesn't seem real.

And those eyes are locked on me. Not just looking at me, but through me, with an intensity that's a physical touch, stripping me bare right here in the middle of campus.

Time stops. I'm not being dramatic; everything freezes. The chatter of students fades to a distant hum. The rustling of leaves in the oak trees goes silent. The only thing I can hear is the frantic, panicked drumming of my own heart.

And then I smell him.

Oh, God.

My suppressants are useless, a dam made of tissue paper against a tsunami. His scent slices through the air, through my clothes, through my skin, and sinks straight into my bones. It's clean sweat and something sharp and electric, like the air right before a lightning strike. Ozone. Raw power.

Alpha.

My mind, my logical, planning, calculating mind, tries to fight it. Fated mates are a biological anomaly. A one-in-a-million chance. A romantic fantasy. This isn't real.

But the screaming in my blood says otherwise. It's a feeling I've only ever read about in textbooks, a primal, soul-deep recognition that short-circuits every rational thought in my head. It's drowning and breathing for the first time, all at once.

My alpha. My alpha.

He takes a step closer, and the heat rolling off his body makes my skin flush. My knees turn to water. My mouth goes bone dry. And a hot, mortifying slickness pools between my legs, a deeply personal betrayal from my own body that I have never, ever felt before.

My omega instincts, the ones I've spent years pretending don't exist, surge through me with a vengeance. Every cell in my body is screaming one word, a desperate, shameful plea: Submit. Submit. Submit.

I fight it, trying to hold onto whatever scraps of control I have left.

"I—I'm late for my advising session," I stammer, the words coming out as a pathetic, shaky whisper. My scattered papers and forgotten map lie at our feet. "I have to go."

He doesn't move. He doesn't blink. His focus is a physical weight, pinning me in place. I can see his pupils dilate, those impossible blue eyes turning almost entirely black with a stark, predatory hunger.

This is insane. This isn't happening. I need to get to Thompson Hall. I need to stick to The Plan.

"I really need to—"

He closes the remaining distance between us in one silent, fluid step. He's so close now I can feel the warmth of his breath on my face. He crowds me, his sheer size a threat and a promise all at once. My head spins. I feel small. Fragile. An omega.

His voice is a low, feral growl that vibrates through the soles of my feet and straight up my spine, rattling my teeth. My entire five-year plan, my carefully constructed world, splinters when he speaks.

"You smell like mine."