Chapter 43 Spencer
Spencer
Waiting never used to bother me. Hell, I was good at it. Patience had always been important in my line of work, and usually I excelled at it. It was a requirement, and I had never been one to let a little discomfort affect my dedication to getting the job done.
Until now.
Because, when it came to Flora, all the patience I had worked years to hone evaporated. It had been almost twenty minutes since she had gone to meet with the greasy-haired TA, and I was going out of my mind. The appointment with her other professor only lasted five minutes.
All I wanted to do was barge in and demand the faculty fix whatever was going on because, clearly, there was an issue with their system.
There was no way Flora was failing all her classes.
The very idea was utterly ridiculous. This was the omega who would rather study than go and get ice cream. We’d all seen the efforts she put in.
Flora was dealing with enough stress from the sudden move and someone following her—and trust that I was beyond pissed we hadn’t found the fucker yet. He had been evading us at every turn as if he could see us coming. We knew he was on campus, sure, but that was pretty much it.
We had been reduced to waiting for the fucker to make a move so we could catch him, and that made me uneasy. I wasn’t used to that. It felt… wrong.
Sighing, I threw my head back, lightly banging it on the brick wall. Subtlety had gone out the window, so instead of waiting from a distance, I was standing in the hallway right outside the professor’s office.
“How long has she been in there?” Chase asked as he wandered up to me. He was wearing a university T-shirt and baseball cap, a generic backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Twenty minutes,” I groaned. “But this is the last meeting of the day.”
“Good. I want to get home and eat. I'm pretty sure Bear is going out of his mind. He's happy to be playing with Maggie, but you know he would rather be here.”
The bond was no longer brand new, so Bear and Flora could handle being apart for a few hours, but that didn't change the fact they simply wanted to be together because they loved each other. And even if I wasn’t particularly good at saying so, I understood that.
I didn’t want to be apart from her, either, which just made right now that much worse.
“It should have been Bear here. You and I both know that Flora won’t give a shit if someone dares to give her a funny look for being with him. Hell, she’ll chew them out.”
It was one of the many things I loved about our omega. Smart and headstrong, even though those traits could be incredibly annoying. She didn't care what anyone else thought. Flora loved Bear, and she would happily declare it from the rooftops.
“Honestly, seeing the way she spoke to her mother when it came to him, if someone dared to open their big mouth, I think Flora would go feral on their ass. Is it bad that I would really enjoy seeing that?”
Chuckling, I shook my head. We were going to protect Flora so she never needed to be in any sort of physical altercation, but even I had to admit that would be a rather amusing sight.
Chase sighed. “Bear is calling. Again. Maybe next time we should force him to come to campus, ’cause otherwise he's going to be insufferable.” He laughed, holding up his phone, showing three missed calls from Bear.
“You're going to be just as bad when you bond with her, and you know it,” I pointed out.
“No, I won't, because when I bond with her, she’s not going to be allowed to leave the nest for an entire month.” He spoke with such confidence.
“Sure, and when she tases you for keeping her captive, you’re just going to go along with it?” I cocked a brow at him, remembering our girl’s skills vividly.
“That’s just spicy foreplay.” He smirked.
“And people think I'm the crazy one of this pack.”
“Nah, just the one with a stick up his ass most of the time.” Chase laughed, nudging me with his elbow.
“If you're not careful, I’ll remove that stick and beat you to death with it,” I threatened.
Instead of being scared, Chase simply beamed. “If that's the price it takes to get the stick from your hole, I will happily pay it because I love you, my dear pack mate. Anyway, I’m thinking about getting takeout from that Greek place down the road tonight. What do you think?”
“Sounds good. But Flora hasn’t really been eating much with everything going on.
” I frowned. As an alpha, my primary job was to look after my omega.
Before work or other obligations, my first priority was taking care of her.
So the fact she wasn’t sleeping well or eating was a kick to the nuts I had limited experience with.
“Do you want—” Chase was cut off as his phone started to ring. Not the normal ringtone, either. It was a harsher alarm that I recognized immediately.
Many years ago, we’d implemented an emergency ringtone. One that none of us would ever ignore. It was a kind of failsafe in case we didn’t answer our phone because we didn’t want to talk about something silly.
If Chase was receiving that call, though, it could only be from one person. Everything in me stilled, terror gripping at me in a way I had never experienced before. Without even thinking about it, Chase placed it on speaker, so we both could hear.
“Bear. What's going on?”
“Are you with Flora?” he asked, his voice rough.
“She’s in the meeting with one of her TAs. We're just outside his office.”
“Get her. Something's wrong. I can feel it through the bond.”
That was all I needed to hear. Their bond meant they shared a unique connection. If he felt like something was wrong, then something was definitely fucking wrong.
Lurching forward, I grabbed the handle of the office door, tugging.
“It’s locked,” I hissed.
There was no reason for a teacher’s assistant to lock his office while having a meeting with a student. My heart rate sped up, general concern ramping up to true worry. I needed to see Flora immediately; to know she was safe.
With a roar, I threw my body weight into the door, the flimsy lock shattering under the force. The university could bill me later. I didn't give a shit.
The office was empty. My head whipped around, taking in everything as quickly as I possibly could.
The back window was wide open, and there was no denying the smell of burnt honey in the air.
It was Flora… her fear. She had been scared.
No, downright terrified, and I hadn’t been there, stuck outside like some fucking—
“Dammit!” I slammed my fist into the wall, still searching for anything that might give us more information.
A chair was pushed over, and a few papers were scattered around like there had been a scuffle. What the fuck had happened to my omega while I was standing on the other side of the goddamn door?
Nausea and tension snaked through every part of me, my pulse skyrocketing.
She was gone. Flora was nowhere in this fucking room, and that TA had done something to her.
It was like something deep within me was being ripped out of my chest. Calm and collected, the stoic, serious one who remained level.
That all fell away. I roared, dragging my hands through the mussed papers on the desk, hoping I’d dig gouges into the fucking wood.
A stranger had my omega. A stalker who’d already declared just how unhinged he was, and he’d been under our noses the entire fucking time. We’d missed it.
I’d missed it.
The only time I'd come close to feeling a fraction of what I did now was when Bear had his accident, when it had looked like, for a moment, we might lose him.
“Bear is on his way.” Chase’s voice cut through the noise in my head, pacing through the office, turning over everything with the tip of his boot. “Can you smell that?”
“Yes.” I choked out the word, growling.
Chase’s face went pale. “No… It’s not just Flora.
I think—here!” He picked up a bottle off the floor, holding it up to the light.
The artificially, chemically sweet smell emanating from it was easily recognizable.
I snatched the bottle from his hand, putting it to my nose before looking back to the open window.
The smashing of glass breaking screamed through the quiet room as I crushed the bottle in my grip, dropping the pieces to the floor as my palm smeared with red.
“The fucker drugged her.”