Chapter 4 Jude
Jude
I've been wearing scarves like a lunatic.
Hoodies zipped to my chin. One of Soren's oversized cardigans that I stole off the back of a kitchen chair because it covered more neck than anything I own.
Shay keeps giving me looks like I've joined a cult.
Milo made me tea yesterday and set it on my nightstand without asking questions, which is Milo for "I know something is wrong and I'm giving you exactly one more day before I stage an intervention. "
I'm not sleeping. The bond hums in my chest like a phone on vibrate that I can't turn off, this low, constant pulse of something reaching for someone who isn't here.
I roll over and it's there. I take a shower and it's there.
I try to watch TV and my brain drifts to a hotel room and hands and teeth and a voice that said wait while I was already pulling on my jeans.
The KnotMe messages keep coming. There are seven of them now.
I can see the notification badge every time I open my phone.
Seven little red circles sitting on that hot pink app icon like a guilt trip with a user interface.
I haven't read a single one. I don't need to read them to know what they say.
Some version of who are you or we need to talk or you left with my bite on your neck and I'd like to know your name.
Tough shit, hand guy. Names weren't part of the deal.
My omega growls at that. My omega has been growling at everything lately.
It purrs when I'm trying to sleep, preens when I catch my reflection and see the dark, healing mark above my collarbone, and whines every time I scroll past the KnotMe notification without opening it.
My omega is a traitor and I'm not speaking to it.
I'm fine.
"You're not fine," Benji says.
We're walking across campus toward Henderson Hall.
Tuesday-Thursday discussion section, eleven a.m., the Gen Ed class I'm taking because I needed the credits and it fit my schedule.
First discussion section of the semester.
The professor handled the opening lectures last week during syllabus week, but starting today, some grad student TA takes over the smaller sections.
Benji's in the same section. He's got his backpack slung over one shoulder, a coffee in one hand, and his eyes locked on me like a heat-seeking missile.
"I'm completely fine."
"You're wearing a turtleneck with a scarf."
"It's called fashion, Benji."
"It's called suspicious. You hate turtlenecks. You said they make you feel like a sexy thumb."
"They do make me feel like a sexy thumb. I've evolved. People evolve."
He narrows his eyes. Benji has this way of looking at you that makes you feel like he's reading your browser history.
Terrifying. "You've been weird since last week.
You went on that hookup with hand guy and then you came home at like one a.m. and went straight to your room and you've been acting squirrelly ever since.
You skipped bar night. You, Jude Park, skipped bar night. Shay almost called 911."
"I had a headache."
"So? You once did a keg stand with a migraine."
"That's not true."
"I have photos."
"I'm not acting squirrelly."
"Soren asked if you wanted to watch a movie on Saturday and you said 'I'm busy' and then sat in your room making a Spotify playlist called 'Songs For When You've Made A Terrible Mistake.'"
Okay, that one's fair. "It's a good playlist."
"Jude." He stops walking. Grabs my arm. "What happened with hand guy?"
"Nothing. It was fine. He was fine. We hooked up, it was whatever, I left."
"You're lying. You always do this thing with your voice when you're lying where you go flat and monotone like you're narrating a documentary."
"I do not—"
He reaches for my scarf.
"Don't—"
He's faster than me. His fingers catch the edge of the fabric and my collar and tug it down before I can slap his hand away.
The bite mark is right there. Dark and obvious against my skin, the edges healed but still raised, still flushed, still very clearly the imprint of an alpha's teeth sunk deep enough to scar.
Benji's coffee nearly hits the ground.
"Is that," he says. His voice has gone very high. "Jude. Is that a claiming bite."
"It's a hickey."
"That is not a hickey. I've given hickeys and I've received hickeys and that is a full-on, permanent, you-are-now-biologically-bonded-to-another-person claiming bite." His eyes are huge. "From HAND GUY? The anonymous hookup? You let an anonymous alpha CLAIM you?"
"It wasn't— I didn't let him, it just happened, we were in the middle of things and it got intense and his teeth were just—"
"HIS TEETH WERE JUST?!"
"Can you keep your voice down? We're in public."
"Oh, now you care about discretion? You, who once described a blowjob technique at full volume in the dining hall?"
Fair point. "That was different. That was comedy. This is..."
"This is you walking around with a mate bite from a stranger whose name you don't know." Benji is already pulling out his phone. "I'm telling the group chat."
"Benji, don't you dare—"
His thumbs are already flying. I lunge for his phone but he twists away, typing with one hand and fending me off with the other. He's scrappy for someone who weighs a hundred and forty pounds.
"Too late," he says. "Sent."
My phone vibrates. Then again. Then three more times in rapid succession. I don't have to look to know the group chat is detonating.
"I hate you."
"You love me. Now come on, we're going to be late for discussion and you can tell me everything on the way." He hooks his arm through mine and physically drags me toward Henderson Hall. "Start from the beginning. Don't skip the dirty parts."
I give him the version with some of the dirty parts.
The scent hitting mid-hookup. The way everything shifted from casual to something I don't have a word for.
The bite that neither of us planned. His knot locked inside me while his teeth were in my neck and the bond just..
. happened. Like a switch flipping. Like something that was always supposed to be on finally turning on.
I don't tell him about the crying. I don't tell him about the way the alpha held me after, his fingers in my hair, so gentle it made my chest ache. I don't tell him about the way he said wait when I was getting dressed, like the word cost him something.
Some things are mine. Even from Benji.
"And you just left?" Benji says as we push through the doors of Henderson Hall. "With a claiming bite? You just got up and walked out?"
"That was the deal. Anonymous. No names."
"Jude, the deal changed when he put his teeth in your neck."
"The deal is what I say it is."
"You are unbelievable." He shakes his head but lets it go, at least temporarily. "Whatever. Let's see who our TA is. Milo said someone in the Tuesday section told her he's hot. So at least there's that."
Great. A hot TA. Just what I need when I can barely function.
He gives me a look that says he has about forty more things to say about the bite, but we're at the classroom door and we're already two minutes late. I yank my scarf back up, take a breath, and walk in.
The discussion section meets in one of those mid-size classrooms with tiered seating and a podium at the front.
Maybe thirty students, mostly bored sophomores and juniors fulfilling their science requirement.
Benji and I usually sit in the middle-left, close enough to look engaged, far enough to text under our desks.
I slide into my usual seat. Benji drops into the chair next to me. I pull out my notebook, flip it open, dig around in my bag for a pen, and look up at the front of the room.
The world stops.
He's standing behind the podium. Button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows.
Black-framed glasses. Dark hair, neatly trimmed beard.
Those hands wrapped around a dry-erase marker, the same hands from the profile photo, the same hands that pinned my wrists above my head and gripped my hips and held my face while he fucked me so deep I forgot what language was.
And underneath the clean soap and the classroom and the thirty other bodies in this room, underneath all of it, I can smell him. My alpha. My mate. The scent that ruined me in a hotel room.
My TA.
My anonymous hookup is my TA.
His eyes find me. I watch it land. His grip on the marker tightens.
His nostrils flare. His jaw goes tight and his shoulders lock and for one second, one single second, his composure cracks and I see what's underneath.
Raw, desperate, searching. He's been looking for me.
Since the hotel, since I walked out, he's been looking for me and I just walked into his classroom with his bite on my neck.
I can't breathe. I can't move. My omega is losing its mind, purring so loud I'm genuinely worried the girl sitting in front of me can hear it. The bond in my chest is pulling toward him so hard it hurts, and I'm gripping the edge of my desk so hard my knuckles are white.
Next to me, Benji goes very still. I can feel him looking at me. Then looking at Rhys. Then looking at me again. Then looking at the bite mark peeking out above my scarf.
"Oh my god," he whispers.
I can't respond.
"Oh my GOD," he whispers louder.
"Shut up," I manage through my teeth.
"Your hand guy is the TA? Your anonymous hookup alpha is the HOT TA?"
"Benji, I swear to god, shut UP."
Rhys clears his throat at the front of the room. His voice comes out steady, which is impressive, because I can see his hand shaking slightly where it's holding his notes. "Let's, uh. Let's get started. We're picking up from last week's reading on carbon offset policy."
Carbon offset policy. My fated mate is going to teach me about carbon offset policy. While I sit here with his teeth marks on my neck and his scent making me wet in a classroom full of people.
This is hell. This is my personal, custom-designed, biology-fueled hell.