Chapter 4
Me
What are we doing for dinner tonight?
Mack
How is it that you think about food more than I do when I’m the one training like a professional athlete?
Pax
I literally watched you do a keg stand last night and then vomit in a shrub
Mack
*shrugging emoji*
My eyes roll so hard they hurt and I sigh, tapping the keyboard aggressively as irritation simmers in my veins.
Me
Dinner. Are we going out? Is someone cooking? I’m starving.
Pax
I’m stuck in lab until 5, so go eat a snack or something and chill.
A growl rumbles in my chest, making me rub my hand over it in frustration.
My alpha has been even more irritable than usual for the last week since we got back to campus, and I can’t pinpoint the reason why.
I’m not the most pleasant person on a good day, but eight days ago a switch flipped, and my alpha has been driving me insane since.
I walk to the kitchen with a heavy sigh and my spirits lift the tiniest bit when I find a box of donuts on the counter.
Jude probably brought them home after his run this morning.
God knows he has the extra time since he’s often running at four a.m. Something has been different with our pack lead since this summer, but he won’t stop moving long enough to talk to any of us about it.
If it goes on much longer we’ll have to confront him, which is going to suck.
But better he be angry with us for staging an intervention than run himself into the ground and get sick or worse.
Grabbing an apple fritter, I stalk back to my room, determined to get a nap in before my shift tonight. Between Mack’s family and his trust fund, none of us have to work, and I really didn’t go looking for the job I have now. It just sort of fell into my lap one day.
I have insomnia and on the nights it got really bad, I would end up at our school’s library so I didn’t wake the guys.
It’s open twenty-four hours and I was almost always the only student there, so eventually the overnight security guard made it his mission to befriend me.
Harold is sixty years old and funny as hell, so I didn’t mind too much.
At least until he fell and broke his leg on shift one night.
I was the one to take him to the campus clinic and then the hospital, and that sneaky old bastard used his condition to guilt me into taking over for him while he recuperated.
That was a year ago, and now he schedules me to cover him whenever he damn well feels like it.
Which is exactly why I’m trying to sleep in the middle of the morning.
My school schedule is a breeze with only having in-person classes on Wednesday.
Even still I would normally never be in bed at this time, but it seems like the only time I can actually manage to catch some solid sleep is during the day when everyone else is in class.
Every other time I’ve tried to do this, it was just a few minutes before I fell into a deep, albeit short, sleep, but today my alpha is restless.
He’s raging in my mind, desperately trying to get me to understand something I am just not getting.
And then I smell it. My jaw drops as the most mouthwatering scent I’ve ever encountered permeates the air.
Where the fuck is that coming from?
None of the guys are home, and though my twin is known to leave a candle under the warmer sometimes, it’s never been a scent like this.
Tart, freshly picked apples and the sweet undertone of honey.
It’s summers in the orchard with our grandparents and a thick wave of nostalgia that makes my chest go tight.
My nose goes into the air, sniffing like a bloodhound.
Going lower makes the scent more faint, and I growl.
I need more of the scent, not less. My room isn’t large, so a couple of long strides takes me to a small desk I have pushed up against the wall.
The closer I get to this part of the room, the stronger the scent gets.
It takes longer than I’ll ever admit to realize the tantalizing scent is coming from a vent high up on the wall.
At 6’1 I’m not exactly short, but damn if I can reach a vent that high up without help.
It just so happens that my desk is perfectly positioned underneath the vent and is probably sturdy enough to hold my weight.
The climb is easy enough, but as soon as I stand the desk wobbles precariously beneath me. “Fuck.” I mutter. The last thing I need is to fall and break my neck before finding out what this smell is and where it’s coming from.
My nose is pressed against the vent hard enough to leave a mark and I’m huffing the air like I’ll die without another lungful of this scent.
“What the actual fuck are you doing right now?” Mack’s booming voice startles me so bad I whip around and growl, only I briefly forgot I was standing on a desk so when I turn, my foot catches on the edge.
My body tilts backwards, arms flailing through the air as I brace myself for the painful impact.
“Woah there, Spidey. I appreciate you falling for me, but you’re like my annoying little brother. And you have a dick.”
Landing in my big brute of a pack mates arms is humiliating in a way that’s hard to explain, and I know he’s never going to let me live this down.
When muffled laughter comes from behind us, I toss my head back with a groan.
Of course Paxton is here to witness this too.
Mack takes one step back without warning and tosses me onto the bed with a shit-eating grin. “Care to fill us in?”
I growl, glaring at the both of them while simultaneously trying to search the air for more apples and honey.
Mack is affectionately called “Mack truck” around campus because he’s fucking huge.
6’7 and 250 pounds of mostly muscle, he’s the largest guy on the baseball team, maybe the whole NCAA, and somehow one of the quickest. Someone so large shouldn’t be able to move the way he does, but with two dads in the NFL, I’m sure it’s at least partly genetics.
“Yeah, Park. Don’t you have a shift tonight?
I figured you’d be getting in a cat nap before work.
” Paxton eyes me suspiciously. One of the worst parts of having an identical twin is that you can’t hide shit.
Pax is extremely emotionally intelligent which makes him intuitive as hell, meaning I can’t get away with anything around my brother.
It’s looking like this won’t be any different.
Just as I open my mouth to tell them to fuck off, Mack’s lips part. His pupils dilate, nearly eclipsing the hazel of his iris as his cotton candy scent explodes around us. “Holy fuck,” he chokes out. “What is that?”
Paxton looks confused for a second before he inhales deeply, getting the same dopey, half-feral expression on his face that I’m sure was on mine when they showed up.
“I don’t know,” I snarl back. “All I know is it’s coming through the vents and I’ve been hard as a fucking rock for the last twenty minutes.”
My brother glances at the wall, a pensive frown on his face. “Doesn’t your wall back up to one of the rooms in the apartment next door? It’s a one bed, right? Maybe whoever lives there now has a really good candle burning.”
Always pragmatic, my twin. Too bad he’s dead wrong this time.
“No fucking way is that a candle,” Mack protests, shaking his head and pressing a massive hand down on his quickly tenting jeans. “I’ve been alive twenty-two years and never once smelled a candle so good it had me on the edge of coming in my pants.”
Pax snorts, smacking Mack on the back of the head.
The big idiot doesn’t move, his wide eyes still locked on mine.
I’ve never seen him look so… frantic. McKenzie Madden is many things, but never anxious like he is right now.
His fingers tap against his jean-clad thigh in an unsteady rhythm, nostrils flaring in rapid pulses that make me think he’s about to hyperventilate or something. “That’s an omega,” he whispers.
My eyes widen even as my head shakes. A denial sits on the tip of my tongue, but the longer I think about it, the more it makes sense. I’m with my pack mate in that I’ve never smelled a candle that got me hard before, but I’ve also never met an omega who smelled like that. Which could only mean…
“Do you think they could be our scent match?”