Hopeless Omega (Their Precious Omega #4)

Chapter 1

June

One Year Ago…

“Love. That’s what I want. Not a cold, sterile society mating when passion only happens when I’m in heat,” I say, smoothing down the silk skirt of my pale lilac dress, my eyes on the ballroom double doors as we wait for the end-of-year ball to begin.

It’s become my mantra. The dream I’ve spent years willing into existence.

Lilly, in a rich burgundy dress that makes her green eyes pop, smiles distractedly, but I know what she’s thinking.

There goes silly Juniper Harrington, dreaming of the impossible, hoping for things that will only disappoint her when they don’t come true.

Maybe she’s right. You don’t come to Haven Academy for love. You come to match with the most eligible alphas in the city. Alphas who will give omegas mansions, silken nests and everything we could ever want. Everything except love.

The harpist falls silent, and as one, our backs straighten as we force smiles onto our faces. Rules and lessons hammered into us over the past four years flash through my mind, a litany I don’t have to reach for to remember.

“Don’t show your teeth when you smile. It’s common.”

“Back straight. You want the alphas to see you as tall and elegant.”

“And above all, wait for them to approach you. Alphas will decide. Never the omegas.”

We step into the ballroom, twenty omegas in silk and velvet, every color imaginable, ready to meet the alphas here to claim us.

The teachers' sharp-eyed focus reminds me of the rules, and for two long hours, I follow them.

I dance with the alphas who reach for my hand. Smile—but no teeth—when two-footed alphas stamp on my toes or their hand slides down the small of my back to grab my ass.

The cloying scent of alpha pheromones sticks to me, making my head spin, blending with sweeter, sultry omega perfumes.

I can’t breathe in here.

Dizzy, tired, and frustrated, I work myself to the edge of the ballroom, needing two minutes out of my heels and away from handsy alphas.

“Let me get that for you.” A handsome older alpha with dark graying hair and gray-blue eyes pulls the door open before I can reach for it.

Smoke and fresh lime.

“Thank you.” I move to step around him. He steps in front of me, blocking my retreat.

His eyes sharpen and his nostrils flare. “You haven’t danced with my son yet. I believe you might be a good match.”

I’m clinging to my desperate hope of love with an alpha despite a long night of wandering hands, crushed toes, and having to smile my way through it. But I’m losing faith. “When I return. I need to powder my nose.”

“Of course.” He steps aside, the heat of his gaze following me out of the humid ballroom and into the cooler, and thankfully quiet, marble-floored hallway.

The door clicks shut behind me, and I’m all alone. I pass by the bathroom, glance around to ensure no one is behind me, then open the door to the library, slipping inside.

It’s not the student library. This one has expensive artwork on the walls, chaise lounges, and a crystal chandelier. It’s a pretty room designed to impress the alphas the school wants to attend the end-of-year balls.

But with the ball tonight, there’s no reason for anyone to use it.

The alphas are here to meet omegas, and the omegas are there to meet them right back.

The lights are off, and the room is quiet.

Perfect. Only when I start to step out of my heels to rest my throbbing feet, do I notice I’m not alone.

A tall figure stands by the velvet drape-covered double windows. The only light comes from the wall sconces on my left, and someone has turned them way down low. Just enough light to avoid walking into anything, but not enough for me to see this alpha’s face.

“Did he send you to find me?” His sharp tone makes it clear I’m not wanted here.

I abandon stepping out of my heels and turn to leave. “Uh, no. I… I’m sorry, I’ll leave you.” I’ll find somewhere else to hide for a bit.

“Wait,” he calls out to me, and I turn back. He slowly closes the distance between us, hands in his dress pants pockets. “I saw you wincing on the dance floor.”

“Yes,” I admit, stepping back into the room and closing the door behind me. “I came to hide from more crushed toes. Were you also hiding?”

He snorts. “I wasn’t hiding.”

He’s still mostly in shadows, but I glimpse a hard jaw, a fuller lower lip than the top, and the glimmer of a brilliant, bright green gaze.

“You’re tucked in the darkest part of the library with the overhead lights off. It feels a little like hiding to me.” I tease.

“Okay, so maybe I was hiding a little,” he concedes reluctantly.

As I step out of my shoes, I nudge them against the wall by the door.

The relief is incredible. I curl my bare toes a few times on the thick carpets to chase away the cramped feeling from stuffing my feet into too-narrow heels.

I learned to walk and dance in four-inch heels.

The teachers didn’t think to prepare us for alphas with two left feet.

“Better,” I breathe with a blissful sigh.

His eyes dip, and his mouth turns up in a half-smile. “Why did you let those alphas stamp on your feet? And why are you removing your shoes? Making a break for freedom.”

Big shoulders and an unshakable confidence mean I’m dealing with an alpha, even if I can’t smell him just yet. The alphas on the dance floor weren’t interesting. This one is, if only because I have never known an alpha to hide from anything.

“My feet hurt.” I wander away from him, just a couple of steps, toward a forest landscape painting in a gold gilt frame near a wall sconce.

Secretly, I continue to observe him out of the corner of my eye, wanting to see more of him.

“I’m hoping to find a prince among all these frogs.

The occasional stamp is preferable to kissing alphas with wandering hands. ”

“You should slap those hands away.” He snorts as he walks toward me.

His eyes rove over me, hungry and possessive.

Even if I weren’t subtly watching him, I’d still feel the heat of his gaze lingering on my hips, the curve of my breasts, and my bare throat.

Alphas like to bite, and I know that’s what he wants to do to me when he lifts one hand from his pocket and drags the back of it across his mouth.

I shrug. “I do my fair share of stamping when those hands wander too far. A stiletto heel does wonders for correcting bad behavior.”

His chuckle is dark and delicious. “I think I like you.”

“For my violent nature?” I raise my eyebrow and wander to the next painting I have no interest in. “The teachers here would faint.”

We move around the room together in a subtle dance. As I wander to the next painting, clutching the skirt of my floor-length dress to keep the hem from tripping me, he slowly pursues me. For every step he takes toward me, I take two away.

If he had wanted to catch up to me, he would have done it already. But I think he likes this slow game of cat-and-mouse almost as much as I do.

He’s younger than I initially thought. Closer to mid-twenties than the late twenties I assumed when I first walked in. His black tie is looser than it should be, as if he slipped out of the ballroom and tugged at it impatiently the moment he was alone.

I’m not the only one who felt trapped tonight.

“All the alphas are here to meet omegas,” I say. “Why are you hiding in here?”

“This was the only hiding place left.” He glances down.

I look down, but can’t see what he’s focused on. “What are you looking for?”

“Checking to make sure you don’t have a secret stiletto under that dress,” he admits with wry amusement. “After what you just admitted, I want them nowhere near my toes before I come any closer. I’m Torin.”

“Juniper. Juniper Edith Alicia Mabel Harrington.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Does a person need that many names?”

I let out a sigh. “No Harrington is safe from ridiculous names. Figured I’d let you know now rather than have a teacher loudly introduce us on the dance floor the way they have all night. I prefer June.”

“It’s not—” He jerks his head to the closed door as the sharp rat-a-tat of efficient footsteps moves down the hallway and toward the library. “Is this for you or me?”

“Probably me.” I’m supposed to be on the dance floor or introducing myself to every alpha in the ballroom.

I quickly look around, then squeeze into the space between the wall and bookcase, where we can't be seen from the door. Torin ducks in a second later, and if someone opens the door, I never hear them.

Amber and cinnamon.

I’m drowning in delicious alpha pheromones, and it’s feeding a part of my soul I didn’t realize was starving. His eyes are wide, and he’s breathing fast as he stares down at me.

If I’m reacting and he’s reacting, it can only mean….

“Scent match.” His lips barely move, but I hear him as loud as if he screamed those two dangerous words into my ear.

The soft snick of a door closing barely reaches me as arousal floods my body, and need spikes hot in my veins. We’re alone in the dark, just him and me, and no one knows we’re here.

“This is dangerous,” I whisper, luxuriating in his scent and fighting to keep my hands off of him.

“Why would this be dangerous?” he asks, his eyes on my mouth.

He pulls me closer, his left arm wrapped tight around my waist. He’s hard, his cock nudging my lower belly and tempting me to rise to my tiptoes so he’ll press right where I ache the most. That’s why it’s dangerous.

I perfumed when I was seventeen.

One of my alpha dad’s friends came to visit him. The auburn-haired alpha wandered into the living room, where I was practicing the piano, and he triggered me. Scent overwhelmed me. My body burned with the need to be touched.

He had me pinned to the floor and was yanking at my skirt as I begged for him to fuck me. A literal stranger. I didn’t know his name, and I didn’t care to know it. I just needed him in ways that felt primal.

My face burned with humiliation when my dad found us two seconds away from fucking on his expensive rug and pulled him away.

The servants took me to my room while others dragged the struggling alpha out of the house. The next day, my parents enrolled me at Haven Academy, the finishing school for omegas, where I would learn to be graceful and meet the right sort of alpha a Harrington should match with.

That need is nothing compared to now.

I want to put myself on my knees and beg. To crawl. To submit to Torin in every way I can. Every nerve in my body just came alive, and I want.

“I haven’t been knotted before,” I whisper. “One of my teachers could find us.”

I’m twenty-one, definitely old enough to be doing this, but that’s not the kind of humiliation I would ever want or need.

He lowers his head, dragging the tip of his nose along my throat. I clutch his suit jacket, gasping as he lifts me off the ground. “Wrap your legs around me, beautiful.”

I don’t even hesitate.

A slow, hungry smile curls his lips. “Part of me wouldn’t mind. They’d have to stay right outside and wait until I let you go.” He gently nibbles my throat, and I moan, rocking against his cock, needing his pants gone.

Knotting is an intimacy—the most intimate act between an alpha and an omega. There is no separating a knot from inside an omega. Not if you want to hurt the omega, and not until an alpha is ready to let her go.

“Fuck. You smell amazing. Blueberries and spice.” His voice is husky, thick with lust as he presses himself closer and sniffs my neck with another deep, hungry groan.

Scent drunk. When a scent is so delicious that you drown in it. I’ve heard of it before, but this is the first time I’m experiencing it firsthand.

With a husky groan, his mouth slants over mine, and I moan as I return his deep, intoxicating kiss. My hands roam over his back, feeling the firm muscles beneath. He tastes rich and sweet, and so achingly perfect that I wish this kiss would never end. But I must end it.

I press my palms on his chest, breaking the kiss and licking my lips as I lean my head back against the wall, a vain attempt to escape a need blistering my bones. “We have to stop.”

“Do you want to?” he asks, eyes fused to my mouth.

“Absolutely not. But we should.”

He places one hand low on my back, resettling me in his arms. My body likes this new position a little too much. With the rucked-up skirt of my dress, there’s no way he can’t feel how wet my panties are beneath.

Pinning me against the wall, he fumbles with the front of his pants as his mouth captures mine in a devastating kiss. I throw caution to the wind and start shoving up his shirt as he grips the edge of my panties and pushes them aside.