Chapter 3
Torin
Juniper Harrington, my beautiful, sweet omega with too many names, isn’t in the ballroom.
None of us wanted to come to this ball, held every spring in a small building on the Haven Academy campus, yet here I am stalking each corner of the ballroom like a man possessed.
I’ve spent the last hour earning a reputation as a raging asshole by repeatedly and blatantly ignoring the Haven Academy teachers trying to push an omega toward me, and walking away without another word when they can’t help me find June.
I don’t fucking care.
June said the teacher who almost walked in on us in the library was Ms. Arkwright, head of the school. No one has seen her, and I don’t even know what the damn woman looks like.
Frowning as I push my way through the ballroom dance floor, I walk past a teacher trying to catch my eye as she reaches for my arm. She’ll want me to dance with an omega. There is no other omega for me but June.
I keep walking, pushing people aside as I search for the beautiful blonde omega in a pale lilac dress. She had melted against me, her body fitting against mine as if she were made for me.
Because she was.
I’ve never been fond of sweet things, dessert or otherwise. But I was ready to drown myself in June’s scent: blueberry pie, brown sugar, and a subtle hint of spice.
My mind flashes back to her standing at the door. Big brown eyes holding mine. She hadn’t wanted to leave, and I hadn’t wanted to let her go.
Leaving her was agony, but I knew she was right. Grabbing her and stuffing her in my car would only make things worse for both of us. If I’d known she’d vanish without a trace, I wouldn’t have let her walk out of that room alone, no matter the trouble it might have caused.
My cell phone vibrates in my left pocket. I pull it out, glance at the text, and slide it back into the same pocket without answering.
As I move away from the center of the ballroom, I weave through the crowd to reach the opposite corner from the refreshment tables and the classical band.
It doesn’t take long to find Callum and Archer.
They, like me, have spent most of tonight hiding from a duty and responsibility none of us wanted.
Callum is scowling as I approach. “Where have you—”
His nostrils flare, his eyes widen, and he practically tackles me, grabbing the front of my coat and sniffing me so hard that people turn to frown at us.
Haven Academy is a finishing school for young, wealthy omegas. Callum’s sudden, feral-like attack on me isn’t the kind of behavior they’re going to appreciate.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Archer grabs his shoulder to peel him away from me. That action brings him closer to me. And to June’s tantalizing scent.
His nostrils flare, and he knocks Callum aside to slam me into the wall, his eyes wild. “Where is she?”
Annoyed and frustrated, I grit my teeth and snap, "Fucking quit attacking me.” I push both of them away and start telling them about June when I notice we've become the center of attention. “Not here.”
Callum and Archer nod, but even as I lead the way out, they stick close behind. We’re pack mates and friends—have been for years. But their need to stay close to me, practically stepping on my heels, has nothing to do with me. It’s all about wanting to get close to her.
I don’t blame them.
I find a side room, a less fancy living room with just a couch, a painting on the wall, and little else. We all file in, and Archer closes the door behind us.
“Juniper Harrington,” I say, crossing my arms. “She’s our scent match.”
Their reaction to her scent confirms she’s as much theirs as she is mine.
Having an omega join our pack and bring us closer together never seemed like it would happen, and as much as I wanted that—more than anything—I was relieved it hadn't. I’m twenty-five, young enough for it to happen, with more than enough money to give our omega everything she could need and want, but there’s a reason we never went looking for her.
A big one.
And I told her precious little about me, Callum, or Archer.
Fuck, I didn’t even give her my last name or mention that I have a pack.
I had the time. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been enjoying myself tonight for the first time, teasing the beautiful omega who was secretly watching me as she pretended to study the paintings in the library.
She’d been as attracted to me as I was to her, and she’d been doing a terrible job of hiding it.
“Where is she?” Callum demands, shaking me out of my daze.
“I don’t know.”
Callum gapes at me. “You don’t know?”
I run a hand through my dark brown hair, pacing back and forth, frustrated. “She wandered into a library where I was hiding.”
Archer raises his eyebrow at that. “Hiding?”
I give him a pointed look. “And where were you exactly? Because I remember the two of you scattering and leaving me to my fate when a teacher dragged me onto the dancefloor.”
On the way, I’d spotted a blond alpha studying the girl and promptly nudged her toward him, slipping out of the ballroom and into the library to avoid any more attempts to get me dancing. I’d intended to stay there all night. Then June walked in and changed everything.
“And she found you in the library?” Archer asks, hazel-light brown eyes intensely focused.
“I thought he’d sent her in at first,” I say.
Callum and Archer exchange a glance and turn toward the closed door. I do the same, making sure we’re still alone.
“What was she like?” Callum asks.
An impossible question to answer.
“Short. Gorgeous golden blonde hair. The sweetest, biggest brown eyes you’ve ever seen.
Her smile is…” I haven’t picked up a camera in years, but I wanted to take a thousand pictures of her.
I recall her self-deprecating sense of humor and her dry confession about escaping crushed toes.
Her willingness to use the only weapon at her disposal, her stilettos, to fight back.
Her ridiculous names. “Funny. So damn sweet and funny, and she’s ours. ”
Tonight, every smile has looked fake. Every conversation mechanical, as if it had been rehearsed five times. Not with June. Talking with her, it felt like the most genuine conversation I’ve had all night. Maybe ever.
Callum and Archer look like they’re in agony. Maybe they are. I’m tormenting them with the memory of our scent match, and I just told them I can’t find her.
“So where the fuck is she?” Archer demands.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“What else happened with June?” Callum asks, watching me closely.
We’ve been friends since we were six. He was always going to be the one to know when I’m hiding things, and I’m definitely leaving something out.
I give them a quick rundown of what happened in the library, aware that we can’t stay in this side room all night. Then I move on to the part of the story I was leaving out. Not because I regret what I did, but how I did it. “As of tonight, she’s no longer a virgin.”
They stare at me.
“She was a virgin, and you fucked her in the library?” Archer bites out, clenching his jaw.
As if I wasn’t already feeling guilty as fuck about it. I wince, avoiding his gaze. “She said she’d never been knotted before. I didn’t think that also meant she was a virgin.”
I had gotten ridiculously hard when she admitted she’d never been knotted before.
Maybe it’s being an alpha or being her scent match and wanting to be the first to knot her that had nearly made me do it.
Then she’d rocked against me, I’d felt just how wet she was under her dress, and all reason fled my mind.
“I can’t believe you just let her leave.” Callum furrows his brow in disapproval.
“She insisted,” I snap. “And it seemed a more reasonable response than just grabbing her and running.” June had been thinking about the consequences of leaving that room together and being seen. I had not been thinking.
Amusement flickers across Callum’s face. “Grab her and run, huh?”
In the hallway, a door slams, followed by the sound of male and female laughter. We fall silent until the noises fade, and then another door closes, even farther away.
I shake my head as we return to our conversation. “Laugh all you want, but you’d have been fighting those same urges.”
Archer pulls up the sleeve of his suit jacket and glances at his watch. “The dancing is still going on for another two hours, so we have time to look for her. We’ll split up and search the building, then the campus if she’s not here.”
“They have security here,” Callum warns. “They won’t appreciate us wandering around.”
“We’ll just have to be discreet,” I say.
Archer studies me with a furrowed brow. “What are the chances a teacher figured out what you’d been up to, and that’s why you’re hitting a brick wall when you ask anyone where she is?”
I frown. June hadn’t looked disheveled when she slipped out of the library. Maybe her pink lipstick had been a little smeared, but her hair had looked perfect. She had been a little unsteady as she crossed the room to the door. Maybe she’d still been unsteady in the hall?
When my mind drifts back to how good she’d felt climaxing around my cock, I pull it back to the present. Now is not the time to be thinking about how tight she was and how I need to be inside her again.
I curse. One sniff and they’d know she’d been up and close—likely too close—with an alpha, especially if that teacher June had been so wary of, saw her slipping out of the library.
“Maybe the teachers have a different alpha in mind for June.” I didn’t even tell her my pack name. If she runs and comes looking for me, all she’d have is just a first name to go on.
“We’ll find her,” Callum says, his back stiffening as he turns to open the door. “The mate bonding ceremony doesn’t happen until tomorrow night. We have time.”
Archer nods, his expression determined. “Juniper Harrington isn’t mating with any other alphas but us. She’s ours.”