Hunter
“Why you gotta do that?” Blake asks as we watch Evans run out of the kitchen like I’ve lit a fire under his ass. And it’s a nice ass, I muse as he leaves, the door slamming behind him. No doubt he’ll be doing a few frustrated laps of the field before his class.
Shrugging, I take a sip of my coffee.
It tastes like shit.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, you do. Look, I don’t know what happened in Crest Haven when the two of you ended up in jail, but since then things have been…
strange.” Blake glares, his hazel eyes scanning my face like he’ll be able to find an answer etched in my skin.
“Is there something I should know? Is there something we should talk about as a house?”
“Respectfully man, what happened is between me and him.” I liked Blake, his parents were friends with mine and we’d grown up in the same circles. But that didn’t mean he was owed all my secrets.
“Then the pair of you need to sort it out because it’s starting to affect the rest of us.
And I like living here.” He shrugs and for a moment, I feel a twinge of guilt.
Our parents were overbearing, well meaning, but definitely over involved when we let them be.
This house had been a compromise, otherwise we’d still be living at home under their watchful eyes.
If they got a whiff of drama (outside the standard pranks and parties), they’d be on us like flies to shit.
“Noted,” I say, taking another sip. Blake is entitled to his opinions but the alpha who was avoiding me was my problem to solve, and I would. I’d take him apart like Gordion’s Knot before I put him back together again if he let me.
Confrontation wasn’t usually my thing, but there was something about Evans that was getting my hackles up. I thought that Crest Haven had brought us closer.
I’ve always felt like a bit of an outlier in this house, despite my friendship with Blake.
I was an artist in a house full of jocks.
I cared more about textures and sonnets while they were focused on touchdowns and scoreboards.
They were all really great guys but I knew when I moved in it was never going to be easy having four alphas living in the same space.
Especially with the extra testosterone that came with athletes.
We each made an effort to keep out of one another's way during our ruts and in fairness to the football bros, they didn’t let the adrenaline turn them into asshole alpha’s too often.
I was lucky that I had a small studio on campus, a place I could hide away.
A place I could hide my dominant alpha nature.
I’d manifested as a teenager and my parents had done everything in their power to help me rein my secondary gender under control.
Dominant alphas were rare but not unheard of.
They were definitely understudied. Supposedly, dominant alphas were supposed to be more intense, plagued with extreme aggression and a need for absolute control.
Painting helped.
Sculpture even more so.
Anything visceral and messy that could consume my senses helped bring me out of it when I felt myself slipping into an aggressive animalistic mindset.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, although it helped, hence why my parents paid a large sum of money to the college to ensure that I had my studio.
It was my safe haven. A place to retreat when the testosterone in the house became too overwhelming and threatened to trigger me.
Evans has been making snippy jokes about where I’ve been all week, but it’s not as glamorous as he seems to think. I haven’t been face down buried in pussy, I’ve been up to my elbows in oil paint. I can feel it now caked under my nailbeds. Grounding me.
Blake narrows his eyes at me again, sighing softly before he retreats into the living room to eat his breakfast. That was another thing that usually helped maintain the status quo in the house.
I was never usually awake and around at the same time as the others since I was typically a night owl.
It minimized the amount of time we had to live on top of each other.
I’ve tried putting that weekend out of my head, I did, really.
But it was like an itch under my skin, constantly there.
I was always aware of him. It didn’t make it any better that every time I came into a room, he vanished.
It seemed to trigger something predatory in me, I wanted to chase him. Pin him down. Devour him.
With a sigh, I scrub my face and pour my shitty coffee down the sink.
Blake was right. I was antagonizing him on purpose.
After all, I’d only come into the kitchen when I caught the scent of bergamot and lime.
I swear I could pick out that slightly citrusy scent from anywhere in the house.
I don’t know if it was because my room was on the same floor as his, but it was clearly burned into my brain.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I glance at the time with a grimace.
It was still way too early for any of my lectures since I had nothing until my Shakespeare module later this afternoon.
Grumbling to myself I head back upstairs, where I should have been anyway, and collapse on top of the covers, not even bothering to remove my jeans.
When I wake up four hours later I don’t feel any more refreshed.
There’s a dull ache in my bones, a familiar growing restlessness that comes with being a dominant alpha.
A doctor once described it to my parents as a switch being flipped, like some sort of added ‘alpha booster’ that would suddenly ramp up my rage and aggression (those were his actual words). That man was a quack.
It wasn’t like flipping a switch, it was a constant simmer.
A continual low burn in the pit of my stomach that was fanned to life by the slightest breeze.
I tried everything over the years. Yoga, drugs, working out, painting and sketching until I was exhausted, lots and lots and lots of sex.
It all helped to take the edge off but nothing ever took it away.
Nothing. A Fated Mate supposedly helped to anchor dominant alphas, but that was like finding a needle in a haystack.
I stretch out with a groan, hearing my joints pop and crack.
I wonder what Evans would think if he knew that I was a dominant alpha?
I grin at the thought of wiping his smarmy grin from his face.
His father placed a lot of importance on status and secondary genders.
I’d only met the man a handful of times but it was old-fashioned narrow mindsets like his stopping the world from progressing the way it should.
Shiloh, Zale’s, omega mate has been trying to educate Evans, teaching him that not everyone fits neatly into the box they were designated, but it’s slow going.
I think it’s part of the reason Zale and Shiloh don’t stay here more often, because without realising it sometimes, Evans opens his mouth and his father comes out.
I wouldn’t want that negative rhetoric around my mate either.
For a brief moment, an image of Evans, round and swollen with a baby flashes in my mind. Now, wouldn’t that be amusing…
A low vibration distracts me, pulling me out of my train of thought as I see Ivii‘s name flash up on the caller display.
“Hola, dickface!” Comes a cheery voice down the line.
“Ivii,” Chuckling, I sit up, shuffling up my bed until my back is against the headboard, “charming as ever.”
She makes a kissing noise down the line. “So, I was thinking, we haven’t hung out in a while. We should grab lunch sometime soon?”
“Is that code for ‘buy me lunch’?” I ask, glancing around my room. I really should tidy it soon. My laundry hamper was overflowing again, which made no sense considering I lived in the same two pairs of jeans when I was working on a project.
She scoffs, sounding every inch the entitled nineteen year old she was. “We’re rich, I don’t need you to buy me lunch. But if you wanted to as a kind gesture…”
I frown, picking at the flecks of cerulean on my skin. My sister always had a plan, she was always plotting something. Even when she’d been a toddler, she’d been the one to watch. Not the twins, although they were always getting into trouble. No, it was Ivii because she schemed to get her way.
“Just you?”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Well, me and my friend Percy.” There we have it folks. My sister was yet again attempting to set me up with one of her friends.
“Ivii…” I warn.
“What? It’s just lunch!”
“Goddess, you’re almost as bad as mom.” I sigh, rubbing my face. I think I must have flecks of paint on my face. I clearly needed to shower before class.
“You take that back!”
Laughing, I get to my feet and start pacing around my room, half-heartedly putting things away. “I hope you know that when she’s old, she’s coming to live with you.”
“That’s what nursing homes are for, brother dearest,” my sister replies saccharinely and I can almost picture her chocolate brown curls bouncing and her lashes fluttering as she gives me puppy dog eyes.
“You guys know I can hear you, right?” my mom yells from somewhere in the background. Ivii was such a traitor, and since she was still living at home for her first year of college, I should have known I’d be on speaker.
“Ears like a bat.” I grumble. “Hi mom!”
She chuckles, knowing that we’re only joking. My parents could afford to buy their own nursing home if they wanted, they’d never be reliant on us in their old age. “Play nice and take your sister and her pretty friend to lunch.”
Rolling my eyes, I skim my fingers over the sketch book open on my desk. “Fine, let me see when I’m free.”
I’m late for my lecture.
Of course I am. Time is a construct that my brain can’t seem to comprehend on a good day, let alone one where a certain alpha frat boy is taking up too much space.
Sliding into my seat beside Callie, an omega sculptor I met during my first term at Oakley U, I ignore the pointed glare from Professor Sands.