Episode 7 The Omega Gauntlet #4
A second later, he’s all but thrown me in the air with his impressive strength, and I’m balancing on his palms as he straightens his arms. It gives me more than the extra inches I need and a second later I’m unhooking the canvas sack.
Which is a good thing, since my knee chooses that moment to give out.
And then I’m falling, and someone screams, maybe me?
But then warm strong arms are wrapped around me, cradling me against a broad chest for the second time today.
“Thanks again, professor.” I beam up at him. He scowls back. I pat his chest, hugging the burlap sack to my stomach. “We should get going.”
He scowls more and then he’s moving, carrying me as he all but barks at the rest of our team to keep up.
“I can walk you know,” I say as he sprints toward the gate, the final part of the physical challenges.
“But can you run?”
Ouch. I frown. Here I’d thought I was doing a fairly good job of masking my discomfort, but apparently not. Or maybe he felt the way my knee gave up the ghost. That’s more likely.
Not able to contradict him, I settle against his chest as he sprints carrying my weight like its nothing.
We reach the gate ahead of the other teams. A glance over my shoulder shows they gave up on moving all the barrels and followed my example. The alphas lifting one of the smaller omegas on their team to get the puzzle pieces.
I watch as there’s a scuffle between Isadora and Gwen over who is going to be lifted by the prince.
Isadora wins naturally. She lets out a delighted squeal when he catches her in his arms, but unlike Thayer he sets her on her feet right after, and they rush toward their gate, three canvas bags in tow.
The alpha carrying me sets me down carefully, hands gripping my hips to ensure I’m steady, while eyeing the barrier. Odette and Joan give me some serious stink eye, gazes lingering on the wide palms framing me, still holding me in place.
I’m not even sure he realizes he’s doing it, his brain focused on the next obstacle. I step away from him, his palms scrape over my yoga pants before falling away, and I swear I see his fingers flex in an obscene gesture that brings to mind Mr. Darcy and makes my already weak knee a little weaker.
A squeal from one of the omegas on another team pulls be back to the task at hand. The barrier is simple enough, just a fake bamboo gate, with pillars on either side. On each pillar there’s a touch screen with four empty boxes on it.
He frowns. “It must need some kind of code.” He looks at the rest of us. “Look around to see if you can find any clues.”
Petal and I glance at each other, exchanging knowing smiles. Without a word we each move to one of the screens. “I have one through four,” she calls over to me.
I nod. “And I have five through eight.”
“I start with yellow air, right?”
I call back with the affirmative, already typing my symbols into the screen. I frown when I hit the enter code and the screen flashes red. “It didn’t work,” I call to Petal, who makes a sound of agreement. We step away from the screens, converging together. “Maybe it’s what side the signs were on?”
There’s an unhappy chirp from my screen and I see Odette is just randomly typing symbols in. Petal frowns. “I mean it’s worth a shot. If that’s not it, what else should we try? In order of the colors of the rainbow maybe?”
I give a quick nod. “Sides of the path first, and then order of colors of the rainbow if that doesn’t work.”
Petal nods. Thayer trails me to my pad where Odette is still moving the symbols around the screen. “I think I have the code,” I say. “Can you move so I can try?”
I’m trying really hard to keep the impatience out of my voice, but I know I fail. This is probably my most fatal flaw. I’m so damn competitive. The idea that someone might get through their gate before me is literally scratching at my skin.
Odette ignores me. “I can do it, alpha. I can figure it out. We just have to rotate through the symbols.” In theory she’s not wrong, but it will take too long. And I know the code.
“Have you put it in?” Petal calls over. Likely knowing that I haven’t, seeing as Odette is still standing in front of the pad.
It doesn’t matter at the end of the day who inputs the codes, just that they’re done correctly. So I mutter to the other omega. “Upside-down triangle with the line through it in red. Upright triangle in blue. Upright triangle with a line through it in green. Upside-down triangle in purple.”
I wait with gritted teeth as Odette scoffs, but inputs the code, then hits the submit button. Petal does too on the other side and the screen flashes green and then our door opens.
Odette squeals and throws herself into Thayer. “I did it! I got the right code!”
I would roll my eyes, but I’m afraid I would do it so hard they would end up permanently stuck that way.
So instead I ignore her self-congratulatory bullshit and scoop up one of the canvas bags of pieces, hurrying through the door and racing over a flat expanse of sand toward the final part of the obstacle course.
The puzzle we’ve been collecting pieces for.
My team follows me, and eventually they overtake me entirely because my damn knee is all but throbbing. But we reach the final stage at the same time, more or less.
I laugh when I see the puzzle. A square with nine squares inside it with nine squares inside them. Some of the smallest squares have numbers in them. Sudoku.
“Something funny, omega?”
“Not really, I just spent the entire flight here doing Sudoku puzzles. I literally had a dream about it last night.” Which was a delightful change from my normal dreams. I dump out the first bag of puzzle pieces without looking away from the board. Thayer dumps the second and Petal opens the third.
My hands fly over the puzzle slotting in numbers while everyone else just stands by and watches.
“Slow down, killer,” Thayer murmurs to me.
I glance at him, the puzzle pieces clicking into place in my mind. I just need to move them and then we’ll have done it. We’ll have won.
“What?”
Petal glances between the two of us anxiously, gnawing at her lower lip. “We can’t beat the prince, Ren,” She whispers like that will keep the microphones around our necks from picking it up.
“I-What?” They want me to lose on purpose? Really? But… I look over to where the producers are standing and Lulu is giving me the stink eye. Marshall is shaking his head frantically at me.
I roll my eyes. “Are you serious?” They want me to throw the fucking game to keep the prince’s ego intact? “I’m almost finished.”
Also, with the time penalties on the ropes course they can just make up a few infractions and hand the prince the win.
Thayer’s hand presses into my lower back, warm and solid, soothing. “We can get second, killer.”
I grit my teeth around what I want to say and slow my movements down. Pretend like I’m considering where to put the pieces. Odette decides to help by messing up some of the pieces and I try like hell not to slap her hands away.
“Competitive.” Thayer makes the word sound amused.
I shrug. “This is a competition show, is it not?” He makes a sound that says he clearly doesn’t agree with that, and actually he’s right. This is not a competition. It’s a farce. Rigged from the start. But who am I going to complain to? The producers? The other contestants? The royal pack?
I look up at the alpha in charge of our little team. “Do you want to be the one to finish this, professor? Do you need the ego boost?”
The grin he gives me is sudden and blinding and my heart skips a beat. Stupid heart.
“My ego is just fine, killer. Thank you though. Feel free to finish what you started.”
When I just stare at him for a moment longer, he arches a brow then looks pointedly over to where Forsythe’s entire team of omegas squeal and bounce around. A horn sounds. They’ve finished first. I jerk my gaze back to the sudoku puzzle and slide the last piece into place. “Check,” Petal calls out.
“Correct,” Lulu says and a horn sounds again.
My team explodes into a celebration, cameras zoom in on bright smiles and sun-kissed skin, bouncing breasts and slivers of stomach. Odette throws herself at Thayer and climbs him like a monkey, shouting about how they work so well together. The dream team.
I suspect he catches her more out of fear for her safety than anything, but he also doesn’t set her down, looping an arm under her ass to support her weight.
Petal hugs me, a waft of something sweet hits my nostrils, faint but there.
And it doesn’t take a genius to realize that we’re out here in the sun, sweating our asses and our descenter off.
Thayer shifts toward me, still holding a grinning Odette. The faintest whiff of an alpha scent teases my nose. Gorgeous and entrancing, and I can only imagine what it would be like to smell his full scent.
His own nostrils flare.
The production team notices.
A swarm of people surround us, there’s a veritable cloud of aerosol propelled descenter sprayed over every one of us. And by the time they retreat, Petal’s sweet scent and Thayer’s more masculine one is completely gone.
And I can’t figure out why that makes me feel like I’ve lost something vital.