Page 2 of Knot Mine

My eyes flutter closed.

Just for a moment.

Just rest my eyes.

Only a second.

Mine.

Mmm…

Chapter One

Shiloh

“Iheard that you’re so desperate, you’d let any old alpha knot you.” A voice whispers from the seats behind me before something tugs at my shirt collar. A sweet smell surrounds me and it sticks to my tongue, cloying in my throat. Omega.

I suppress a shiver, refusing to let them see even a sliver of weakness. Letting their words roll off me, I pull my textbooks out of my satchel, letting them land on the desk with a heavy thud. This lecture theater isn’t one of my favorites on campus, because there aren’t individual seats, just curved rows, which means we’re all sat far too close for my liking.

There’s a small chuckle to my left. “How did Millie end up with a pathetic beta like you for a brother?”

Millie.

Of course.

Blocking out the words, I focus on the clock above the whiteboard, but it’s like time has frozen as the omegas surrounding me let me know exactly where my place is in the food chain.

At the fucking bottom.

As if I could ever forget.

The sickly suffocating sweetness, like dying flowers, continues to wrap around me, clinging to my clothes. Another trip to the launderette wasn’t on my radar for tonight, but I didn’t want it permeating the apartment either. It was hard enough living with Bell, but at least their perfume didn’t make me gag. Maybe it’s because I liked them?

A pen lid is flicked against my cheek, and I flinch at the quick, sharp sting. “You know what’s worse than a slutty beta? A slutty, stuck-up beta who thinks they’re better than everyone else.”

They laugh, the tinkling noises sound like jagged metal on stone to my ears, but I’m sure to the alphas in the room, watching hungrily it’s nothing short of an angelic choir.

Looking through rose-tinted glasses doesn’t quite cover it, when it comes to the Omega population, it’s like the rest of the world is deliberately ignorant. By nature, they’re designed to charm, to entice, to seduce, and while everyone marvels over how demure and gentle they are, they are blind to the claws hidden behind fluttering eyelashes and coy smiles. Omega’s can be cruel and territorial if they feel like someone doesn’t belong. And I don’t.

Rolling my eyes, I swallow back a snort. I never once said I was better than anyone else. In fact, I am painfully aware of just how lacking I am.

I was plain looking, with no social skills or special talents, and I hate being around people. Being trapped inside my mind, second guessing every interaction, had gotten tiring pretty quick, and so I’d learned to tune out everyone else and just do what I wanted. It meant making friends was almost an impossibility for me, especially since I’d ended up in the same college as my twin, Millie.

Not that it was her fault.

Oakley University was the prestigious Ivy League school that our parents had chosen. It was an inevitability, since it waswhere they’d met as fresh-faced youths and it was somewhat of a family legacy to attend. With our father also on the board, they were only too happy to pay the extortionate fees and grease whatever palms needed to be slicked up to ensure we were enrolled.

At least dear old mom and pops had allowed us to move out, otherwise we’d all still be living together at home and Millie had outgrown me back in third grade.

She was everything I wasn’t. Beautiful, brave, bold. If being confronted each morning in the mirror by my plainness wasn’t enough, I’d grown up seeing those same features echoed in my twin. Our dark curls and pale porcelain skin looked perfect on her, but messy and like some sort of sickly Victorian child on me. We shared the same green eyes, but where hers were a bright emerald color, mine were murky, like pond water. I wasn’t in denial about who I was. I knew I was a pale imitation of Romilly. Almost like a copy, but one where the toner has dried out or a counterfeit, where the quality is obviously questionable. Everyone was drawn to Millie, like moths to a flame, and she burned bright enough for the both of us.

While people loved her easily, they were wary of me. I made them uncomfortable. Pushing my glasses back up the bridge of my nose, I try to shut out their petty whispers. I didn’t even need them. They were just another tool in my arsenal for hiding. Another guard in place to block out the rest of the world.

The gaggle of nasty omegas sitting behind me are only acting this way because Millie isn’t in this class. If she was, they’d be ignoring me like usual. Pretending I don’t exist. I’m a non-entity when she’s in the room, and I liked it like that. No one bothers me.

“How many knots can you take at once in that gaping hole of yours, Shiloh? Two? Three?” Sadie, an Omega with long glossy red hair, asks, lowering her voice so that she’s not overheard bythe lecturer, who’s just entered and is setting up ready for our class.

Oakley University had introduced mixed secondary gender classes a few decades ago and while I was glad it meant I wasn’t surrounded solely by Omega’s, there were a few too many alphas on my business management module for my liking. All that posturing. All that arrogance. Who had time for that?

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