Page 32 of The Rejected Omega

“Astute,” Connor provides.

“Yeah. Good one.”

Connor gives him a razor grin. “I wanted to get Crane here alone.”

I jab Connor in the neck with my elbow.

Lance leans into the doorframe. “What are you two studying?”

“None of your business,” Connor says.

“English Romantics.”

“Really? I could use help with my paper in that class?—“

“She doesn’t have time to help you.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “No room in this session?”

“It’s a private session. And I don’t appreciate being interrupted. Why are you sniffing around what doesn’t belong to you?”

Lance swallows. “Just trying to do a friend a favor. Lana mentioned she lost her lunch break, and I know her schedule is mad. We eat in the caf sometimes.”

“She hates cafeterias. I should know. She ate lunch in my car every day in high school. She’s a very messy eater.”

He manages to make it sound like I was gobbling his dick instead of Italian subs. Part of me wishes that was true.

I glare at Connor as I speak. “Thanks, Lance. That was very thoughtful. I’ll make it up to you sometime.” I don’t have any cash on me, but I’ll bring it to our next class together.

Lance raises his hands. “No problem. I’ll bring you something again next week.”

“That—”

I’m interrupted by Connor’s growl in my ear. He stood up and moved behind me without making a sound. Heat pulses between my thighs as my hair stands on end.

“I will see that she’s fed from now on.”

His scent is kicking into high gear, and my mind shoots back to the dwindling bottle of suppressants at home.

“Thanks again, Lance, but we really have to get back to studying.”

Lance lets off the doorway, shooting glances between me and Connor. “Alright. See ya in chem.”

“See ya.”

I close the door behind him and turn toward the glowering alpha pumping the room full of pheromones. He’s breathing heavy, his shoulders and biceps straining beneath his shirt. The veins in his forearms are popped.

“You have a class together?”

“You have to calm down. I’m going to open a window.”

“It’s freezing outside.” It was March, the most meteorologically vacillant of months. Sweater weather in the morning, shorts by the afternoon.

“Yeah, well it smells like the locker room of an all-alpha rugby team here. What the fuck was that about?”

It’s a rhetorical question. He’s reacting exactly how I’d expect to an unmated alpha in his territory, trying to feed his mate. And even if Connor didn’t realize that, obviously some level of his subconscious did.

It was a threat, an indictment that he wasn’t taking proper care of his omega and seeing to her needs. I ought to say something to calm him down. But some spiteful part of me wants him to burn with the same irrational jealousy I had every time I saw him with Cassandra.

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