Page 71 of The Alpha Experiment
I didn’t move until the sound of footsteps in the hallway penetrated the haze of horror I’d sunk into.
Meredith. She couldn’t find me like this.
Sitting up took an effort. Picking up a pen and a stack of sticky notes, so I could pretend I’d been getting a jump on writing the finals I’d have to administer in a week and a half, nearly broke me.
She walked in a second later, in her usual flurry of papers and notebooks and to-go coffee cups.
I looked down at the pen I held.
It might as well have been an artifact of an alien culture for all the meaning it had to me, and it felt foreign in my hand. My whole body felt like it’d disconnected from the physical reality around it, drifting untethered in space.
“I’m not feeling great,” I heard myself say, cutting off Meredith’s stream of commentary on her afternoon class. How had she not noticed that I’d phased out of reality? That I’d fallen in love with—I swallowed down bile, swaying against the force of a wave of nausea. Well, at least I wasn’t lying to her. “I’m heading home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I shoved my laptop in my bag on autopilot, my hands clumsy, and tossed in whatever papers I could reach.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to drive you? Newton, whatever you need I’ll be happy—”
I shut the door on her worried voice, practically running down the hall to get away. Well, lurching. But quickly.
When I pushed my way through the building’s doors, freezing rain spattering up from the pavement stung my face and immediately dampened my clothes, and I stopped, nonplussed. A small knot of students huddled under the portico, chatting and drinking coffee and obviously trying to wait out the downpour. I gave them an awkward nod and peered out into the gloom. I’d parked in my usual spot, in the section of the lot reserved for faculty. Those spots were a lot closer to the building than those reserved for students, but I’d still get drenched.
And of course, I’d forgotten an umbrella. I’d been forgetting almost everything lately.
I leaned up against the wall, resigned to waiting a few minutes to see if the rain slowed. The cold damp felt good against my hot face, and I started to settle down.
Why the rush to get home, anyway? It wasn’t like I had anywhere to be except sitting in my lonely apartment trying to come up with a plan for the rest of my life.
I could be one of those ancient, eccentric professors, never married and without any obvious life outside of the university, grading on a whim and conducting more and more bizarre research until they carried me out of the lab feet-first.
Yep, that sounded like a plan.
Colin would get mated and live happily ever after.
Maybe he and his wife would spend every Thanksgiving with my family, and I’d sit there and pretend to be happy to see them every year, while I died inside a little more each time.
That would be the only time I’d see him, probably.
Well, at least now I had that plan for the rest of my life, but I also didn’t have anything to do with the rest of my evening.
A gust of wind howled around the corner of the portico, blowing up a whirlwind of soggy dead leaves, making all the students across the entryway hoot and laugh. I dug my hands deeper into my jacket pockets.
One of the guys bent his head to his friend’s, clearly trying to be discreet, and said, “Hey, isn’t that Fiona McEwen’s brother? I think he teaches biology or something.”
What was left of my mood plummeted all the way down through my feet and into the muddy pool of water forming under them.
Screw this. I could handle getting a little wet—and just as I thought that, a crack of lightning burst over the campus, and thunder rumbled and growled, sounding like the world’s biggest and most pissed-off werewolf.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, a car was rounding the big tree set in the middle of the drive, swishing to a halt right in front of the portico.
I blinked again. Blue Cadillac. My heart stopped for a second.
The driver’s side door popped open, and Colin leapt out.
He slammed the door, and all the students started to whisper, a little ripple going through their group as he rounded the hood of his car and strode toward the portico.
Colin. Here. And looking like a man on a mission—no, an alpha werewolf on a mission, stalking his prey. His eyes glowed golden.
I stumbled back a step, cornered and caught, with nowhere to go. My heart pounded in my throat.
