Page 2 of In Deep
So far, I’ve gone unnoticed by avoiding the omega and alpha haunts and using blockers. Now that I’ve literally run into an alpha, my cover is blown.
His frown deepens as he examines my face more closely. Then he shakes himself from his thoughts and carefully rolls off me, jumping to his feet and holding out his hand.
Ignoring his help, I scrabble up onto my hands and knees and gather my scattered books back into a pile.
“I’m sorry for pulling you over,” I say, as I brush myself down and shuffle past him, restarting my race up the stairs.
“Wait,” he calls after me.
But even if I wanted to, I can’t. I am definitely late now. My watch declaring the time as 3pm exactly and two more flights of stairs still to climb. “I’m sorry, I’m late.”
I can hear him calling after me, but I keep running, not halting until I’m outside the professor’s door.
I pause, my hand on the handle, and catch my breath. Then, with what I’m sure is a flushed and sweaty face, I slip into the room and find a seat at the back of the class. Professor Michael glares at me over the top of his half-moon glasses, but for once, he says nothing.
Perhaps that’s because I reek of alpha.
Professor Michael is an alpha himself, bonded to an omega an eternity ago, but an alpha nonetheless. If I can smell the scent, then so can he.
In fact, as I sink low in my chair and subtly sniff my shirt, I realise I’m completely bathed in it.
Did that alpha do that deliberately?
I glare at the professor from the back of the room as he chalks up a particularly nasty equation on the blackboard. White dust sparks up into the air as he attacks the board, loud squeaks making the other students cringe.
He’s probably delighted to smell an alpha all over me. He probably thinks that means I have a ‘beau’. Someone who’ll be bonding me and whisking me away from his class before the term is finished.
I won’t be sorry to disappoint him. I’m here to stay, to finish this course and go on to bigger and better things. I’m not here to score some alpha, some tyrant who’ll dictate my life for me while I pop out his kids. If I wanted that, I would’ve relented to my mum’s demands and enrolled in one of the special omega colleges, the ones where they teach you how to be the perfect omega mate.
Not that I could ever be that.
Not that I want to either.
I let out a long sigh. The numbers and the symbols blend into one another and the professor’s voice becomes one long hum. Bigger and better things – like a job at the International Space Agency – aren’t going to happen if I can’t understand these equations first.
I spin my pen around in my fingers and inhale, realising immediately what a mistake that is. The alpha’s scent rushes up my nose, making the gland at the back of my neck tingle. I roll my shoulders, trying to dissolve the sensation. When I get back to my dorm room, I’m going to have to scrub myself from head to toe and burn these clothes.
Although I have to admit, the scent is intoxicating, like floating in a warm, scented bath of aphrodisiacs.
Which is precisely why I have to stay away from alphas.
It’s too easy to be seduced.
Chapter 2
Have you ever had the feeling that someone is watching you? Like you can feel the weight of their stare upon your skin?
Your body senses it before your mind. You squirm in your seat, shift on your feet, your skin heats. You look up, but you realise you imagined it. No one is watching you. Everybody’s gaze is fixed elsewhere. You go back to what you were doing, but that same sensation returns.
It’s a familiar sensation for all unmated omegas. Someone, somewhere is always watching us.
Today is the fourth time I’ve sat studying in the library, certain I’m being watched. I roll my neck, my eyes sweeping the other desks, looking for whoever it is who’s fascinated by me.
Back home, I was repeatedly catching people’s attention, no matter how hard I tried to shrivel into the background. I was one of the few omegas in a town dominated by betas. Like the rest of the world. We omegas and alphas are a dying breed.
Here in Studworth – a city a million times bigger than my sleepy hometown – I hoped there’d be more of us. More chances to be lost in the crowd. My small frame isn’t an obvious giveaway, but my scent is. Which is why I use blockers to try to disguise the aroma. A strategy that never worked at home. Everyone knew what I was. There was no hiding.
Usually, those whose attention I capture aren’t so hell bent on disguising their interest. Typically, it’s an alpha who has no problem striding over and making his intentions clear.
