Page 9 of Sweethearts and Savages
She moved away, never taking her eyes off Bohdie, even as his body rippled with the urge to change. He was fighting it off, but his lion wanted out. I pushed Stacey gently behind me, feeling better that she was out of the way of a swipe or accidental bite. I squeezed her hand, her soft fingers twining with mine, before I let go and stepped toward the enraged lion.
Calming enraged Alphas, I could do. Besides, despite the fact he was about to turn into a big cat, I felt entirely safe with Bohdie. My wolf wanted to bust out and meet his lion face to face, but I pressed back for control. Neither of us was going to shift in the infirmary.
When I was in grabbing distance, I met his gaze. “It’s okay, Alpha. I am okay. Scent me in the air.” I reached forward and pressed my hands to his chest. “Feel my touch. I am okay.”
I should have expected his hands to whip out and grab me, but I still yelped a little as he tugged my waist and pulled me onto his lap, nuzzling my neck and breathing in lungfuls of my calming scent.
Where I would normally seize up like a deer in the headlights, I allowed myself to relax into his aura too. I inhaled the powerful pheromones that he gave off, the ones that promised safety and virility. That promised pleasure and abundance. It was primal and intoxicating, and I shook my head to clear my mind. Because I wanted to lick him to claim him as mine, like he was a cookie and not a six-three wall of muscle.
I could feel the lion retreat, and the tension left his body.
“Never again, Enit. I swear it. Never again.”
It felt like a promise he shouldn’t be giving me right now. We didn’t know each other; he was basically a stranger, an unknown Alpha. I should move. Run as far and fast as I could in the direction of Christopher or Mouse or someone who would keep me safe. So that nothing could touch me—not the good, the bad or the ugly.
But still, being in his arms felt right, so I didn’t say anything. I just lay against his purring chest and basked in the safety he presented, just for a little while longer.
4
Stacey
Ihad indigestion. Although I hadn’t eaten any inflammatory foods for lunch, that could be the only reason my chest burned like this.
I snorted at myself. Yeah, probably wasn’t the salmon and rice I’d had. What I was feeling was jealousy. I was self-aware enough to recognize that the sight of Enit in the lion shifter’s arms made me feel… off.
The lion shifter’s change receded as Enit’s Omega pheromones wrapped around his body, filling his senses and calming him better than any shot I could give him. She had biologically evolved to counteract the overdeveloped protection response that was prevalent in Alpha shifters.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Enit, the danger now passed.
She looked up at me almost dazedly from the Alpha’s lap. If an Omega’s pheromones made Alphas docile, then the Alpha pheromones pumping out that scent of safety were like a drug to an Omega. Like catnip.
I tensed my jaw. Yes, this was definitely jealousy.
Enit’s gaze softened as she looked at me, and I swallowed hard. “It’s okay, Stace. You’re right, it isn’t a secret. I just liked that there was someone who didn’t know I was weak.”
I frowned. “Why would anyone think you were weak? What happened was very obviously not your fault. To blame you for the biological shortcomings of an Alpha is as ridiculous as blaming the seal that gets caught by the orca.”
Another low rumble from the Alpha had Enit sitting up, alert. He looked at me with those blazing gold eyes. “Anyone who attacks an Omega is not an Alpha. They are dirt.”
Well, we both agreed there. Enit was looking warily between us, like she was wondering if she needed to move me from harm’s way again. She had thought this Alpha—who she looked very comfortable with—would attack me, and she’d protected me.
The thought made that little spark of emotion that I’d tried to smother, flicker back to life. I wasn’t in the habit of lying to myself either. That emotion was love. Three years ago, I’d loved Enit, in a way I didn’t think I could love a human being.
It was different to the love I felt for my parents or my younger siblings, or even my brother Daniel, who was the only person I loved in a way that was messy and jagged. I didn’t like messy and jagged, but Daniel and I had been through too much for our bond to be anything but a lifebuoy in shark-infested waters.
No, what I felt for Enit was… complicated. I was a prodigy. They all said so. But you know what they don’t tell you about being a genius? That it sucks the magic from the world. Even in a world of shifters and preternatural anomalies, if I studied them, I knew I would find a biological imperative that led to their evolution into something more.
I’d never met the witch who worked the wards around the Academy, but if I did, I wondered if she’d let me study her magic, and if I could find the science behind it.
But worst of all, science was the executioner of the notion of love. Love was just a physical imperative that resulted in a chemical change in the brain. It aided in the survival of the species and therefore, the notion of love had been romanticized for time immeasurable.
I knew that. My brain knew that.
But my heart? It was so completely confused by the physiological responses I got around Enit. It beat faster when I saw her in the hall, or when she smiled at me. It had been crushed when she’d rejected me.
And the small smile she gave me just now? It began the process of mending my heart together again. But I wasn’t sure I could take rejection a second time.
I turned away, cleaning up the workstation and snapping off my latex gloves. I did the deep breathing exercises my mother Layla had taught me, the ones that allowed me to center the whirl of my thoughts. When I decided that I had my physiological responses under control, I turned back to the pair in my treatment room.
