by J. L. Wilder
All the teachers and faculty members were chaperones. Of course, that included Grant. His presence was the most frustrating thing of all. He hadn’t so much as looked at her.
What the hell is the point of going to a social if I can’t socialize with the one person I really want?
She was aware of someone coming over to sit beside her, but she ignored them. Cait had been doing her best to project don’t talk to me signals all night long, and for the most part, it had worked. Very few people had intruded on her solitude except to say hello.
But someone clearly wasn’t getting the message. “Hey,” he said.
She knew that voice. “Bart,” she said, not bothering to turn and look at him.
“Got a dance for your alpha?” he asked.
“You’re not my alpha,” she said.
Back at home, that had always been a taunt guaranteed to raise Bart’s hackles. But today, he just laughed. “They still haven’t gotten that attitude out of you?” he asked. “If your father had let me have you first, instead of wasting time on this school lark, I’d have it beat out of you in a few days. But I suppose they want to ease you in.”
“You know you can’t do anything to me,” she said. “Not in front of all these professors. Why are you even bothering with this? Why are you even talking to me?”
“Because like it or not, I am your alpha,” he said. “You were promised to me, and I fully intend to claim you when the time comes.”
“I won’t submit to you,” she told him. “Not ever.”
He laughed again. “Yes, you will,” he said. “I’ll make you. That’s what being an alpha is, Cait. It means I have all the power, and you have none.”
She thought of Grant, of the gentle explanations of alpha authority he had given her and the way he had helped her to see that a good alpha would actually value his omega’s happiness. “I guess you haven’t learned anything at school yet either,” she said.
“And what do I have to learn, exactly?” he asked.
She grinned. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. That’s not my job.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not your job.” She could hear some anger in his voice now. “I don’t mind telling you, Cait, I’m not at all convinced that this education thing is what’s best for you. It’s turning you into a know-it-all, and that’s not what I want in my omega.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Cait said. “My father already decided that I could go to school. He’s given his permission. You can’t do anything now except wait for graduation.”
“I can do more than you think,” he shot back. “I can tell him I don’t like you being here. He’d pull you out if I told him I wouldn’t take you like this. He wants you to be mated to the alpha of the pack.”
Cait felt a chill run down her spine.
Was Bart right?
She couldn’t be sure. But he was making some good points. Her father did want to see her mated to an alpha—that was true. If he thought her time at Omega University was making her less desirable instead of more, he might change his mind and order her to come home.
“What do you want from me?” she asked Bart.
He grinned. “I’m easy to please—for now. All I want from you tonight is a dance.”
“That’s it? One dance?”
“That’s it.” He got to his feet and held out his hand.
Reluctantly, Cait took it.
Dancing with Bart was like dancing with an insect. It made her skin crawl. She hated even to have him touch her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her close, pressing her body tightly up against his.
“There, now,” he said, his breath hot and damp against her cheek. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
“No,” Cait lied, gritting her teeth.
He ran his hands up and down her sides. “I think you might be eating a little too much here,” he said. “You’re filling out. Have you gained weight?”
“I haven’t been weighing myself.”
“Well, maybe you should do some exercise. Go running in the mornings.” He looked her up and down critically. “I don’t want you getting fat.”
“Why not?” Cait demanded. “Fat women can carry babies just as well.”
“Don’t talk back to me,” Bart said. “I don’t want you getting fat because I like you in good shape. You don’t need any more reason than that.”
Cait’s blood boiled. It was her body, wasn’t it? She shouldn’t need Bart’s permission to do anything. She should be able to gain or lose weight, cut her hair or grow it out, or get a tattoo if she wanted one, without asking his permission.
But that wasn’t the way Bart’s world worked.
That wasn’t the way her father’s world worked.
There was no point in getting into an argument in front of everyone, so Cait bit back her rage. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go running.”
“That’s my girl.” Bart slid a hand down and squeezed her ass.
Outraged, Cait stepped out of his arms.
He pursued her, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her close again. “Our dance isn’t over, baby.”
“It is now,” she said. “You can’t do that. I’m not yours that way until we’re done with school. Even my father agreed to that.”
“Hey, I’m just sampling the merchandise,” he said, slipping his fingers down the waist of her jeans. “No one would object to that. Gotta try before you buy, right?”
She squirmed in his arms. “Let me go, Bart.”
“I know you like this,” he said, sliding his hand down deeper and pulling her tight against him. He was hard, and it sickened her. “All omegas like it. You just don’t know how much you like it until someone gives it to you. You’ll see. As soon as you’re mine, you’ll realize that you had no idea what you were missing all this time.”
She shoved at his chest. “Let me go!”
“What’s going on here?” a voice boomed from behind her.
Grant.
Cait wanted to cry—both from relief and from humiliation. The last thing in the world she would have wanted was for him to see her in that situation.
Bart immediately let her go and stepped back. “Just having a dance,” he said, but there was an insolence in his tone that let Cait know he had no intention of deferring to another alpha.
Grant frowned. “You were in violation of the code of conduct,” he said. “Alphas and omegas aren’t permitted to have sexual contact at the socials.”
“Oh, sorry,” Bart said, not sounding remotely sorry. “Everyone’s dancing close. I just thought—”
“I heard her tell you to stop,” Grant said.
“Misunderstanding,” Bart said. “She told me she wanted it. I guess she changed her mind.”
Cait felt like melting into a puddle on the ground. She never wanted to see either of them again.
“I think you’d better head back to Shifter U now,” Grant said.
“I’m not ready to go,” Bart countered. “The party’s just getting started, and the people I came with are still here. I think I’ll stick around, maybe go and find a new dance partner since she’s being such a frigid bitch—”
Grant moved so fast that Cait didn’t even see what he had done until it was over. In a split second, Bart was lying on his back on the ground and Grant was kneeling over him, a hand planted firmly on his chest.
“I can’t permit you to talk about my students that way,” Grant said. “Nor can I allow you to violate school rules and touch them inappropriately at these events. I’m going to ask you one more time to go back home for the night and think about how you can treat these omegas with some respect the next time you’re here. If you don’t do as I ask right now, or if I catch you disrespecting one of my students again, I’ll have to speak to the dean at Shifter University about whether having you at our socials is a good idea in the future.”
Bart sulked but said nothing.
Grant released his hold and got to hi
s feet, dusting off the knees of his pants.
“Boring party anyway,” Bart mumbled. He shot a furious look at Cait and took off jogging toward the highway.
Only once he was gone did Cait notice that everyone else at the party was staring at them in silence.
“Get back to what you were doing,” Grant said, looking around at all of them. “I’ll take Miss Sterling to the nurse.”
His hand came to rest on her shoulder.
She shrugged it off.
“Cait,” he said quietly. “It’s all right.”
“I don’t need to go to the nurse,” she said. “He didn’t actually do anything to me.”
“We’re not going to the nurse,” he said, his voice low enough that no one else could hear. “Take a walk with me.”
She gave in and allowed him to lead her away from the party and into the woods that surrounded the school. His hand on her shoulder was warm and reassuring, soothing her and providing comfort. His touch was so different from Bart’s.
After walking for about fifteen minutes, they came to a little tent set up among the trees. It was just big enough for two.
“Go inside,” Grant said softly.
And for the first time in her life, Cait obeyed an alpha’s order without question or hesitation.
Chapter Thirteen
GRANT
Grant followed her into the tent and sat down beside her.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he asked her, aching to touch her, knowing that he needed to move slowly.
“I’m all right,” she said. She sounded disgusted. “I can’t believe he did that. In front of everybody. Like it didn’t even matter.”
“It matters,” Grant said quietly.
“Thank you for sending him away,” she said. “For intervening when you did.”
Grant shook his head. “You shouldn’t be thanking me,” he said. “I’m your alpha. It’s my responsibility to protect you, and yet this creep was able to do what he did right under my nose. I should never have let him near you. I should never have let anything happen to you.”
“Grant, you couldn’t have done anything more than you did,” Cait protested. “It’s not like you can hover around me all the time, making sure nobody approaches me. That would make it too obvious that there was something going on between us.”
“That’s not an excuse!” he said. “To let something happen to you because I was protecting my own self-interests—that makes it even worse, Cait. It’s practically criminal. It should go against everything in my nature.”
“Calm down,” she urged him. “It’s all right. Nothing really happened. He just had his hands on my ass for a minute. It was embarrassing. That’s all it was. We’re okay now.”
“I wanted to tear him apart,” Grant said, his breathing heavy and too fast. “I wanted to kill him. I’ve never felt anything like that before.”
“Take a breath,” she said. “You need to calm yourself down or you’re going to shift in the tent and tear it apart.”
“I’m not going to shift.” Grant hadn’t lost control of himself and shifted unintentionally in years. But he took a deep breath and steadied himself. She was right that they would both be better served if he got his anger under control.
“He was the one, wasn’t he?” he said. “Your alpha from your pack at home. That was him?”
“Yes,” Cait confirmed. “That was Bart.”
“Why were you dancing with him in the first place?”
She blinked. “Are you angry with me?”
“Not angry,” he said. “I’m surprised that you would choose to be near someone who’s always treated you so badly.”
“I would never have chosen to dance with him,” Cait said. “Never in a million years. I only did it because he threatened me.”
“He threatened you?” Grant’s hands clenched into fists.
“Not to hurt me,” Cait said hastily. “He threatened to complain to my father, that’s all. To have me taken out of school.”
“For not dancing with him?”
“No, a dance was his price for silence. He complained about other things.”
“What things?”
Cait shrugged. “My attitude, mostly,” she said. “He’s pissed that I won’t submit to him.”
“Well, that’s not on you,” Grant said.
She looked up at him. “It isn’t?”
“No,” he said. “This guy has an omega handed to him on a silver platter, practically from birth, and he can’t win her submission? No, that isn’t your fault. He’s the alpha. He’s the one who is supposed to make things happen. If you’re not compliant, it’s not your fault. It’s his fault.”
“That’s not what you said,” Cait protested. “You said I was fighting my nature. You said it was my responsibility to accept my role and become the best omega I could be.”
“I didn’t know everything when I said that,” Grant said. “I didn’t know you had been in such vile hands. If that’s what you grew up with, I don’t know that you’ve ever had a real alpha.”
“You don’t think he’s really an alpha?”
“I don’t think he’s a quality alpha,” Grant said. “He has no idea what it means to care for an omega. He has no idea of the responsibility he has to his pack and to his family.”
He opened the flap of the tent. “Come outside with me,” he said.
“Outside? Why?”
“Just come out.”
She did. Already she was learning to take orders from him, to obey his commands. She still questioned him, but Grant would break her of that soon enough. After having met Bart, he could understand why it was so hard for her to extend trust.
They stood in a patch of moonlight among the trees. Grant held out his hand to her. “Dance with me,” he said quietly.
“There’s no music,” Cait said.
Grant waited, hand extended, eyes locked on hers.
After a few moments, Cait took his hand.
He pulled her close, wrapped an arm around her back, and led her into a slow waltz. “This is what he should have done,” he said quietly. “Do you feel the difference?”
“It’s not a threat.”
“No. But there’s more than that. We’re not just dancing because I want to have a dance partner.” He guided her through a spin and pulled her back into his arms. “We’re dancing because I want to give you one.”
She caught her breath. “I never thought of it that way,” she said.
“I don’t think anyone ever gave you any reason to,” he pointed out.
“I never felt about him the way I feel about you,” she said, gazing up into his eyes. “It wasn’t just because he wasn’t a good alpha. It wasn’t just because he was a bully. I don’t feel that way for him. I never could have.”
“Maybe not,” Grant said. “But if you’d never met me, if you’d never imprinted, and if he had been strong and kind, the way an alpha should be—don’t you think you could have learned to respect him? Maybe even to feel some kind of love?”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “I guess we’ll never know now.”
“No,” Grant said. “He’ll never know now. He’ll never know if he could have had more. He’ll never know what a little kindness might have done for him.”
They had stopped dancing. By unspoken agreement, they stood bathed in the moonlight, absolutely still, gazing into each other’s eyes.
“Take off your clothes,” Grant said quietly.
He expected her to question him, or to put up some kind of protest, the way she usually did. But she said nothing. She didn’t even blink. She stepped away from him, stripped out of her shirt and pants, and left them pooled on the ground at her feet. Naked, she moved back into his arms.
“Now take my clothes off,” he said.
He stood very still as she complied. She lifted his shirt over his head, but instead of allowing it to drop to the ground, as she had with her own things, she hung it carefully over a tree branch. She did the sam
e with his pants, once she had slid them down and he had stepped out of them.
He pulled her close. “I’m not going to let anyone do anything like that to you ever again,” he murmured, running his hands up and down the length of her back. “I’m not going to let that kid onto our campus. I’ll report what he did. I’ll make sure he never comes back.”
“You can’t keep him away from me forever,” Cait murmured. “He’s a member of my pack. And he thinks I belong to him. My father told him he could have me. He’s going to keep coming back. He’s going to keep trying to claim me.”
“He’ll never have you,” Grant whispered. “You’re mine. Only mine.”
He lifted her in his arms and kissed her deeply as she wrapped her legs around his waist. Moving slowly under their combined weight, he lowered himself to his knees, then lay back, pulling her down to lie on top of him.
“I want you to take the lead,” he said, taking her hands in his and intertwining their fingers. “I want you to show me how you like it.”
“I don’t know how I like it,” she admitted, her voice soft and breathless with passion. “I’ve only ever done this twice before. I don’t know what I like.”
“Then let’s find out,” he said.
She nodded, lifted her hips, and sank down on him.
God, she felt good. There was nothing like her in the world. Grant had been with a few different women in his time, and it never ceased to amaze him how the experience was different with each one. Lovemaking with his wife, before her death, had been unique and beautiful.
Now, with Cait, it was perfect in a completely new and different way.
She lay flat across his chest, rocking her hips slowly, taking him deeper and deeper. He traced his fingers up and down her back and relished the softness of her skin. She was so beautiful. So exquisite. The idea that anyone could try to hurt her felt sinful.
He noted the pace she set. Slow. Leisurely. He would remember this, and he would give it to her often. As her alpha, it was his job to know what gave her pleasure and to make sure she had it as much as possible. She had to know that she could depend on him for that.
“You like it like this?” he breathed into her ear. “Nice and slow?”