The Alpha's Hidden Mate

The Antagonist

*Ember*

The cafeteria is noisy, and I’m glad for it. Traveling down in the elevator with Kyan had been awkward, even though a couple of other guys had jumped on right before the doors shut. Still, after the intense physical reaction I’d just had from his touch, I’m still trying to recover. I can tell he’s trying to include me in the way he’s walking a bit slower than the other guys, even though they’re attempting to have a conversation, but when I see Luka across the expansive lunchroom, I have an excuse to break free.

“I see my friend over there,” I tell Kyan. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Oh, okay.” I think I hear relief in his voice, and I can’t blame him. He’s too damn polite to abandon me, but it’s clear he knows some of the others in the room and doesn’t want to babysit me.

Kyan turns and walks toward one line where food is being served, and I wave at Luka and then head to the other line. By the time I have my tray, which is loaded with way more food than I could ever eat, Kyan is through his line and sitting down at a table near the guy who’d helped me out at registration. I can’t tell if they know one another or not, but I pry my eyes away and head toward Luka’s table.

That’s when I trip.

At first, I think my shoe must’ve hit a c***k in the floor, or I stepped on a banana peel or something, but as my food flies up into the air, my drink spilling everywhere, I glance down to see a black boot being tucked back under a table.

Thankfully, none of my food actually spills on me or anyone else, and most of it lands right back on the tray leaving only a bit of splatter on the floor in front of me. I can’t eat it, though. It’s all jumbled up, and my juice is now mixed with the pasta.

“Hey, watch it, kid,” the guy at the end of the table says, laughing. “Don’t wanna fall on your face so early.”

I turn and stare at him, anger burning behind my eyes. He’s at least a foot taller than me, with light brown hair and dark eyes. The cronies sitting around him laugh as well, and my eyes flicker to each of them, four in all. Bastards. I wanna punch him in the face, but I can’t do that, not if I want to live to see another day.

“Come on, Malcolm!” Luka is suddenly right in front of me. “Cut the guy a break, huh? Goddess.” Luka shakes his head and steers me away from this Malcolm fellow. “You okay, Emory?”

It takes me a second to answer because I’m so mad–and maybe I’ve temporarily forgotten my new name. “I’m fine.”

Luka pries my tray out of my hands. “I’ll be right back. Just go sit over there, ‘kay?” He gestures at the table where he’d been sitting a moment ago, and I trudge over. When I sit down, I can’t help but find Kyan’s face in the crowd, praying he hadn’t seen any of that.

He’s looking right at me, and his nostrils are flared for reasons I can’t quite decipher. He shakes his head slowly but says nothing, and a moment later, the guy he’s sitting next to regains his attention.

“Malcolm is an asshole.” The boy next to me shovels in another bite of pasta, little dots of sauce flecked across his ruddy cheeks. “I hate him.”

“Me, too,” a blond across from me agrees. “Everyone from Crater Pack is a jerk.”

I’m not sure what to say, so I sit there in silence, trying to stop shaking. It doesn’t take long for Luka to return, setting a full tray in front of me. I manage to thank him, and he shakes my shoulder. “No worries, bro. I got you.”

When Luka touches my shoulder, I only feel camaraderie. Once again, I’m looking at Kyan.

I must be really looking at him, too, because the food shoveler says, “That’s Kyan. You know him?”

“Uhm, yeah,” I mutter, turning my attention to a plate full of pasta that has my stomach churning. “He’s my roommate.”

“No f*****g way!” Luka laughs, shaking his head as he takes an enormous bite of food. He’s not quite done chewing when he adds, “How’d you get so unlucky?”

“What do you mean?” I take a much smaller bite and hope he finishes chewing before he answers. I do remember the conversation we had in line, but I thought that was about sparing, not living arrangements.

He doesn’t finish chewing first. All around me, I see men talking with their mouths mostly full, like it’s not disgusting to do so.

“All I can say is, I wouldn’t want that guy seeing me in the shower,” Luka says. “And I’m a pretty big guy.”

“No doubt,” the blond says. “Muscles like those? I’d feel like a f*****g stick.”

At first, I thought they were talking about something else, but now, I can’t even think at all. What am I going to do about the showers?

“We have showers in our rooms,” Ruddy-face chimes in.

“We’re men,” Luka replies. “We can’t be shy like a bunch of sissy girls or else everyone's gonna make fun of us, Mikey.”

Mikey makes a face I can totally identify with. He’s short, though not as short as me, and… stocky, to put it politely.

“I’m Brock, by the way,” the blond says, extending his hand. “Boulder Pack.”

“Emory. Fire Pack.” I shake his hand and then go back to my dinner–and my nightmare.

What the f**k have I gotten myself into? I can’t pull this off.

“Emory?” Luka says, and for a moment, I don’t know if he said something I missed or if he’s just concerned. “You okay, buddy?”

“Fine.” I take a deep breath and conjure up a smile, and he nods, but he holds my gaze for a long moment before looking back at his food.

I am not okay–and Luka knows it. And when I accidentally let my eyes flicker to Kyan, he’s looking at me, too. He also knows I’m not okay, and I don’t know what to do about that.

All I can think about is that I shouldn’t be here, that someone is going to figure out that I’m a woman, and they’ll tell my father.

An image of Alpha Gavin, a man nearly fifteen years older than me, with a hook nose and a round belly fills my mind.

Either way–I’m screwed.