Claiming the Vesper Omega

Chapter 6

Dorian POV

It takes me the better part of the night to track Jaxon down, and when I find him, he point-blank refuses to come back to the apartment. Won’t say why. He just says no and starts walking.

I should let him go. Zephyr needs me. My instincts scream at me to go back to our Omega.

But something’s wrong with Jaxon, and I’m afraid if I don’t convince him to come back, he might ghost us. He’s left before, and I let it go. We’re both Alphas. We’re not always going to agree on everything. I knew that when we decided we were a pack.

This is different. Everything changed when we met our Omega.

They feel everything so much more deeply than everyone else.

If Jaxon leaves us now, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him. So, I chase him down until he agrees to talk.

The sun rises, and I start to regret the decision. I slow to a stop, and Jaxon turns, doing the same.

“Go back home,” Jaxon tells me. “He needs you.”

I shake my head. “He needs both of us.”

Jaxon sighs. “He needs you. You’re the rock, Cass. You always have been.”

“If you need time to yourself, or whatever, we can figure it out,” I tell him. “But it needs to be a conversation between the three of us. You can’t just leave again.”

He closes his eyes, and dread fills me.

He wants to leave. I can feel it. He wasn’t sure about claiming Zephyr when we met him over a year ago. He felt what I did. He knew this was our Omega. But he didn’t accept it without having to do this. He walked away then, but he came back. He can’t keep doing that. If he wants to walk away again now, it’s over.

“Will you please just tell me what’s going on?”

He opens his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t like the thought of Zephyr being at Goldcrest. There are too many Alphas here. It’s too risky.”

“We can’t just lock him in the apartment every day and expect him to be okay with that,” I tell him. “He needs to be free to make his own decisions. We only need to be here when he needs us.”

Right now, we’re not. He’s alone, and he shouldn’t be.

“I don’t like it,” Jaxon admits. “And I don’t know how easy it’s going to be having him on campus and ignoring him. f**k. I can’t f*****g ignore him. He’s our mate. It’s not like it is between you and me, Cass. Everything’s different with him.”

“I know, but we’ll get through that, because it’s what he wants.”

Jaxon nods slowly, but something’s still bothering him. I can see it in his eyes.

“What else happened?”

He blinks at me. “Nothing.”

He’s lying. I frown at him. “Bullshit. What happened?”

He’s quiet, and for a second, I think he’s going to lie again. He lets out a sigh.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“I was walking around last night, and I felt something. It wasn’t the same as the night we met Zephyr—not exactly—but it was similar enough that it shook me up a bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a girl,” he says. “She… I don’t know. She was just a Beta, but I felt something when I saw her.”

“Something like what you felt when we met Zephyr?”

He nods. “It’s probably nothing. I’m wired. I haven’t slept in forever.”

Betas don’t make Alphas feel like Omegas do, but Jaxon slept with a lot of them before we met Zephyr. All women. All Betas. I thought he’d gotten over the surprise of being mated to a male Omega. I was wrong. I don’t know how we deal with this, but I’m going to have to figure it out.

This is worse than I thought.

He misses what he used to have.

Vesper POV

Cole plows through the crowds like a force of nature. She isn’t scared to bump into people to get past them, and she’s giving out a lot of preemptive apologies as she goes. I shuffle along in her wake, glad that she’s pulling everyone’s attention.

I can be her shadow. It makes it that much easier to hide.

I don’t sense any Alphas as we head into our first class. I sort of sensed a couple of them kind of far away outside. I don’t think they were close enough to be any kind of threat.

I let out a relieved sigh as Cole led us to the seats at the back of the class. The room fills up with Betas. So far, so good. I don’t run into any trouble in the morning, or over lunch.

Our next class is home to a particularly arrogant Alpha who’s in his seat, lip-locked with a blonde Beta in a short skirt who’s sitting on his lap when I walk in. I quietly practice my breathing exercises and give his desk a wide berth while I follow Cole to her favorite place—the back of the class. Far enough away that I shouldn’t catch his attention.

The room feels too small with him in it. I rough up the skin on my shoulder, rubbing my shirt against it, and I squirm a bit in my seat to make my pants cut in a little harder. I go past discomfort into pain. It seems to be what I need to push down my Omega’s desire to perfume the air to attract the Alpha as a potential mate.

I can’t help watching him while I’m supposed to be taking notes.

His behavior is repellent. He’s still making out with that girl he probably only met a few minutes before. Professor Greene introduces himself to the class before turning his attention to the distraction up front. He doesn’t seem pleased, but his expression makes it obvious he’s seen it all before. This is how Alphas are. They do what they want, when they want, and damn the consequences.

Greene makes a few indirect attempts to get the Alpha to stop what he’s doing. None of them work. The Alpha ignores the professor, establishing dominance over him.

I glance around and find that a bunch of the Beta girls, and some of the guys, are whispering and watching the Alpha paw at the girl.

Probably wishing to be in her place.

“That’s nasty,” Cole mutters next to me.

I nod, even if it’s hard to take my eyes away from the spectacle.

It’s better to keep my head down. I don’t want to attract his attention.

Eventually, the make-out session stops, and he tells the girl to go back to her seat. She seems kind of dazed as she looks around. Another girl waves at her, and she stumbles away from the Alpha to sit down on an actual seat.

The next hour limps by, almost as if time has stopped. Toward the end, the professor asks everyone to introduce themselves by name and to mention a hobby. I cringe as the awkward icebreaker game begins. The Alpha’s name is Colby Summers, and he confesses to collecting Betas as his hobby. That makes most of the class laugh. They all want him to like them. Even if they’re not interested in being pawed at, they want a piece of him.

When it’s my turn at introductions, I try to stay calm.

“I’m V., and I like to read.” I shrug. Keep it short and boring, and no one will remember you.

I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look.

Cole takes a dramatic breath and blurts, “I’m Cole, and my hobbies include flirting with waiters and writing restaurant reviews. Oh, and I also like going to parks to pet strangers’ dogs.”

It gets a few giggles, which I think she was going for. She smiles at me as the next student starts to introduce herself.

I can still feel the Alpha’s gaze fixed on me. Maybe it’s paranoia. I can’t look to be sure. I can’t risk it.

He’s seriously bad news. I contemplate switching classes, but I decide to hold off. See how this week plays out. Another class might have more than one Alpha.

One is bad enough.

I take my time packing my bag, not wanting to move out of the class until he’s gone.

Cole taps her fingers on the desk impatiently as I get up. “Ready?” she asks.

“I need to head to the bathroom. I’ll meet you at the next class.”

She nods. “Okay, sure. I’ll save you a seat!”

I swear, that girl doesn’t know how to slow down.

She takes off, and I’m alone at the back of the class while the rest of the students filter out slowly.

I sling my backpack over my shoulder and nudge my sliding glasses back up my nose.

I tell myself one in three classes with an Alpha isn’t so bad.

I have ten minutes before the next class, so I head outside to get some air.

There’s a light breeze, and it feels good on my skin. I don’t know where the Alpha went, but he’s not out here. Leaning against the wall, I let myself relax a little bit.

I’m seriously exhausted. Turns out sitting in a closed room all day with an Alpha wears out an Omega who’s trying to avoid being detected. Who would have known?

Ugh. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake.

I should have stayed in Silver Lake. I could have worked my way up a little in the library and eventually found a Beta I could trust to settle down with. It would have been easy.

Too bad I’ve wanted something more my whole life. It didn’t feel like I was really living back home.

It felt more like a trap. This was my way out.

I had to take it, so here I am.

“Don’t screw it up,” I mutter to myself.

I turn and go back inside the building, ready to head to my last class of the day.

I take two steps inside and stop walking.

There’s a guy leaning against the wall, his eyes closed and his lips moving.

He’s freaking out. I feel the chaotic, anxious energy that’s spiraling out of him, and something inside me just clicks.

It’s like a switch being flipped. A light pinging on.

All of my efforts over the last four years undone with a single glance at a stranger.

He’s not even an Alpha. He’s just crazy anxious.

He takes in a deep breath, and his eyes open. He blinks and turns his head to stare at the Omega who’s unraveling in front of him.

He has pretty green eyes, framed by thick, dark lashes. A mess of chocolate brown hair sticking up in a cute, just-rolled-out-of-bed kind of way. Even the slack-jawed look he’s giving me can’t hide how attractive this guy is.

My body flushes with heat. My clothes feel even tighter and more irritating than usual.

I clench my thighs together, and the friction that causes makes my eyes roll upward.

My c**t throbs like it has its own pulse. My n*****s get harder and harder with every breath I take. Oh hell. It’s happening. I’m perfuming.

The sweet vanilla scent that rolls off me is potent and undeniable.

Whoever this guy is, he just unmasked this Omega.

His pretty eyes lock with mine, and I see it the second he realizes the truth.

His surprise deepens into shock.

I need to get the hell out of here before someone else notices.

I turn and run.