Page 7 of Toxic

Sometimes he talked to one of the omegas, whom I recognized as Tim from Alvin’s list. Occasionally, Mark, an alpha from the same list, joined them for a short chit-chat with Sean, but Soren ignored him pretty consistently. Unfortunately, there was someone else who often hovered around them—the bleached alpha. I didn’t recognize him from the list; maybe he was a patron or their colleague. I remembered Alvin mentioning some Don, but I had no idea if that was him.

Slowly, I was gathering the courage to approach Soren, but it wasn’t until a week later that I noticed a suitable opportunity.

One day, I arrived early before class and saw Soren standing alone, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the lecture.

I felt my heart racing. Although I didn’t smoke, I had bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter a few days prior, just to have a pretext to approach him.

Slowly walking, I came closer, feeling my heart pounding. The only advantage of me being an alpha and him being a beta was that he couldn’t hear my heart, since betas had much weaker hearing than alphas and omegas. But to my surprise, I noticed that his heart sped up significantly when I stood about six feetaway from him and took out the cigarettes! I could hear it quickening: thump, thump, thump… Did I somehow affect him?

I lit my cigarette, trying to appear casual, but I didn’t intend to actually smoke; it was more for show.

Soren didn’t look at me; his silvery, stormy eyes were fixed on the campus park, where it was raining, everything drowned in gray. There was silence as we stood about six feet apart.

And his heart continued to do it… thump, thump, thump! So quick!

But why?

There were still twenty minutes until the lecture, so there was plenty of time for a conversation. Finally, I took a step toward him and extended my hand, saying, "Hey, I'm Skye."

But to my disappointment, his cold eyes glanced at my face for a brief moment, and then a disdainful grimace formed on his beautiful lips. He turned away, didn’t shake my hand, didn’t say a word. Instead, he took a deep drag, walked to the ashtray, put out his cigarette, turned around, and headed toward the lecture hall.

Well, that didn’t go as planned. His hostility remained firm, and I couldn’t understand why he only acted this way toward me—he just ignored the other students. Pretty strange.

I quickly ditched my cigarette and followed him into the lecture hall. To my surprise, he sat in the front row, almost directly across from the professor’s podium. That was a clear signal: ‘stay away from me’.

Unsure what to do, I passed by him slowly, but he didn’t honor me with a glance; he just stared at his phone screen, ignoring everything around him.

Well, my plan went up in smoke. Literally. I lost the courage to approach him again.

The next opportunity came two days later when I noticed him sitting alone in the cafeteria. This time, he was at a three-person table, so he couldn’t easily explain that he was waiting for a friend.

As I grabbed a tray, my heart pounding, I approached his table and just sat down without asking. I came from behind on purpose, so he couldn’t see me and run away. I noticed he flinched slightly in surprise when he heard the clink of my tray next to his elbow.

"Hey, mind if I sit here?" I asked, but only after my rear was already on the chair.

I saw a grimace of anger on his face. The cafeteria was pretty crowded, and no other tables were available, so he couldn’t easily escape my company, especially since his tray was still full.

Up close, his face seemed even more hostile, with tightly clenched lips and narrowed eyes. But it also looked even more… eye-catching.

He didn’t say anything, just leaned over his tray and sped up his eating, obviously wanting to finish as quickly as possible so he could get up and leave me as usual.

But his heart did it again; boom, boom, boom.

"I noticed we’re in almost all the programming courses together. I’m new here, just transferred from Dornel College."

Silence. He didn't even raise his eyes, just continued to focus on his food, only his heart was galloping. I didn’t know what else to say, except to get to the point. I was almost about to utter the password Alvin had told me, but something held me back. Shyness?

After some hesitation, I started to eat, saying nothing. So pathetic. The strange thing was, I had never been a particularly shy guy, so why did Soren evoke this strange timidity in me? The next few minutes passed in total silence until I suddenly heard footsteps… and saw Sean approaching us.

I could almost see the brief flash of relief on Soren’s face when he saw his friend.

Sean sat down next to us with a cheerful smile.

"Hey, Soren, care to introduce us?"

"I don't know him," Soren said coldly, not even looking at me.

"Oh, okay. Hi, I'm Sean," the redheaded beta greeted me, smiling and holding out his hand.

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