Page 3 of Defiant Beta

I swipe the moisture away with the back of my hand, which disgusts her even more. “Uh. It’s a hot day.”

“Go towel your face right now. A light perspiration is acceptable.” She points an accusatory finger at me, and I recoil when she nearly takes out my eye. “Thatis not. Towel. Immediately.”

River hides a smile with her palm as I trot over to the stack of neatly folded towels set out by one of the white uniformed serving staff. It’s embossed with HA. In gold. Because only the best for a Haven Academy girl.

I’m getting sick of lessons light on the education and heavy on the obedience, punctuated by fancy meals in the dining hall, and the omega lessons where I try desperately hard to be something I’m not.

It’s time to scale up operations.

Chapter 2

Della

The girls’dorms are in a pastel pink cottage, nestled among tall oaks, a lavender garden, and sculpted bushes.

The boy's dorm, located in a pastel blue cottage, is closer to the teachers' and is probably identical inside. There are only a handful of male omegas since they’re rarer than female omegas.

Each of its four wings houses ten to twenty girls. There’s a communal bathroom, restrooms, and a reading room with leather armchairs and a large table for us to study the meaningless crap these teachers are determined to spoon-feed us.

At the end of each bed is a white, vintage-looking trunk where we can store our most personal things. We each have a dresser and closet, but those are farther away, and I have things, namely extortionately expensive perfume I need to keep a close eye on.

“Do you want one alpha or a pack, Delilah?” River asks me at the end of a long day.

Sweet omega scents permeate nearly every part of Haven Academy, particularly in the dorms. I bought out a fragrance store's supply of cherry and praline perfume, the closest scent Icould find to omega pheromones, so I’m adding my own sugary mix to the room.

I am fast running out of supplies with the way I’ve been spraying the stuff all over my clothes, hair, and skin, because everyone knows betas don’t smell of anything.

Maybe I don’tneedto go so heavy with the fragrance, but it’ll take one person to notice my underlying smell of nothing, and they’ll drag me out of here so fast my head will spin.

I have a map of Haven Academy spread out in front of me to plot more destruction as I lie flat on my belly and kick my feet. “Uh, whatever. Don’t mind.”

Alphas and omegas have passionate love affairs. In movies, it’s always a delicate, beautiful omega who falls for the big, powerful alpha. I do not foresee an epic love affair in my future, and that’s okay. I don’t need that to be happy with my life, but it would be nice to be a guy’s obsession instead of a forgettable beta.

“Apackof alphas,” Cheyenne says firmly from the next bed over as she brushes a vintage-looking gold comb through her silky, chestnut brown hair. “I’d get double, triple, or quadruple the amount of spoiling.”

Almost all the girls come from money. They don’t dress over the top fancy, but everything they wear is expensive. It’s the kind of no-label, perfectly tailored, tasteful outfits worn by people used to dressing well.

I dress like them, too, courtesy of the credit card that Everleigh let me borrow. From a distance, I might look like them, but the clothes don’t feel right. Maybe because I’ve never stopped feeling like a fraud since I stepped foot on campus.

“Everleigh Ashe has three alphas. That’s what I want,” says Kimber with a soft sigh of pleasure. “She’s so lucky.”

If they knew what my sister went through to get her happy ever after with a pack of alphas who adore her, they wouldn’tbe calling her lucky. They’d be saying it was a miracle she found happiness at all, given how many times she nearly died.

Ever and I have different parents. My mom raised and then sold her, which is why I cut her out of my life; we look so different that no one would know we’re related.

I make a non-committal sound and refocus on my map of the school.

Wearing a cream silk nightdress, River perches on the edge of my bed. “Are you still getting lost?”

My excuse for spending my evenings and any spare time I have poring over the Haven Academy map has been a terrible sense of direction.

“I think I’m starting to figure out where everything is now,” I say.

I’ve hit the science building, the wellness center, and the dining hall. The admissions building, which houses the nurse’s office, is a no-go area. Someone is always in there working, and it feels wrong to target the nurse who seems nice.

Where next?

I hesitate to hit the library. The thought of ruining books is enough to make me feel queasy. So the library is out of bounds.

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