Page 41 of Defiant Beta

“Let’s get out of here,” Zach says with a chuckle. “I’ve worked up an appetite.”

Waiting until I can’t hear them anymore, I drag my skirt down my legs and scramble to my feet. I fall, my knees shaking. My back doesn’t burn anymore, but it feels cold, just like the rest of me.

My stomach clenches, and I clap a hand over my mouth, swallowing hard. I crawl to the corner of the room and throw up over and over.

Until bile burns my throat.

Until tears stream from both eyes.

Until I have nothing left and my stomach muscles spasm, and still I try to force more out of me than there is to get out.

And when I’m done, I crawl to another corner of the room, form myself into a ball, wrapping my arms around my legs as I watch the door. A tear leaks from the side of my eye. I do nothing to wipe it away.

Why can’t I stop shaking?

Chapter 14

Vincent

I readfrom the textbook as my students take notes.

My monotone voice fills the room, an endless drone that goes on and on.

Last evening, three unknown men abducted Delilah Farrow from the Haven Academy visitor’s parking lot.

This morning, cops were still combing for evidence, and the faculty meeting was subdued.

A girl is missing, abducted from outside the school gates, but Ms. Arkwright had said…

What had the head of the school said that had pissed me off so much?

“I believe it’s in the best interest for all the omegas to continue as though all is perfectly well at Haven Academy.”

“Shouldn’t we send the students home?” Mr. Willoughby, the professor of music, had suggested with a furrowed brow.

“And cause more disruption to the students? I think not,” she’d said firmly.

From the knowing glances around the faculty office, what she’d meant was that she had played down what had happened to the parents, or just plain not told them at all.

“And Delilah Farrow?” I’d asked at the faculty meeting. “What about her?”

Ms. Arkwright had smiled tightly at me. “It’s in the hands of the police. They can do their jobs and we can get on with ours. Now, the end-of-year ball is only weeks away for senior year, and…”

I hadn’t intended to say the same thing to Levi and Xavier, but I had washed my hands of Delilah, turning my back on her just like Ms. Arkwright.

Not my responsibility. Not my problem to fix. Let someone else deal with it.

“Professor Vincent?”

I lift my eyes from my open textbook.

A room full of omegas stares at me.

Delilah isn’t an omega from a wealthy and influential family, the type Ms. Arkwright panders to.

She isn’t an omega at all.

With no money behind her, she doesn’t mean a thing to the head of school, who excels at kissing ass like no one I’ve ever seen.

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