Page 35 of Defiant Beta

Mercy shreds the tissue in her lap. “She said she would give them hell.”

Delilah Farrow. No other student would say something like that. No one else has the fighting spirit that she does.

“And they took her,” Mercy whispers.

I stare at her.

“I don’t know why she was leaving here, but a haunted school has to be better than being tasered. Do you think they’ll kill her?” Mercy whispers.

A flashback of a news report invades my mind.

An omega’s body dumped on the side of a road, missing half her clothes.

We’re hunting an omega killer, and I chased Delilah out of here with threats of exposing her. She smelled like an omega, and she was wearing the Haven Academy uniform.

To what fate?

A door slams open behind me.

Ms. Arkwright stalks in with a phone clamped to her ear. “Cops are on their way. They’ll be here soon. They said?—”

I get up and walk away. Then I stop and turn back, meeting Mercy’s gaze. “Thank you for talking to me, Mercy.”

She blinks, surprised. “Uh, thanks for listening.”

I walk out of the nurse’s room, pulling the door closed behind me.

Outside, a handful of teachers stand in a small group.

Xavier and Levi are among them.

As a visiting instructor, Levi has the least amount of responsibility. I told him to check if Delilah had left the school grounds, and he would have.

I feel them watching me as I jog down the long gravel road to the front gates. If cops are on their way, I have limited time to have a look around.

As I enter my staff code on the keypad, nudge the side gate open, and walk outside the school gates, the distant sound of a police siren grows nearer.

“Professor Vincent?” the security guard calls out, glancing at me.

The dark-eyed beta is standing directly in front of the gate, hand on his gun, likely sent down here to ensure no trouble finds its way into the school.

I ignore him.

A battered Toyota sits in the parking lot. My gaze lingers on black tire skid marks from a car accelerating fast. The duffel bag on the ground is the only evidence that something happened in this parking lot.

I have dedicated ten years of my life to a single goal.

I have never turned away or been tempted to give it up.

Until now.

The sirens grow louder. I take another careful look at the parking lot and step back onto the school grounds, letting the iron gate slam behind me as I make my way up the gravel drive.

Xavier and Levi linger in the shadows of an oak.

“Ms. Arkwright has some teachers doing a roll call in the dorms,” Levi says before I can ask what happened to the other teachers. “I offered to walk around and check if any of the girls were wandering around. She said the most important students are safe.”

Of course she did. The wealthiest. The ones whose disappearance could threaten her job.

---