Page 63 of Overeager
Maybe sooner than that, considering the damn thing had sparked off seven whole days before it was supposed to.
Eli stumbled out of bed, dragging on his discarded pajama bottoms, even though the material itched at his skin. Faith was a disturbingly early riser, and she was already in his kitchen, immaculately dressed with a mug of coffee in hand.
She immediately wrinkled her nose, covering her face with one hand. “Oh my god.” She set her coffee aside with a choked sound. “No wonder you were acting batshit yesterday.”
Eli covered his own nose in a mirror of her actions. Normally he found his sister’s earthy scent soothing, but right now it was … wrong.
Wrong alpha, his instincts were telling him.
“It’s early,” he whined, knowing he sounded like a child but unable to help it. “A week early. I’m screwed. It’s midterms this week.”
“It’ll be fine,” Faith told him, her words muffled by the covering of her hand. “Just call in your heat exemption, and they’ll get a sub for you. Not everyone’s heats cooperate as neat and timely as yours usually do.”
Eli’s anxiety was unappeased. “Noah’s supposed to help me through it.”
Eli didn’t have his usual dose of suppressants from the doctor, and the thought of using toys after planning to have Noah with him all this time …
Faith shrugged. “And?”
“He hasclass,” Eli practically wailed. “Exams.”
“Students get heat and heat-partner exemptions same as professors, Eli,” she reminded him, emitting her pheromones in a way that was probably supposed to be comforting but was setting Eli’s hair on end instead. “He’s an alpha partner of an omega in heat. You two can get a doctor’s note afterward, if his professors ask for it. The names will be confidential.”
Eli knew all this. He really did. But he couldn’t stop the growing sense of panic.
Everything was all wrong. His alpha wasn’t here. Eli hadn’t even started building a nest. Noah was supposed to bring him clothing over the next week, but they hadn’t had a chance, and now his heat was here, and there was no alpha and no nest and—
“It’s early!” he yelled again, slamming his open palm on the kitchen counter. “Why is it early?”
He couldn’t see Faith smile behind her hand, but he could hear it in her damn voice. “Jesus. I forgot how you get.” Before he could fly off the handle, she added, “You’ve been spending your days with a compatible alpha, and you just had a big emotional upheaval. It makes sense for things to have gone offtrack. You just need to call Noah.”
“What if he won’t come?”
Just saying it out loud had the panic rising higher in his throat, Eli’s stomach cramping harder than it had so far. Noah needed to be here. He was Eli’s alpha. Why wouldn’t he be here?
It was stupid. Eli had spent heats alone with medications and toys. But he hadn’t been expecting to spendthisone alone.
Why was Noah making him spend his heat alone?
“Eli.” Faith’s voice broke through the fog of his anxiety. “Call him now. I’m going to get Deadly packed up.”
“What?” Faith was taking his cat? “Why?! What’s wrong with her?”
To Faith’s credit, she didn’t call Eli out on his losing his mind. “To babysit her,” she said evenly. “You’re going into heat for days … maybe longer, with a new alpha in your life.”
“He’s going to fail all his classes!” Eli cried, forgetting that two seconds ago, he’d been convinced Noah was abandoning him.
“Eli. Call Noah.Now.” Faith added a hint of alpha command into the last word. Eli didn’t technically have to follow it—omega bodies had evolved since the dark ages of real alpha commands—but it did add a little bite that cut through the fog again.
He bolted to his bedroom and grabbed his phone off his bedside table. His room didn’t smell like the wrong alpha, but it didn’t smell like Noah right now either.
That was bad. And wrong. And … bad.
Usually Eli had a bigger vocabulary than this.
“Eli?” Noah picked up on the first ring, but he sounded sleepy, like Eli had woken him. In Eli’s hypersensitive state, he also thought Noah sounded a little wary.
Oh god. He hated Eli now, didn’t he?
