Page 23 of Want It All
I shouldn’t have felt safe. I knew what those monitors meant, even if I didn’t know the details. No omega would trust a feral alpha.
Except … I did. Becausethisferal alpha had brought me food. He walked me to class and protected me when I’d needed it, even when I hadn’t known he was doing it. And here he was, trying so hard not to crowd me, to give me space.Iwas the one moving closer, ruining his good work.
I’d have liked to see anyone do a single thing differently. His hair was pulled back, still damp from the shower, and it brought the strong planes of his face into focus.
I wanted to map them with my fingertips.
I wondered what his lips would feel like.
‘Should we …’ I turned to face him, my eyes tracking the way his throat moved as he swallowed. My mouth went dry. ‘Should we look at the first assessment?’
The notion jolted me out of my pleasant daydreams.
Other than the nightmare of my failed attempt at art school, no one had known my designation during my undergraduate degree. As an online student, there’d been no need for me to reveal it. On the advice of doctors, I’d had a heat during my very first cycle to let my body adjust then taken suppressants ever since, so heats had never been an issue. None of my lecturers or tutors had known I was an omega.
But here,everybodyknew, including my teachers. And apparently it mattered – to Brandon Heathcote, at least.
‘I’m going to have to work my ass off, aren’t I?’
Byron looked startled for a moment, then his expression tightened into understanding. ‘We all are. That’s why we’re here. But you might have to work harder than most in Heathcote’s class.’
The rest of the week took on a rhythm. Byron waited outside my room in the morning and walked me to breakfast, where we sat with Sebastian and Tristan. We went to class together, worked together, and we had lunch together, too. In the afternoon, we went our separate ways: Byron to check in with his parents or liaison officer, Tristan for a walk, and Sebastian and I disappeared into our respective rooms. I usually watched something on a streaming service before joining Byron a fewhours later in the First Year Library. Then we studied – and I tried not to flirt – until dinner.
It was comforting.Nice. I woke up each morning already looking forward to it. Sometimes, Alessia and Pravin would join us, either in the dining hall or the library. Marina invited me for a coffee catch up, and we spent two hours talking about her research and my ambitions over a plate of cupcakes and a plunger of coffee.
I hadfriends.
But it was Byron I spent the most time with. When he was late one morning, I started to panic before he arrived, rushed and breathless, saying he slept through his alarm.
You’re there for a degree, not a pack, Chloe’s voice warned.
‘Who did you choose for the first assessment?’ I asked him, when we were in the library one afternoon.
The first main assessment wasn’t huge; it was only five hundred words, worth ten percent of the final grade. We had to write a short report on an anthropologist or archaeologist, and why we thought they deserved more recognition for their contributions to their field.
Byron flipped his laptop around to show me a journal article; he’d chosen an archaeologist who’d developed an open-source coding system where researchers from around the world could input measurements and descriptions to build an online simulation of sites they were excavating. The system was new but had immense potential, not just for archaeology but for history education too, making sites accessible for students who otherwise would have little chance of seeing them.
And the archaeologist was a beta.
I smiled at him. He blinked, then cleared his throat. I inhaled slowly, but there was no hint of scent in the air. I couldn’t help but wonder what his might be. Something edible, like citrus? A woody scent like cedar? Or would it be sweeter, like lavender?
The possibilities were endless.
My gaze strayed to where his jaw met his neck, my teeth aching as I imagined raking them over his scent gland.
‘Did you end up choosing Nora Cummins?’
I shook myself. Nora Cummins was the only omega working in either field as far as I knew. A few years ago, there’d been a huge controversy when she wasn’t nominated for an important prize after developing surveying technology that helped identify and map archaeological sites in protected environmental areas. ‘I finished a draft last night. I need to do some tidying up, and I haven’t finished the bibliography yet, but I think it’s okay.’
‘I can look it over, if you’ll read what I’ve done?’ he offered.
I slid my laptop towards him in answer, then broke out in goosebumps when his hand brushed mine.
Keep it together, Rose, I begged myself.
It was immediately clear that he deserved his place at Banksia House. His writing was eloquent and graceful, expressive without being flowery. He addressed the topic of the report and hit every criterion on the rubric. It was the kind of paper that was academic without being impenetrable, something you might have read in a magazine or a journal.
I shifted restlessly in my chair. ‘You misspelt her name in the second paragraph,’ I teased, pushing his laptop back towards him. I didn’t glance at the other tabs he had open; he’d trusted me with his work, and I wouldn’t do anything to undermine that.
