Page 26 of My Defiant Mate
And yet here I am. Wrecked by a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and a rulebook. My hands are shaking. I clench them into fists, digging my nails into my palms until the sting is sharp and real.
I knew better. I saw it. I swore that would never be me.
My father's face swims in my memory. The last time I saw him, he was sitting in a dark living room, surrounded by empty bottles, blaming my mother for leaving. Blaming fate. Blaming anything but the man in the mirror who was too much of a coward to fight for his own family.
And what am I doing? Sitting on a roof, ready to let go, ready to run. Just like him.
The thought hits me like a bucket of ice water.
No.
The word is a silent snarl in my own head. No. I am not him. I will not be him. Running is what he did. Giving up is what he did.
A fire starts in my gut, hot and clean, burning away the self-pity. Toby thinks he has to choose between his future and me. Henderson thinks he's won.
Fuck them both.
I'm on my feet, my boots scraping against the gravel. I'm not running from this. I'm running toward it. I grab my guitar and head for the door, a new purpose thrumming through me, sharper and clearer than any chord I've ever played.
My room is a disaster, but for once, I don't see the chaos. I see a war room.
I flip open my laptop, the blue light burning my eyes in the darkness, casting weird shadows across the walls. The university website is a labyrinth of bureaucratic bullshit, a poorly composed symphony of conflicting rules and dead-end links. I'm not a scholar, I'm a musician. But this is just another kind of composition.
I'm hunting for the one loophole, the one dissonant chord in their perfect harmony of bullshit that I can exploit. Each policy is a measure, each clause a note. I'm searching for the one wrong note that will bring the whole fucking thing crashing down.
Hours blur. I mainline coffee until my hands shake and my vision blurs, but I don't stop. I read through page after page of legalese, the words swimming in front of my eyes. I drink coffee until it tastes like burnt metal and my eyes burn. The university website is a maze of bureaucratic bullshit, but I keep clicking. My room is buried in paper—printouts highlighted in angry yellow, notes scribbled in the margins.
Around 4 AM, I hit a wall. Every path leads to a dead end. The RA handbook is an ironclad fortress. For a second, despair claws at me again, cold and sharp. Then I remember. The gossip. Wes and Braiden. They went up against the university when some rival was harassing Braiden, and they won.
My fingers are already dialing Braiden's number, which I'd gotten from a mutual friend weeks ago for a study group that never happened. He answers on the third ring, his voice thick and blurry with sleep.
"Jionni? Is everything okay? It's four in the morning."
"No. I need your help. You and Wes... you fought the school. And won. How?"
There's a rustle of blankets, and then a muffled, grumpy growl in the background that can only be Wes Chambers. "Brai? Who the hell is calling?"
"Shh, go back to sleep," Braiden murmurs, his voice momentarily turned away from the phone. "It's important." He comes back, his voice clearer now. "Okay, I'm listening. What happened?"
"Henderson has him," I say, the words scraped raw from my throat. "He's making Toby choose between me and his scholarship. I'm looking for a weapon in the rules, a way to fight back, and I can't find it."
"Where are you looking?" Braiden asks, his voice instantly sharp and focused. The sleepy omega is gone, replaced by the brilliant mind that aced every class he took.
"The RA handbook. Housing policies. It's a goddamn fortress."
"Wrong place," he says instantly. "That's the trap. They want you to look there, in the employment rules. You need to look under the university-wide 'Student Accommodations' policies. It's not about his job; it's about his rights as an omega. Check for anything related to bonded pairs."
The background growl gets louder. "Give me the phone, Brai."
"Wes, no, he needs tactical advice, not a pep talk—"
There's a sound of a minor scuffle, and then Wes's voice, low and hard as granite, comes on the line. "Alarie. It's Wes."
"Chambers," I acknowledge, my own alpha instincts rising to meet his.
"Stop thinking so hard," he says, his voice a low command. "Braiden's right. Find the rule. But when you find it, you don't ask, you don't negotiate. You walk into that meeting and you ram it down their throats. You make it clear that this isn't a request, it's a notification of how things are going to be."
"I plan on it," I growl.
