I let her words and her bullshit wash over me, allowing it to become some mildly annoying background noise, because none of this had anything to do with me.
My father had been a beta enforcer to Alpha Vanguard’s pack, almost an uncle to the boys that surrounded me. His job, like the other enforcers, had been to smooth things over, ensure the ruling pack’s orders were followed to the letter, and he had done so admirably. When we were little, they used to joke about the boys and me, as the alpha’s pack had sons, and Dad had only a daughter. I was going to grow up to be an omega, their omega, and they would be my pack, treasuring me, protecting me, mating…
I’d gone along with the idea for a while, feeling something inside me that tugged at the mention of it, and Dad had been sure that was an early sign that I had an animal. And so, on his deathbed, he’d made the boys promise to look after me when he couldn’t. But after a respectable mourning period had passed, Alpha Vanguard had taken me to one side and spelled out the way things had to be.
“We always planned for you to mate our sons,” he’d told me. “But Mother Nature, she has her own ideas.” His eyes had raked down my much more modestly curved beta body, one just like my mother’s, and he’d shaken his head. “A pack of alphas need an omega. Even if we could support your relationship with them—”
His tone was soft, as gentle as he could make it, and there was real sorrow on his face. Didn’t lessen the blow though.
“The first time an omega goes into heat around them, they’ll leave me,” I’d said woodenly, reciting the received wisdom of the pack.
Alphas and omegas, they went together like peas and corn. They just made sense, but alphas and betas? We served them, helped them. In the old days, we would have ensured the pups survived, working hard to provide food and shelter. But now?
Now I was getting out.
Cheryl focussed all her ire on me, her perfectly contoured face screwing into an ugly expression, her eyes flashing.
“You lay a fucking finger on her,” Ryan rumbled, the threat resonating throughout the whole bus, “and I’ll make sure you regret it, Cheryl.”
This was what I’d miss—Ryan’s cheeks flushing under his deep tan, his eyes shifting from blue to silver, his dark hair scraped back with a hasty hand, all humour gone. Dad had meant for the best, trying to ensure his baby girl made it into adulthood in one piece, but he never knew what he’d done to me, making these boys promise to look out for me.
It put a target on my back, that was one thing, because Cheryl’s rule as queen bee of the school was not going to be fucked with by anyone, let alone some beta. The second was it didn’t allow me the anonymity of my natural place in the pecking order. Some betas dealt drugs to get in with the different alpha groups, some procured free alcohol. Others left clothes behind with complete abandon, not caring in what context they got to touch the golden alphas, just that they did. But most were like me—just content to skate by, be productive, and part of the community.
In my case, it wasn’t going to be this community.
The worst thing about Dad’s promise wasn’t that though. It was being forced to watch all five of them lean forward, a picture of masculine menace in my defence. That was what fucking killed me. We’d been as close as kin, the six musketeers, right up until they revealed as alpha and I’d…
The reveal of my designation was nothing major, just a tiny little blip of a thing, as sometimes was the case with betas. There was no massive surge of hormones for us, like there were with alphas and omegas. Cheryl had been a plain little stick of a girl before she developed, becoming some kind of sex goddess overnight, whereas I was just me—the girl they’d be forced to leave behind, because they couldn’t keep pushing the omegas away. They wouldn’t want to.
“I can’t wait until my first heat,” Cheryl said, picking herself up and dusting off her skin-tight jeans as a means to draw attention to her curves. “I’m going to make you beg for a piece of this, Ryan Vanguard, and then I’m going to tell you what I should’ve all this time. Fuck off!”
She flipped him off with one perfectly manicured finger, then reshuffled the other beta kids, shooing them off seats until she and her crew were happy with the arrangement before the bus driver could finally put the vehicle in gear. I sank down, feeling the omegas’ eyes on me, wanting the bus seat to just swallow me up and hide me.
Two more weeks, I said over and over.Two more weeks.That thought fused with the sound of the bus engine, repeated over and over, until we got to school.
“C’mon,”Colt said, the bell ringing the minute we got off the bus. We should have been here ages ago, but the delays of the morning had us here right as school started. He wrapped his arm around me and steered me towards the door. “I’m walking you to class today.”
Chapter 2
“Riley, can I have a quick chat before you go?”
The bell had gone for recess, but Ms Thornton, my physics teacher, looked up from her desk, a bright smile on her face, before she waved me over. Blake appeared at the doorway, frowning when he saw me walking towards the desk, not out the door. They took the directive to keep me safe seriously, but that didn’t necessarily extend to spending precious break time in class.
“Ah, sure,” I replied to the teacher. “Is everything OK?”
“Better than OK.” She was positively beaming. The sound of a cleared throat had both of us looking at the doorway. Blake pulled away to allow the principal and the careers advisor into the classroom. “We’ve got some amazing news. Come in, Blake,” she said to the alpha. “No point hovering in the doorway.”
Was it his dragging feet or was it the purposeful bustle of the teaching staff that had me on high alert?
“So, you know how you sat the UCAT test back in July?”
The UCAT was a test sat by students wanting to study medicine in Australia. On top of having to get damn near perfect score in all your year twelve work, you needed to ace the test as well to ensure a place. My palms were instantly coated in sweat now, my heart racing from a standing start. I just nodded belatedly in answer to her question.
“Well, the test results are released to universities in September, and they match the scores with student applications for medical degrees and…” Ms Thornton squealed then. The tall, lean, almost butch physics teacher squealed like a little girl, and I just stared.
“Not only are you the first student at Bordertown High to attempt the UCAT,” the principal said in that cheerfully authoritative way he used at most assemblies, “but…” Everyone leaned forward, including me, but the responses were all different. The teachers were all excited, Blake was scowling, his arms crossed over his broad chest, and me? I was terrified. They obviously thought the news was good, but was it actually? Was it what I wanted? Would it give me a way out of this fucking town?
Apparently, the gods were kind, because the answer was a resounding yes.