| |
Dawn was breaking by the time Tiberius paid the cabbie and stumbled into the academy, flashing his card to the bored guard at the entrance. The guard did a double-take when he saw him, but Tiberius was past giving a fuck at this point.
He’d been summoned to meet Fennix again and Tiberius had gone with the full speech prepared in his mind. He didn’t want to hurt Fennix. Didn’t want to anger his own father. But he had to tell Fennix that the marriage wasn’t gonna happen.
He’d managed that much.
And then his father had come at him as he’d waited for a cab and taken Tiberius down. They’d shifted and fought, and damn, the old wolf was damn strong. A huge black wolf who had torn down his enemies in ritual fights since before Tiberius was born.
Though for the first time ever, it had been a draw. Tiberius had never won a fight against his father, and he didn’t know if he ever would.
A draw was good enough. For a moment there, Tiberius had thought his father had meant to tear his own son’s throat out.
Fuck...
He’d almost succeeded, too. Clutching at his blood-soaked shoulder, he headed toward his room—only to stumble into a group of alphas laughing in the hallway. He knew those fuckers. Valerian, Alexander and Lucian, sons of powerful clans and assholes extraordinaires.
“Tiberius.” Valerian pretended concern, pouting at him. “Aw. What happened to you? Did an omega scratch you because you couldn’t satisfy him?”
“Get out of my way.”
“Or maybe you ran into a wall with that too-good omega you like hanging around? Reese, was it? Maybe a real alpha challenged you and Reese chose him?”
“Fuck off.” He shoved Valerian away and unlocked his door, seething at the laughter behind his back. His head pounded and all he wanted right now was Reese, but the room was cold and empty.
Reese wasn’t there.
That had to change.
***
“What happened, Ty?” Reese’s eyes were wide and fixed on the bandage peeking over Tiberius’s collar.
“Oh, nothing. I’m all right.” Tiberius sat back, tapping his pen on the desk, from the corner of his eyes seeing the teacher entering the classroom. “Just a scratch.”
“That doesn’t look like a scratch,” Reese muttered. “Did you get into a fight?”
“Sort of. Don’t worry, the nurse cleaned the wound, so I’m not going to die of infection.” Though he could still die of chronic lust for his omega. Who, come to think of it, looked a little pale. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Reese opened a notebook and avoided Tiberius’s gaze.
“You’re late. Are you sick?”
“Nah, I overslept.”
That was so unlike him. “Listen, Reese... I want you to stay with me.”
“Come again?”
“Stay in my room. Spend the nights with me. I want to sleep with you in my arms every night.”
Reese’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Reese smiled. It was sweet, and it went straight to Tiberius’s heart, like an arrow.
Hadn’t the omega yet realized how Tiberius felt? He wasn’t so good with words. No, scratch that. He wasn’t so good with feelings. In his family, feelings were a thing never brought up, never approved of. And in this world, alphas and feelings were never mentioned in the same sentence, as far as he knew. Alphas took what they wanted, made their way, ruled and managed and dominated.
What Tiberius felt made him weak.
And happy.
Afraid.
And able to overcome anything.
Anything to be with Reese.
He didn’t even know what sort of movies Reese liked, what sort of music, if he had siblings. Where his family lived. What his fathers did for a living.
He didn’t know Reese at all, and yet he felt as if he’d known him forever. He knew his scent. The sounds he made as he came. The light snores he let out when he slept on his back. The way his soft hair fell in his eyes when he woke up, looking adorably confused.
He wasn’t getting married to Fennix. No way. Not with the way he felt about Reese, even if he couldn’t put a name on those feelings yet. Being away from Reese felt like a wound, like a part of him missing. It wasn’t normal. Couldn’t be.
And he couldn’t lie to himself, and to Fennix, pretending he could go ahead and get married when his heart wasn’t in it.
That was it. His heart. It felt as if his heart didn’t belong to himself.
How strange.
***
“So you’ve hired him back?” Nero asked as they sat down to eat, an omega coming to take their order in the Academy salon. “I thought you’d decided you didn’t want a Boi after all.”
“Yeah. Well, I changed my mind.”
“He’s a fine piece of ass, I’ll give you that.”
“Shut up. He’s much more than that.”
Nero gave him a surprised look. “Oh? I’ll have the pepper steak,” he told the omega. “Bloody. Got it?”
The omega nodded nervously.
“I’ll have the same,” Tiberius said absently.
Nero shooed the omega away. “Now tell me about Reese.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“And yet you give me this mysterious “it’s more than that” line.” Nero drew air quotes and leaned back in his seat, shooting Tiberius a narrow-eyed look. “Spill, buddy. What’s the deal?”
Tiberius poured himself some scotch, downed it in one gulp. “Hired him back, that’s all.”
“And took him to bed, didn’t you?”
“What if I did?”
“What about the marriage your father has been arranging?”
“Fuck him and his plans.”
“So I figured.” Nero sighed. “Are you serious about this, dude? Are you gonna Claim Reese?”
“How is this any of your business?”
“He’s a good kid. Can’t have you fucking him and then leaving him.”
Tiberius frowned. That was unexpected, coming from Nero. “That so? Watcha gonna do about it?”
“Nothing, Ty. Just telling you. He’s a good boy. Don’t fuck with him.”
“Who says I am?”
“So it is serious for you?”
“Yeah, Dr. Freud. I just...” He groaned, rubbed at his forehead. Yeah, I think it’s serious. “At least, it is to me.”
“Good.” Nero grinned, and it transformed his normally stoic, cold face. He drew a heart in the air with his forefingers. “Is it true love?”
“Shut up,” Tiberius grunted.
Nero winked. “You’re in love, wolf boy, admit it.”
“So what?”
“I want to see what it does to a person. Study it from a distance, if you like. You, my friend, will take the plunge, and I will stand on the shore and see if you make it back to the surface.”
“That’s cheerful,” Tiberius muttered.
“Love isn’t supposed to be cheerful. But it’s supposed to be deep and powerful.”
“So why don’t you try it?”
Nero laughed. “I’m chicken shit. Plus, I haven’t met the right omega yet. You, on the contrary...”
“I don’t know if I’ve met the right one, Nero.”
“No, you don’t. But in your heart, you do know, don’t you?”
Did he?
***
Marcus was back, just like he’d promised, and it lifted a weight off Tiberius’s chest he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. Limping, but cheerful all-in-all, grinning at Tiberius as he crossed the salon to clasp hands with him.
“My man.” He pulled Tiberius into a brief bro-hug, then sank into one of the leather armchairs with a sigh of relief. “So what have I missed? Anything pretty passing this way? He leered at an omega carrying a tray of drinks, making the boy blush. Being alone at the manor was so damn boring.”
“I thought James was there?”
“Ah, yeah. He dropped by to leave me food and give me sponge baths.” Marcus rolled his eyes. “Or not. Point is, James is not the sort of company I would have liked.”
Guilt swamped Tiberius. “Marcus, I’m sorry I—”
“And you’re not the company I wanted, either, sorry,” Marcus said. “What I had in mind was more of the...” He waved a hand, encompassing the salon. “The cute, sexy omega variety.”
“Are you saying I’m not sexy?” Tiberius muttered.
“No, idiot. I’m saying that you’re not cute.”
“Alphas aren’t cute.”
“Exactly.”
Tiberius was sure that by the end of the day, Marcus would go to his room with company. He looked antsy, and was apparently horny, though with Marcus it was often one and the same. He used sex the way other shifters used booze to deal with stress.
And speaking of sex, he had some ideas of what to try with Reese that night... Just the thought of it had him shifting uncomfortably on the seat, fully hard. His omega was the hottest, that was for sure. Let Marcus chase after every unmated omega in the Academy. Tiberius had been lucky, getting his paws on the cutest, sexiest one of them all.
“Marcus!” Nero headed their way, carrying a drink in one hand, a bowl of nuts in the other. “You’re back. I heard you had an accident.”
“It’s nothing.” Marcus didn’t get up to greet their friend, though, just grinned. “Be like new as soon as I can shift again.”
“That bad, was it?”
“Well, I’m not pregnant, so yeah.”
Tiberius frowned. Few things rendered a shifter unable to shift. One was pregnancy, as Marcus had said, and the other was broken bones. Reese hadn’t been able to shift that time, a couple of weeks ago, and Tiberius hadn’t paid too much heed, but—
“You broke your leg?” Nero sank down across from them, setting his drink on the table.
“You didn’t tell me that,” Tiberius said accusingly. “Should you be walking on that leg, then? It’s only been a few days.”
“Guys, relax. It’s just a small fracture, or so the medics who wrapped it up told me. But I didn’t want to risk it setting wrong if I shifted.”
Made sense.
“You should have told me,” Tiberius insisted, a growl rising in his throat. “And if James wasn’t helpful, I would have arranged for someone else to be there.”
“I...” The hard veneer of arrogance in Marcus’s gaze vanished for a few moments. “Thank you, Ty. Appreciate it.”
“What are friends for?”
Nero crunched on a nut. He was watching them intently. “Is this a bromance I’m witnessing? Are you going to head up to your rooms and have wild sex now?”
“Fuck you, Nero.”
“No. Thank you, though. I’m more into small, hot omegas myself.”
“Aren’t we all.” Marcus rubbed at his eyes. “You know what? I think I’ll head up to my room.” He shot a glare at Nero from between his fingers. “Alone. To rest.”
“Ah-huh.”
“I have an appointment with a new stash of porn mags.” Marcus lowered his hand and grinned widely. “This series is set in the elven lands about five hundred years ago, and it’s about handsome alpha kings searching for their fated omegas.”
“Elven lands? Is that the same as the Fae kingdom?”
“The Fae used to be called Elves before. The word actually meant The Pale Ones. The Fae eventually decided it was too racist. They do have some dark-skinned Fae after all.”
“How the hell do you know so much about the Fae, and why are you reading Fae porn?” Tiberius muttered.
“Oh, come on. They’re so exotic. And they make good porn. One day I want to travel there, when the ban for humans in the Fae lands has been lifted.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Nero muttered. “Hey, do the Fae have the same division of sexes as we do? Alphas, betas and omegas?”
“I can’t believe you’re asking me such a basic thing. Theirs was the first race to lose all females. We at least have some left, even if they’re infertile.”
“What about the witches?”
The dragon shifter race of magic. I think it’s the same, though. After the great human-Fae war where the wolf shifters tipped the scales, winning on the humans’ behalf, the whole world changed. I, for one, can’t imagine it any other way, despite the history lessons.”
“I heard rumors that in some parts of the world, females are making a comeback.”
“Hm.” Marcus looked doubtful.
“Speaking of rumors.” Nero grabbed a handful of nuts from the bowl and leaned back, popping them in his mouth. “Is it true the Fae have been abducting shifters to bear their children throughout history?”
“You’re an idiot,” Marcus said evenly.
“What? The Fae have always had fertility issues. We don’t. It would make sense to use us as surrogates or babymaking slaves, or whatever.”
“The Fae managed that with strict laws, as far as I know, having all presented omegas fertilized the moment they hit maturity. Anyway, the Fae wouldn’t mix their blood and seed with that of shifters. They consider us low beings. Animals. Dogs. Just like the vampires and witches do.”
“True. Nobody ever talks about the vampires.”
“They’ve closed themselves off for so long, nobody’s even sure they really exist. The witches on the other hand... if history is to be trusted, they created us. And they’d have no compunction in using us once more as their slaves to do their bidding.”
Well, that was a comforting thought, Tiberius thought wryly. Though he found it harder and harder—pun intended—to worry about politics and the world at large when he had Reese.