Hollis is behind Bishop, and I’m not even sure when he got there. Someone that big shouldn’t be able to move that quietly, but his hand is already hovering at my back, close enough for me to feel the warmth of it through my hoodie without him touching me.
I take the last step, my balance slipping for half a second. I lean back before I can talk myself out of it, Hollis’ palm settling between my shoulder blades.
For the first time all night, I don’t feel like Knotlocke’s most talked-about Omega or the thing Reece shoved into the light because he knew people would pay to stare. Bishop is watchingmy face, Hollis is waiting for the smallest sign before giving me more weight, and it hits me so hard I almost can’t breathe.
They might actually see past what happened to me.
They might see me.
hollis
Theafter-partyhastakenover the alumni lounge by the time I get Jude to the corner farthest from the doors. Quiet is a generous word for it. There’s music coming from someone’s speaker, too many people laughing too hard, and half the swim team pretending they aren’t watching Bishop and me bring Jude in like we didn’t just buy him off a stage in front of half the school.
I take the end of the couch because it puts my back to the room and keeps Jude away from the easiest path through thecrowd. He sits near the corner with his hoodie pulled crooked from where Reece grabbed him, one knee bouncing so fast the movement makes my whole body hurt to look at. He’s trying to be still and failing, and every Alpha instinct I have is roaring at me to fix it, wrap around him, cover him, hold until the shaking stops.
Bishop’s hand finds the small of my back before I can move. One firm press, right over my spine.Easy. Not yet. Let him come to you.
I turn the movement into reaching for a water bottle instead. There are a few left on the low table, wedged between empty plastic cups and a plate of cookies someone has been slowly destroying. I crack the seal on one and hold it out to Jude without leaning too far into his space.
“Drink?” I ask.
Jude looks at the bottle, then at my hand, then at my face. He reads people in pieces, so I keep my arm steady while he decides what to do with me. His fingers brush mine when he takes it, cold even through the plastic.
“Is this part of my prize package?”
His voice is dry, but the edges are still wrong.
“No,” I say. “If it were, there’d be a ribbon. Athletics loves a ribbon.”
The corner of his mouth almost moves. Almost. I get embarrassingly excited about it anyway and have to press my heel harder into the floor so I don’t lean closer like an idiot.
Bishop sits on my other side, close enough that his thigh presses against mine. His hand slides into my lap and laces through my fingers with practiced ease, quiet enough no one else would make anything of it. I squeeze back harder than I mean to, as he rubs his thumb over my knuckles until my grip loosens.
The room smells like beer, citrus mixer, old carpet, Alpha excitement, and too much cologne, but under all of it, closeenough that my lungs keep wanting more, there’s Jude. Sea spray and grapefruit, sharp and bright, still tangled with fear and blockers.
He doesn’t react when my scent thickens. He watches Bishop’s thumb, my shoulders, the space we leave open on the couch. He watches the way Bishop touches me and the way I listen to it.
I’ve heard the rumors. Everyone has. Jude Morrison can’t scent anyone else and that the incident last year was because he didn’t know what his own body was doing. Most of it is cruelty dressed up as campus gossip, but sitting beside him makes the truth harder and clearer than any version whispered in a locker room.
He’s reading everything except the thing I was born expecting Omegas to read first. Bishop’s knee presses into mine before I can stare too long, and I drag my attention back to the table. Jude takes a drink, swallows, then keeps the bottle in both hands like it gives him something to do.
“I’m going to pay you back,” he says.
Bishop answers before I can. “No, you’re not. The bid was covered. We got a donation from someone on the wrestling team, an Omega with enough money to buy the academy twice and make ballroom dancing a graduation requirement if he got bored.”
Jude stares at him for a second, then nods like that’s one more strange thing he doesn’t have the energy to unpack tonight. “I’ve heard rumors about Blair,” he mumbles.
We all have and I wasn’t surprised to find Blair sympathetic to our cause after he dropped twenty thousand on his now Alphas. He’s a spicy little Omega, but he apparently likes the underdog.
Bishop’s thumb keeps moving over my knuckles, Jude watching that instead of asking another question. I want to ask if he’s really okay, which is useless because he obviously isn’t. I want to ask if he hurts, if his shoulder hurts, if he wants food,if he wants to leave, if he wants me to stand in front of him until everyone in the room forgets he exists. Bishop squeezes my fingers before any of it gets out of my mouth.
Jude takes another drink and lets the bottle rest against his thigh. “You mentioned I wasn’t on the schedule. I was holding the clipboard. You... triple checked?”
Bishop’s hand tightens around mine once. On the way over here, both my Beta and I explained that we didn’t actually expect him on the stage. “Yes. Your name wasn’t on the roster, the cue cards, the approved copy, or the order Marsh signed off on. Marsh was clear you weren’t part of the auction.”
The softness on Jude’s face disappears quickly enough that I feel it behind my ribs. I flex my fingers against Bishop’s, and he holds on.
“Reece made it seem like a change in the event. The announcer already had all the information about me and everything,” Jude says.
