Fall Semester (Omega Wolf Academy Book 2) Page 12

  "Mmmm, Chase Parker," Cam murmured.

  "Mmmm, Lucian Durand," Greg added a moment later.

  Dina bumped Greg with her hip. "You don't like men," she chided. "Unless something's changed. Do you love the D, now?" Dina's eyes sparkled with laughter.

  Greg shrugged. "Not really, but if I ever were to go gay, I'd definitely look in their direction." He shot Cam an apologetic look. "Not that I don't find you sexy, but we're friends, and one does not ruin a friendship for sex."

  Cam pondered Greg's words for a moment then nodded his head. "Agreed. But, for the record, I'm just as sexy as they are."

  We all made noises of agreement, then, arms still linked, we started off to find food. As we started across the quad toward the various campus restaurants, I caught sight of Alyssa, walking by herself with her gaze on the ground in front of her and the lightness in my heart grew heavy with regret. I’d been insensitive and horrible to her, and she deserved better. I’d make it better.

  I hoped.

  ♀♀♀

  I checked my phone again, hoping to see a response to the text I’d sent Alyssa the night before. “Still nothing,” I murmured, slipping my phone back into my pocket.

  “What are you mumbling about?” Chase asked, nudging me with his arm. “How stubborn Dimitri is being or something unrelated to our little brain scan expedition?”

  I glanced past him at Dimitri, who was still sullen but much less so. Orgasms and group sex apparently brightened his mood. Since it brightened my mood, too, I figured it wouldn’t be a hardship to keep him happy for the rest of our lives.

  “Something unrelated,” I said with a shrug. “I kind of went off on Alyssa the other day. It was right after Dimitri stormed out.” I sighed. “I was in a bit of a mood and she showed up complaining about one of her profs.”

  “Oh?” Chase’s eyebrow winged up. “She’s having trouble in one of her classes?”

  Guilt resurfaced, curdling in my stomach. “Yeah. She has that jerk, Fauci. He’s terrorizing the class.”

  “Ugh.” Chase shook his head. “I had him first year, and he’s the worst. I have no idea how he still has a job with the number of complaints about him. Why did you go off on her?”

  I chewed on my lip, recalling what I’d said to her, how I’d acted. I was the jerk, not Dr, Fauci. “She kept complaining about him, about her class, and, I don’t know, it just struck a nerve.” I slowed down so I could look at him while we walked. “The shit we grew up with, it was big and dark. And then last term, the kidnapping and meeting you guys, those are big things. I guess I was comparing problems, and hers seemed insignificant in comparison.” I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I was a giant bitch and need to find a way to make it up to her.”

  Chase wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pressed his lips to my hair. “You’ll find a way. She can’t stay mad at you forever.”

  My eyebrows rose and fell. The fact was, I didn’t know Alyssa well enough to be able to agree to that hopeful statement. She could be the grudge holding type, although I highly doubted it. She’d given me another chance after I’d ignored her the entire first week of school.

  “Lexi!” Dr. Daniels called out, interrupting my line of thought. A broad smile lit his face, making it blatantly obvious how excited he was at this unprecedented opportunity. I glanced at Dimitri, whose eyes narrowed immediately, and grimaced before I forced a smile.

  “Good evening, Dr. Daniels,” I said, stepping out from under Chase’s arm. I held out a hand, since we weren’t in class and it felt like the right thing to do. His handshake was firm but friendly.

  “Please,” he said, gesturing to the open door of the lab. “Call me Nixon. It’s great to meet you all.” He extended his hand to Lucian first, then Chase, both of whom offered warm greetings, then turned to Dimitri. The smile on his face froze then fell. His hand hovered in the air for a moment, then fell to his side awkwardly. “Okay, so, um… let’s get started then.”

  We followed them into a large office connected to another room through a large glass window. It reminded me of the MRI rooms on Grey's Anatomy, and I wondered if it worked the same. It looked and smelled sterile, which, I guess, was a good thing. No one wanted to lie down on icky medical machines.

  “Might as well be a government lab,” Dimitri muttered beneath his breath. I shot him a side-eyed warning to shut up then looked across the room to check if Dr. Daniels had heard. He seemed thoroughly engrossed in conversation with my other mates, though, so probably not. I turned to face Dimitri.

  “You agreed to this, so how about not embarrassing me?” I whispered, rubbing absently at the tightness that always plagued me when one of my guys was upset.

  “I was coerced into agreeing,” he retorted, frowning.

  I snorted, then slapped a hand over my mouth when the three other men in the room looked up questioningly at us. I shook my head and murmured, “Nothing, sorry,” then spun back around to smirk at Dimitri.

  “You were coerced by excessive sex? Was that it? That’s your story? Would you like to report me for said coercion?” I tilted my head and smiled.

  He glared back then took a step closer, snaking a hand out around my waist to trap me against his body. His breath slid hot and heavy over my ear. “You’re awful saucy for someone who’s going to be fucked blind tonight.”

  “Huh.” The sound slipped from between my lips, making me sound like an imbecile. Images of Dimitri naked, sweaty, and between my legs robbed me of all rationality. I wanted to say more, wanted to come off cool and sexy, but my brain seemed incapable of forming real words.

  Dimitri watched me with self-satisfied smugness playing across his gorgeous face, then nipped playfully at my ear before pulling back and shooting me a devilish grin.

  And we were apparently back to the theory that sex made him decidedly more pleasant.

  "So, the machine is sensitive to any type of metal, so if you have any jewelry or belt buckles, you have to take them off. But, you can leave the rest of your clothes on, since this is primarily a brain scan." Dr. Daniels gestured to the table in the corner. "You can leave your things there. I'd like to start by getting a baseline scan for each of you, without anyone else in the room."

  I added my earrings to the small pile of watches, cell phones, and belt buckles, that were deposited on the table, then followed my professor into the next room to have my brain scanned.

  Surprisingly, the scan wasn’t uncomfortable. Soothing music played over the speakers as the machine hummed and moved in a circular pattern around my head and shoulders, and a heat fan in the corner swirled warm air all around me. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was on a beach somewhere warm.

  It was over in ten minutes, just long enough for the music to lull me half to sleep.

  “Okay, Lexi,” Dr. Daniels said through the intercom. “You can get up now. I’ve got your baseline. We’ll do Chase next.”

  One by one, my mates filed into the room and lay on the table to be scanned. I watched the results on the computer screen and wished I knew more about brains.

  “Now comes the fun part,” Dr. Daniels said after Dimitri slipped back into the room following his scan. “We know what your brain looks like on its own, now let’s see how that changes when you’re in close contact with your mate. I’d also like to see how you three react when you’re all together. From what Lexi told me, you were drawn together as best friends long before you met her. There could be some physiological connection between you even without her present.”

  The next few hours flew by with Dr. Daniels giving instructions to “Touch her hand,” “Give her a kiss,” and “Think about your future together.” I joked and played with my mates, keeping it light but letting myself dream about the family we would eventually make together. Once or twice, the dark thoughts and what ifs of uncertainty leaked through my happiness, but I chased those away quickly and hoped they didn’t show up on the scans.

  We concluded the array with all four of us toge
ther in the room, chatting, touching casually, kissing, and a little more. My nerves and discomfort faded quickly when I saw that Dr. Daniels was no more interested in our sexuality than he was in women. His gaze was locked on the computer screen, intent on the results.

  Lucian grabbed my hands and pulled me upright, and helped me hop off the table. "Good?" he asked, when I blinked for a moment to clear the lightheadedness after lying down so long.

  I nodded. "I'm good. Now let's go see our brains."

  As part of my convincing tactics, I'd shown them textbook images of mated wolves brain scans, so there was an air of excitement as we gathered around the screen, waiting for Dr. Daniels to divulge the results.

  His face was lit up like a child's on Christmas morning when he turned in his chair to face us. "This is so cool," he said, gushing. His giddy excitement was so unlike his usual demeanour, it knocked me back a few paces. My eyebrows arched up and nerves skittered up and down my spine as I waited for him to explain.

  "What did you find?" Lucian asked.

  Dr. Daniels took a deep breath, puffed up his cheeks, and blew it out slowly. "The most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said, shaking his head. He turned to face the screen and brought up a compilation image with four sections. "These are your baselines."

  I leaned in and studied our brains. I was grateful for the labels, identifying which brain belonged to which wolf, because they looked remarkably identical.

  Dr. Daniels bounced in his seat and hovered his finger over the computer mouse. “Remember that joke, this is your brain, and this is your brain on drugs?”

  Dimitri made a grunting sound.

  “Well,” Dr. Daniels said with all seriousness. “These are your brains.” He clicked to the next screen and swiveled to grin wildly. “And these are your brains together."

  My hand fluttered up to press over my mouth as I stared in wonder at the new screen.

  Just like the scans he showed in class, our brains were lit up like Christmas trees. My gaze flicked from one image to the next, comparing my scan to Lucian's, to Chase's, and to Dimitri's. They were all beautiful, and they were all almost exactly the same.

  "What does it mean?" Chase asked, leaning in to get a better look even though his eyesight was perfect.

  "Well." Dr. Daniels pointed towards my scan. "See this area here? This is the nucleus accumbens or, in layman's terms, the pleasure center. See how it's lit up? When I took the scan, each of you was touching Lexi. Her brain released dopamine and increased blood flow with that physical connection, even more so than when you were simply in the room with her or talking."

  I licked my lips, overwhelmed by this visual representation of our connection and what they did to me with something as simple as a handhold. "Their scans look just like mine," I murmured, letting my hand drop to my side to take Lucian's. Next to me, Dimitri's hand slid palm to palm into mine. Chase completed the connection by sliding his arm around my waist.

  Dr. Daniels nodded. "Yes, they are, but I expected that. Remember the scans from class?"

  I nodded. "Yes."

  "Each mate responds to the other exactly the same, which is what you're seeing here. But," he added, reaching for the mouse again. "What's even more interesting than that is this." He clicked to the next screen. This time there was just a single scan, mine.

  I studied the image then looked to him for explanation.

  "This is your brain in the presence of one, or two, of your mates." He tapped the mouse again. "But, once you add the third mate, this happens." The lit up scan we'd already seen popped onto the screen, creating a side-by-side comparison that made the conclusion obvious, even for the most lay of layman.

  When we were all together, magic happened.

  “Fuck me,” Dimitri muttered, then launched into a run-off of Russian. I tore my gaze from the screen to glance at him and saw the awe in his expression.

  “What does it mean?” I whispered, turning in a daze back to Dr. Daniels.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this before, doc?” Chase asked, shaking his head. “And, more importantly, do we have super powers when we’re all together?” His mouth turned up in a crooked grin. “Cause that would be cool.”

  Lucian elbowed him.

  “What?” Chase retorted with mock severity. “Look at the way it’s lit up! There has to be some side benefit to being a complete freak.”

  “You’re not freaks.” Dr. Daniels pushed to his feet. “You’re just unique and, if you’ll give me more time with this, maybe I can help figure out how this happened. Not that we technically know why the mate bond happens.” He looked hopefully at me. “But I can try.”

  I chewed my lip and looked at each of my mates. Chase seemed irreverently intrigued, Lucian fascinated at the science, and Dimitri in pure awe. I nodded. “That would be good.”

  Dr. Daniels clapped his hands together. “Great! Oh, and before I forget. Remember my hypothesis that you three were linked even before meeting Lexi?”

  Lucian arched a brow. “Yeah? Did you find anything?”

  “Did I ever. Check this out.” He pulled up another slide then stepped back for them to see.

  This screen juxtaposed six images, each labelled with one of my mates’ names and the words “before” and “after.” Just like in my case, their after scans were lit up beautifully. The only difference was the intensity of the colors.

  “They’re bonded, too,” I murmured, reaching out to gently stroke a finger over proof of my mates’ connection. Seeing it there, as real as any of us, made my heart stretch until I was sure it would burst if given the chance. Whatever nerves, anxious thoughts, and doubts I’d ever had faded away. They’d been meant to find one another and then find me. Fate had willed it so.

  But was fate always right? I wondered. Did it ever make mistakes? And what would our bond mean for the children Dr. Daniels had asked us to think about? Would they be ‘unique’ like us? Would society accept them, or us, by then?

  Questions swirled in my mind, too fast to figure out. I pushed them back, tucking them away for another day, and sniffed back a tear.

  “Thank you, Dr. Daniels,” I murmured. “Thank you for showing us this, and for keeping our secret.”

  He nodded sincerely and reached out to take my hand. “Thank you for trusting me. Now, I have a vast amount of data to pick through, a tedious and boring task, from your point of view, I’m sure.” His smile returned. “I’ll compile a document laying out my findings and interpretations as soon as possible and get back to you. But, until then.” He clicked a few buttons, and a printer whirred to life. “Here’s proof of your amazing connection.” He picked up a color printed copy of our side-by-side scans and handed it to me.

  I looked at it, at the undeniable bond between us, and felt a quiver in my stomach. We might be freaks, or unique, as Dr. Daniels put it, but it didn’t matter. We had each other, and that was all that mattered.

  Dimitri pushed up close to me, reaching for the print out. His body eclipsed me, overpowering me, annoying the shit out of me. I smacked his hand and took the paper back. He glared for a moment, then turned and asked Dr. Daniels to print out three more.

  With my back to him, I rolled my eyes. Yes, we were connected. Yes, it was freaking cool. But, Old Ones help me, how was I supposed to love and live with Dimitri the rest of our lives and not end up killing him?

  Chapter 16

  I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder and winced at the slight pain the movement sent through the still tender bite marks that covered the area.

  I could take the pain, though. It was nothing compared to the sensation of being marked by my mates. Besides, it's not as if I didn't bite them back.

  Still, it was a good thing werewolves healed quickly, or else I'd be in a bad way.

  Dimitri seemed to have a thing for biting, and, I think, spanking. He'd worked several good smacks to my ass into last night's sexual frivolity. Not that I minded. Between the biting and the spanking, I was becoming a regular mas
ochist.

  A blast of cold air moved up my neck, sending a shiver down my spine. I adjusted my jacket, pulling the zipper up as high as it could go, and made a mental note to find my clothes and scarf after class. I was already wearing knee-high riding boots, I might as well finish off the basic bitch ensemble. Just the thought had me craving a Starbucks coffee. I altered my direction towards one of the kiosks and slipped in line behind students and professors waiting for a caffeine hit.

  "It's insane. My uncle Sergei lives in Moscow. He called last night to fill us in. Apparently the Alpha has been batshit crazy for years, but no one saw this coming," the guy ahead of me murmured quietly to his female companion.

  My ears perked up at the mention of Russia.

  "Yeah, we got a few calls, too" the woman said with a shake of her head. "Did no one ever question his rise to the Alphaship? I mean, someone must've realized he was capable of murdering his own brother."

  I blinked, trying to piece together their conversation. I'd never followed European pack gossip, so I wasn't sure who the Alpha of Russia was or whose place he'd taken. If they were right, and he'd murdered a family member to steal the Alphaship, then there was no way of telling how big the fallout could be now that his actions were revealed.

  Still, I knew better than to trust gossip. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, accessed the Wolfnet, and searched for any news on the Russian Alpha.

  My eyes went wide as my search returned thousands of hits.

  "Holy shit," I muttered, stepping out of line and whirling around. I needed to get back to the dorms. Dimitri would find out soon, if he didn’t know already. I typed furiously, then shot off texts to Lucian and Chase, telling them to meet me at Dimitri's room. I didn't have time to explain, so I sent them each the link to an article with the headline, An eye for an eye: Viktor Dom Volkov, murderer, now dead.

  They were smart boys. They'd get the hint and meet me.

  My feet covered the distance quickly as I skimmed through one article after another, trying to absorb as many details as possible.