It’s easy to smile, painful to walk away.
My legs are like jelly as I hurry to the door and slip into my heels. Hoping I don’t have lipstick smeared all over my face, I straighten my dress, relieved that a hairdresser secured my long, wavy blonde hair in a low twist with half a can of hairspray. I pat down any flyaway strands and hope for the best. There’s no mirror for me to check my appearance. This will have to do.
Before I pull open the door, I turn around.
I can’t see Torin. He’s hidden deep in the shadows between the two mahogany bookcases filled with brown leather-bound books. But I feel him watching me and willing me not to leave, and it hurts all over again when I want to take his hand and run away.
But I can’t.
My family would never forgive me. The teachers would assume he’d kidnapped me, and I might never see my sister again if I humiliated my parents like that. We have to do things properly. “Bye, Torin.”
Bye feels so small and too inadequate to say to my scent match. I should have left already, but invisible strings keep pulling me back to him. I don’t want to leave him.
Torin steps out from the shadows with a small smile and says, “I’m looking forward to meeting for thefirsttime on the dance floor, Juniper Edith Alicia Mabel Harrington.”
“Call me that again and I’ll be stamping onyourtoes,” I warn him with a smile and a slight narrowing of my eyes. “And it’s June. I’ll always be June to you.”
His smile grows. “I look forward to our first dance, June, andthisfirst will not be as painful as the last. I’ve had dance lessons.”
I’m smiling with happiness, excitement, and anticipation as I open the door and step into the hallway. That smile withers and dies at the sight of Ms. Arkwright, scowling at me from three doors away from the library.
Scowl deepening, she strides toward me. “Where have youbeen, Juniper? Everyone has been searching for you.”
I start to explain about feeling hot and needing to rest, but she cuts in with a muttered, “Never mind.” Inches away, her nostrils flare and her eyes flick to the door behind me. Her expression shutters, and she refocuses on me. “This way.” The hand she clamps around my wrist leaves me no choice but to follow or be pulled along.
Frowning, I hurry to keep up. “This isn’t the way to the ballroom.”
“No,” she says tightly as she leads me away from it. “Your night is over.”
“But Ms?—”
“Enough,” she cuts in. “I know everything I need to.”
Panicking, I twist around, hoping to catch Torin’s eye so I can at least mouth to him where I’m going and that he won’t find me in the ballroom. The bonding ceremony is tomorrow night. If we don’t meet—officially—on the dance floor tonight, the teachers won’t see us together to bond us.
I try to slow her down as we near the end of the hallway, but Ms. Arkwright is a force of nature. There’s no stopping her once she’s set on something. The library door swings open as Ms. Arkwright drags me around the corner and out of sight before Torin can step out.
He won’t know where I am or even how to find me. I found my scent match tonight. I gave him my virginity, and then I lost him again.
Chapter 3
Torin
Juniper Harrington, my beautiful, sweet omega with too many names, isn’t in the ballroom.
None of us wanted to come to this ball, held every spring in a small building on the Haven Academy campus, yet here I am stalking each corner of the ballroom like a man possessed.
I’ve spent the last hour earning a reputation as a raging asshole by repeatedly and blatantly ignoring the Haven Academy teachers trying to push an omega toward me, and walking away without another word when they can’t help me find June.
I don’t fucking care.
June said the teacher who almost walked in on us in the library was Ms. Arkwright, head of the school. No one has seen her, and I don’t even know what the damn woman looks like.
Frowning as I push my way through the ballroom dance floor, I walk past a teacher trying to catch my eye as she reaches for my arm. She’ll want me to dance with an omega. There is no other omega for me but June.
I keep walking, pushing people aside as I search for the beautiful blonde omega in a pale lilac dress. She had meltedagainst me, her body fitting against mine as if she were made for me.
Because she was.
