“Whoa, what?” Ellie asks, sitting down in the chair beside mine. “Since when? What happened?”
I know she’s asking me what happened between me and Luca, but somehow that’s more painful to talk about than the crimes he’s been accused of. “An omega went missing in Fairhaven.”
“Grace Cassidy,” Bridget says, cutting in. The senior omega almost always keeps to herself, never joining in our conversations before or after class, so to hear from her about a missing omega is like a punch to the gut. “She was a senior when I was a freshman. We still meet up for coffee a few times a month.”
“Holy tits,” Bitsy says, sitting down heavily on Ellie’s other side. “That’s fucking rough. But Luca didn’t do it?”
I sigh. “We were together the whole afternoon after we left the diner.”
Bitsy waggles her eyebrows and then frowns. “Wait, you said he’s not your alpha anymore?”
“He lied to me. The whole time we were together. Our whole relationship was… was a lie.”
“Oh, girlie,” Alyssa says softly. “I’m so sorry. I honestly thought he was one of the good ones.”
“I don’t buy it,” Bitsy cuts in. “Not for a minute.”
“I’m struggling a bit too,” Ellie admits. “Junie, he can’t have lied to you. He was crazy for you.”
“Literally, no alpha in the history of alphas and omegas has ever loved an omega more.”
Love.
It’s then that I realize that Luca never told me he loved me. My eyes prick with tears. I guess there was one lie he wasn’t willing to tell, one lie too heavy for even his conscience to bear.
He couldn’t tell me he loved me.
“And no way in hell did he take Grace,” Bitsy swears.
Leigh sweeps into the room, setting down her shoulder bag and a new stack of readers. “So you’ve heard that one of our dear omega alumni was taken.” She purses her lips. “You girls must all be careful about the alphas you trust. No matter what pretty lies they tell you, you must always protect yourself first and foremost.”
“Grace is mated to a wonderful pack,” Bridget says, scorn sharp in her voice. “She didn’t trust the wrong alphas. She waskidnapped. And you’re blamingher?”
“All this time,” Bitsy muses, “and you’ve been telling us how we need, above all else, the protection of a pack.” She levels a hard stare at our Omega Seminar teacher. “I suppose this means that the protection of our future packs is no longer enough? If that’s the case, Mrs. Parsons, just how are we meant to protect ourselves?”
For the first time all term, Leigh has no stern retort. Fear and exhaustion wear on her pretty face, making her look older than she is.
Bitsy’s right and Leigh knows it.
If a mated omega can be taken off the street, then the protection of a pack isn’t enough.
I trusted the wrong alpha and I’m still stinging from it.
Naively, I believed a broken heart was the worst that would come from Luca’s lies.
But what if he was getting close to me to do what someone did to Grace? What if he planned to turn me over to the Soldiers of Saint Aldous as soon as he’d gained my trust?
I have no pack and too many enemies.
Imustlearn to protect myself.
I must.
CHAPTER4
Ithrow myself into my classes because I can’t bear to be left alone with my own thoughts. I work even harder than I did leading up to midterms when I was attempting to learn half a semester’s worth of magic in little more than a long weekend. I read and reread my textbooks and practice spells late into the night, determined to master each one.
Determined to progress in my magic enough to learn the magic that will let me protect myself.
