My heart pounds in surprise from seeing her, and my alpha practically beams out of my body, wagging his tail in excitement at the idea of her waiting outside practice for us. For a moment, there’s no doubt in my mind that she came here to see me, to wait on me the same way Kit waits on us outside of our Alpha Xi meetings. Then, I see the flash of blue hair beside her.
My heart pinches.Oh, I see.
“Oh, Opal is here, too!” Dax says with excitement as he waves at his omega.The embarrassment starts to seep in, so I quickly gather up any dignity I can and prepare my exit strategy.
“I’ll see you guys later.” Completely unaware if they actually heard me. I turn in the other direction, ready to go home and spend the evening nursing this bruise I just let fall onto my ego. I shouldn’t have assumed she’d be here for me, anyway. The reality where that happens apparently only resides in my hopeful and delusional daydreams.
Before I can make it a reasonable distance, her voice calls out to me. I turn in that direction and find Opal watching me expectantly. She tilts her head and smiles before waving me over.
There’s only a tiny percentage of me that hesitates. My instinct is to go to her immediately, bask in her warmth for as long as she’ll let me, but I stay frozen in place. When I finally get the courage to walk over, my limbs feel stiff and unnatural.
“Hi,” I say as I walk up. Rory and her mates all watch on, oblivious to the strange war going on inside of me. Opal doesn’t pay them any attention, and instead just grins up at me with absolute trust in her eyes.
It sends me back to that moment in her room, when she was in so much pain and had no way to alleviate it. She trusted me to take care of her, and that same brightness in her eyes causes me to take a minute and let my shame from before subside.
“What are you guys up to?” I ask, surprisingly starting the conversation. Rory’s mate, Jett, gives me a perplexed look. Probably because I’ve only ever said ten words to him and six of them were just a second ago.
“We’re going out to get food,” Rory answers.
“Hotpot, specifically, because we’re surprisinglynot banned after a little stunt Rory pulled a few months ago,” Dax says as he gives his omega a particularly teasing look.
My brow arches at that as Opal looks at her friend. “What did you do?” she asks.
Rory waves it off. “Let’s just say I almost started a riot with some kimchi.”
The rest of her mates let out a laugh. I just stare at them, confused by the vague summary.
“Well, you guys have fun,” Opal says, her grin full of humor. She has a glimmer in her eye as she admires her friend with her alphas, like she can’t help but take in the happiness that radiates off them. Like she enjoys the way it permeates the air.
Now that I really notice it, their joy does feel kind of contagious.
“Wait,” I say, pointing at Opal and then Rory as I process what she said. “I thought you were here to go with them.”
She shakes her head. “Actually, no. I didn’t know she was going to be here. I came to see you.”
My entire body freezes.Shewashere for us, my alpha whispers.
I can’t help the way my cheeks flush at the realization. It’s a weird reaction for me, because only a few people have ever been able to make me blush, and now I guess she’s one of them. The reality of her standing out here, waiting for me, makes something very foreign burn in my chest.
If she notices my reaction, she doesn’t call attention to it. She just smiles widely and asks, “Would you like to get dinner with me? In the dining hall?”
“I—” My voice cracks slightly, but I clear my throat to cover it up. “Yeah, that sounds like fun.”
I spend so much on my meal plan, and I never use it, so it’slike two birds with one stone. The other bird is spending time with Opal.
“How was your day?” I ask her after we say goodbye to our friends and head toward the dining hall. She starts telling me about her teaching assignment and how one little boy had an incident on the playground but wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. He had mulch all over him, even in his hair, and the teacher couldn’t figure out if someone had pushed him into the ground or if he was playing with it. I’m fairly amused as Opal keeps putting out theories on what could have happened.
“The staff is calling it PlaygroundGate,” she says with a smile. “Gosh, he probably just fell and is too embarrassed to say so.”
She continues to talk about her day, and I relish her company. I’ve had a few times the past few days where my alpha has practically demanded I go to her. He is still unsettled from her sickness, his instincts telling me to go to any length I can to help her, but she seems back to normal now. She’s bright and cheery in the winter sun, and I keep rubbing my chest to assure my alpha that she’s fine. But he is insistent, apparently traumatized by the omega who was sick in our presence.
Now, how the hell do I tell him that she isn’t our omega to take care of? Our omega is at home, probably two hours into some kind of video game marathon and shoveling popcorn in his mouth by the handful.
Which, to be fair, does make him ease a little bit. The image of the messy-haired omega does things to him that I haven’t fully paid attention to before now. I always thought it was platonic, but the way it felt when he hugged me the other day and whispered in my ear was anything but. I’ll have to make some time to see him later.
When we get to the dining hall, my body involuntarily stays close to Opal in the crowded space. I hover over her as shegathers food on her plate. French fries, a bratwurst, and some slices of cucumber. It’s cool the way she assembles it on her plate, so it looks presentable even though it’s entirely random by a nutritionist’s standards.
When we swipe our cards and finally take a seat, I’m so hungry from burning calories in practice that I just dig in. It’s a bit dry, so I wash down each bite with water and keep going.
