“Moonlight picnic and star gazing,” Thayer says and I swear half of the omegas let out little sighs of pleasure at the thought. If only they knew that by star gazing he means lecturing them on the constellations and then testing them about it later. Takes out some of the romance. But they don’t know that.
When I flip my board there’s visible disappointment on some of the omegas faces. And I can’t blame them. Most of them are as active in social circles as we are, and their ideal date would involve being seen with our pack. Being on the arm of a prince.
“Okay, Omegas, let's see what you’ve got.”
They shift and straighten as one by one they flip their boards and read off their answers. Isadora matches Forsythe’s answer to a tee. Almost like she copied him word for word. In fact, most of the omegas have some version of his answer.
My eyes immediately find Florence’s. Her handwriting is a little messy from nerves, but clear enough, and if it wasn’t her sweet voice is.“Cooking dinner together. Dancing bare foot in the kitchen. Laughter. Being easy.”
My throat goes tight.
Courtland mouths at her,Easy?And then wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. The idiot.
Her cheeks pinken, and she drops her pen, flustered. Her chair scrapes against the stage as she scoots and bends to pick it up, her face even more red when she straightens. Petal leans over and mutters something I wish I could make out but can’t.
Ren gives her a grateful, if rueful smile, and rolls her eyes at herself. The production team finishes tallying points and gives Cleo the go ahead to move to the next question.
“What matters most in a pack?”
My answer comes to me immediately, scrawled across my board within moments, so I see when Florence wrinkles her brow, nibbles on her lip like she’s considering. She writes something, then stares at it, crosses it out and writes something else.
“Okay, time’s up. Omegas, show us your answers.”
Boards flip.
Most omegas write bullshit like “Legacy,” “Status,” “Ambition.”
Florence? ‘Trust’ is her final answer, but I can see where she wrote ‘safety’ first before drawing a line through it.
My breath punches out of me. Courtland makes a pleased noise when he sees how they match.
I raise my answer when prompted. “Safety.”
Thayer’s board says ‘love’, which is surprisingly mushy for our resident professor. Courtland doodled a heart around his answer. Forsythe wrote “Stability,” which is as close as he can get to admitting anything real on camera.
Florence looks between my board and Courtland’s a wrinkle between her brow like she can’t figure out how we got so close to hers, and then she looks at Thayer’s and Forsythe’s answer, and her shoulders release just slightly, as if seeing all four of our answers together is a relief to her.Trust, Love, Safety, Stability.All integral to pack life.
“What’s your biggest dealbreaker?”
Isadora writes, “disrespect.”
“Lack of ambition,” writes another.
“No money. I don’t want no scrubs,” is Tristan’s answer drawing a puff of laughter from everyone, while Ren snorts into her hand.
Half the others scribble whatever they think Forsythe would approve of.
Florence? She pauses, thinking over her answer, like she’s finding the exact right word for what her dealbreaker is. One that will encapsulate everything. And when she turns it toward us, my heart clenches.
“Cruelty.”
The deliberate way she wrote that, the care she took with her choice tells me all I need to know. Florence Karlin has experienced cruelty in her life. Someone hurt her, physically or emotionally or both. And I am going to hunt whoever it was down and eviscerate them.
I’m so focused on the fantasy of beating some faceless person bloody, that I hardly notice what everyone else wrote, what I wrote.
I barely come back from the edge of an alpha rage when Court nudges me with his elbow and then jerks his chin in Florence’s direction. She’s watching me when I look over at her, a concerned frown on her face. “You okay?” she mouths at me.
The rest of my ire drains away in the face of her worry and I give what I hope is a reassuring nod. She doesn’t look convinced though.
