Page 12 of Swipe My Alpha
"Not now."
"You can't just leave, he's your mate—"
"I said not now, Benji."
I push through the doors into the bright September air and walk until I can't smell him anymore. It takes three buildingsand a parking lot. The bond aches in my chest the entire way, pulling back toward Henderson Hall, toward him, and I ignore it the way I've been ignoring it all week.
Behind me, Benji has stopped chasing. Smart. He knows when to push and when to let me run. He's definitely in the group chat right now narrating my breakdown in all caps, and in an hour the whole squad will be sitting on our couch waiting for me to come home, and I'll have to look at their faces and explain that the anonymous alpha I let claim me in a hotel room is the same person who's going to be grading my discussion posts for the rest of the semester.
Fun, not forever. That was the plan. That's always been the plan.
My phone buzzes.
Not the group chat this time. KnotMe.
I shouldn't look. I look.
A message from the anonymous profile. Those hands in the photo. That three-word bio that started all of this.
I know it's you. Please don't run.
I stare at the screen until it blurs. The bite throbs on my neck. My omega whines.
I close the app and keep walking.
Rhys
His name is Jude Park.
I know because I pulled up my class roster after he ran out of my section and there it was. Park, Jude. Junior. Media Studies. Headshot from his student ID: the same jaw, the same mouth, the same look in his eyes like he's daring the camera to keep up with him.
Jude. My mate's name is Jude. I've been saying it in my head on a loop like a crazy person. Jude while I brush my teeth. Jude while I grade papers. Jude while I stare at the ceiling at three a.m. in sheets that don't smell like anything.
He hasn't answered a single message. I sent one more after class.I know it's you. Please don't run.Read. No reply. Eight messages now, sitting in a chat with a faceless profile. All read. All ignored.
I should be grading. I'm in my office, which is generous language for a room the size of a closet with a desk, a bookshelf, and a window that doesn't open. Office hours are from two to four on Wednesdays and nobody ever comes because this is a Gen Ed class and nobody cares about environmental policyexcept me and the three students who are actually in the program. I should be grading the response papers I handed back. I should be prepping Thursday's discussion questions. I should be doing literally anything other than sitting here refreshing KnotMe and smelling my own shirt to see if any trace of him is left.
There isn't. There hasn't been since the hotel. The sheets there smelled like him for hours after he left and I lay in them like a pathetic idiot until checkout and even tipped extra because I felt guilty about how wrecked the bed was.
My phone is open to his student profile. I've looked at it a lot today. I'm aware this is not healthy. I'm aware that I am a teaching assistant with a professional obligation to not obsess over a student's ID photo, and I'm doing it anyway because that student has my claiming bite on his neck and I can still taste his skin when I close my eyes.
One of the other grad students in my seminar texted me this morning.You sounded weird earlier. Are you sick?I told him I was fine. I'm not fine. I haven't been fine since a stranger walked into a hotel room and turned out to be the rest of my life and then walked out again before I could learn his name.
Jude. His name is Jude and he sits in the third row and he has a septum ring and copper in his hair and he ran from me twice and I don't know how to make him stop.
Someone knocks on my door.
I look up. It's 2:47. Nobody comes to office hours.
I open the door.
He's standing in the hallway with his hands shoved in his jacket pockets and an expression on his face like he lost a fight with himself and he's furious about it. No scarf today. The bite is visible above the collar of his hoodie, dark and healed and mine, and the sight of it hits me somewhere below my ribs.
"I'm not here because I want to be," he says.
"Okay."
"I'm here because I haven't slept in two days and my omega won't shut up and apparently you broke something in my brain and the only way to fix it is to be in the same room as you, which is really annoying, so."
