Page 3 of Alpha Varsity (Wolf Ridge High #5)

Chapter Three

L otta

I run toward the rear of the school, my body still alight from what happened on the mountain.

I can’t believe it. I’ve never had sex on a full moon run before. I never even had the desire. Tonight, I was incapable of refusing that male from the moment I caught his scent. I wanted sex like I’ve never wanted it before.

Ugh . This is why I didn’t want to shift.

I didn’t want to give into my wolf nature and get entangled here in Wolf Ridge. Yet, I can’t deny how satisfying it was to allow my animal side out. And I don’t mean for the run although that felt amazing, too.

I mean the wild, rough sex.

I’m still feverish and hot. Trembling with desire for that male. Both satisfied and needy at once.

Who was he?

I kind of love that he didn’t allow me to see him. He doesn’t want me to know who he is. That means he’s not looking to tie me down here.

And he was careful with me. He pulled out, even though I desperately wanted him to come inside me. He had more control than I did.

He’s older, perhaps. Certainly far more dominant.

What does the intense reaction I had to him mean? He’s not–he can’t be–my mate.

Or is he?

Fuck.

If we’re mates, he would’ve recognized it first. Males have an easier time identifying the scent of their mate than she-wolves.

He would have known it the moment he picked up the chase.

Yet he didn’t want me to know who he was.

Does that mean he’s already mated?

Oh, Fate.

The idea turns my stomach. Did I just have sex with another woman’s boyfriend or husband? That’s disgusting.

But of course, if I’m his fated mate, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. Not under the full moon in his wolf form. No matter his commitment to another female, the full moon runs reveal our most authentic nature. We can’t stop our urge to hunt. To screw. And if nature shows us our true fated mate, to claim.

This is where the human lore about werewolves comes from. The idea that we turn into monsters who can’t stop ourselves from killing is partly true. It’s just that we don’t kill humans. We hunt game. We stalk the opposite sex.

This is exactly why I tried to suppress my wolf side. I can’t be this out of control.

But I should be glad, I guess. If that male truly is my fated mate and is already bound to another female, it would provide me with an even stronger reason to get the hell out of Arizona as soon as this substitute teaching contract is up .

And it would mean he wouldn’t stop me or follow when I fled.

I shift to human form when I reach the school's back door. The deep, rich scent of that male still clings to my skin. He smelled of leather and spice.

Standing here naked in human form brings everything back even more cutely. My nipples tighten. Moisture leaks between my legs. Shifting to wolf form brought on my rapid healing abilities, but I still feel the tingling of his spanking and the twinge of the soreness between my legs. I still hear the echo of his rough growl in my ears.

Fate, that male.

Who was he?

No, I don’t want to know.

My pelvic floor squeezes between my legs, remembering how he used me.

Did he seem angry with me? He certainly wasn’t pleased.

Perhaps because his life won’t accommodate finding a fated mate like mine.

His annoyance didn’t stop him from being careful, though. Going slow until I was ready to take his oversized cock.

I loved how rough he was. That alpha dominance I never thought I would enjoy took me to a level of nirvana I’ve never found before—with or without a partner.

And honestly, before tonight, the best sex I’ve had was without a partner. Just me and my battery-operated boyfriend. But then again, I’ve only had sex with humans, so maybe that’s why.

Tonight, I learned what sex can be. An altered dimension. Alchemy. A place to spar, ignite, and become something completely changed, completely new .

I reach for the door handle and tug.

Oh. Shit.

“No.” I smack my palm against the locked door to the school. Even though I know it’s locked, I jiggle the door, putting all my strength into it.

Did I actually lock my keys inside my classroom? And my clothes… Oh, fuck.

This couldn’t be worse. They’re strewn through the hallway of the high school where I teach. A high school full of shifters who will know by scent who they belong to! This is…calamitous.

I’m going to lose my job the week after I started. I don’t know what got into me. I’ve never been so overcome by a full moon in my life. I lost all reason.

I turn in a circle, considering my options.

Basically, I don’t have any. I can stay here naked and risk being seen by a human–or worse, one of my alpha-hole students—or I can shift and go home.

Fate, if any of those horn-dog ballers who sit in the back of my classroom and ignore me all period saw me right now, I’d forever be the dirty joke of the school. I already know they entertain all kinds of pornographic fantasies about me. Being a young female teacher to a bunch of teen wolves has its hazards.

I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

It’s okay. I can manage this. I’ll just have to be the first one in the school tomorrow morning. So long as I get here at the same time as the janitor, everything will be fine. Unless the janitor is a horn dog, too.

Fuck. He probably is.

Lotta

I toss and turn all night, feverish with hormones I haven’t felt since I transitioned. I wake in the throes of an orgasm, my fingers between my legs, my sex dripping. I’m arching up off the sheets, my inner thighs shaking where they clamp around my wrist. I don’t remember what the dream was. I only know that I still hear the echoes of that male’s deep growl in my ears.

I still feel the tremble in every cell in reaction to his voice.

I’m dying to catch his scent again–that leather and spice and manly aroma that hit me like a heady drug.

I sag back on the pillows, trying to catch my breath. Then I look at the clock on my bedside table.

Fuck !

I leap out of bed and bolt for my closet. There’s no time for a shower—good thing I took one last night. I’m late. So late.

Did I hit snooze in my sleep?

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

How can I be late on the morning when I was supposed to arrive early?

Seriously, what is happening to me? I never oversleep.

Of course, I also never have fever dreams about male wolves making me come out in the wild.

I yank on a T-shirt and skirt without checking to see if they go together. I shove my feet in a pair of flip-flops. Who cares if they are against the district dress code? No flip-flops is a dumb rule, anyway, right along with the sexist rule that girls cannot show bra straps.

In a minute flat, I’m out the door and starting up my Mini Cooper with the spare key I dug out last night after crawling through an open window to the casita where I live .

I step on the gas, screeching the tires as I peel out. It doesn’t matter though. While I may arrive before the clang of the first bell, there is no possibility of me being the first or second person in the school. I orgasmed my way right through that chance an hour ago.

I race down the streets and pull into the staff parking lot.

Dear Moon Goddess, get me through this day. I jog into school. I swear everyone’s looking at me, but hopefully, it’s just paranoia.

I do a quick, surreptitious check, but my clothes are not in the hallway. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, to be honest. I walk to my classroom, where students gather outside my door for the first period. It’s a first-year class, one of my easier ones. The younger they are, the easier they are for me to control. My worst class is the sixth-period seniors–the class with Asher Martin, the school football star and leader of the alpha holes.

The neighbor kid who doubled in size since I saw him last and who now absolutely hates me.

I reach for the door to my classroom before I remember I don’t have the keys to unlock it.

Dammit. I need to find the janitor or principal.

No, wait. No, no, no. I resist the urge to scurry around like a guilty rat.

I’m a teacher here. I need to maintain my dignity.

I draw up all five-foot-two of my height, puff up my chest, and turn a regal head on the closest student to me. “Andrew, go and find the janitor to unlock my door.” I may not be the biggest or strongest wolf in the school, but I am a teacher, and I know how to pull authority.

“Yes, Ms. James.”

As soon as he disappears, I wish I’d gone myself. Because now, the seconds stretch out like hours as the bell rings, and I’m still standing in the hallway with my class.

I think fast. “Being an artist means working with what you have where you are,” I tell the class. “The bell has rung. Class begins now. Look around this hallway. If you were to depict it in a way that conveyed some meaning, how would you do it?”

No one is listening to me.

I put as much Alpha Command in my voice as I can. “Backs against the lockers.”

My students reluctantly shuffle back to form a line against the wall. “Now, let’s look at that wall.” I point to the wall opposite us. “What do you see, and how would you make a statement about it?”

“What do you mean, make a statement about it ? It’s a wall.” One of the female students says, looking at her nails.

“Sure. How many different things can a wall convey?”

Blank stares.

“How do walls make you feel?”

More blank stares.

I offer a little vulnerability. “Sometimes walls make me feel shut in. Imprisoned.”

I get some nods as they start to catch my drift.

“So I might paint this wall with an oppressive tilt in my direction as if it were closing in on me. Or how else might I show that?”

“You could paint bars,” someone throws out.

“Exactly. I could paint actual prison bars.”

“Or you could make the lockers look like prison bars–I know!” –Finally, one of my students gets excited– “You could have the lockers as prison bars and then have them bent open in the middle with a hole to the outside.”

“Yeah, and what if everything inside was black and white, and then the outside could be in full color?” Another student suggests.

I reward her with an encouraging smile. “Now that sounds like an art piece worth making.”

The janitor–Zory, I think his name is–arrives with the keys. He doesn’t look at me as he unlocks the door and pushes it open for me.

“Thank you, Zory,” I murmur.

He grunts in response and walks away without another word.

Someone has been inside the classroom recently. I catch the scent but can’t quite identify them. My clothes from last night are folded and neatly stacked behind my desk, underneath my purse.

Okay. I exhale the breath I’d been holding.

Someone had my back.

Maybe nothing is fucked here.

I go with the morning’s lesson, telling them that we’re going to take a break from their current pointillism project to try some rough sketches of the hallway.

A cheerleader raises her hand.

“Yes, Remi?”

“May I go out in the hallway to sketch?”

I hesitate. I would love to take my class out of the classroom and into the world to start seeing the world through an artist’s lens, but I’m not feeling brave enough to buck the system after my behavior last night.

That only compounds when the principal opens the door and leans in. “I need to see you after school.”

Fuck.

I’m probably about to be fired. Great. My first professional job lasted all of three weeks. I’m not sure whether Artist Me just self-sabotaged so I won’t sell out and stay in Wolf Ridge, or this is the natural punishment for letting my wolf out.

I don’t know. I’m too much of a mess this morning to understand any of my failures or motivations since I arrived.

I swallow. “Yes, sir. I’ll be there.”

I am so busted.