Page 46 of In Doubt

“Why?” I ask, wondering if I’m finally going to get to the bottom of all this, and also intrigued by that colour sweeping across her skin.

“I told you,” she picks up her water bottle and throws back her head to take a long gulp, the action elongating her slim neck. “He’s my academic rival. Tell me.” She snaps the lip back on the bottle and drops it to the ground. “Are you all pally with players from other rugby teams? I mean, your opposition?”

“Hell, no.” I laugh. “Coach would probably string me up by my balls if he caught me being friendly.”

“Exactly,” she says, then pauses. “Why would your coach be that outraged?”

I sigh, smiling at her. “I’m not very good at keeping quiet about things.” She tilts her head to examine me more. “I have a big mouth. He’d be concerned I’d spill all our secrets, tell them all our tactics.”

She meets my smile with her own. And yeah, well, it’s clear as day why this one has been driving Jake crazy. “I like that. I like straight talkers. Sometimes I get all tangled up with what I want to say and it comes out sounding all wrong.”

“It doesn’t always work out in my favour.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I got friendly with some dude around Christmas time. He seemed solid, you know. We went out for beers a few times and we swapped stories. The way guys do. Then those stories ended up in the student paper. Turns out he was a gossip columnist, looking for stories about the rugby team.”

“Wow, that’s really–”

“Shitty,” I finish for her. “More than shitty. It pissed off both my packmates and team mates and nearly had me booted off the team.”

“It hurts when you trust someone, when you think they care about you, and then it turns out they were only using you.” There’s something about the tone of her voice that makes me think she understands.

“It’s happened to you too?”

She pauses for a moment, then nods sharply. We’re quiet for a moment, although she continues to scratch at her neck.

“You’d have thought I’d’ve learned my lesson,” I say, finally. “I got permanently kicked out of one of my classes as an undergraduate because me and the lecturer didn’t see eye to eye.”

“In what way?”

“He was talking a load of crap and I told him so.”

“Oh,” she says, her eyes gleaming in amusement. “I wish I had the guts to do that more often.” She fiddles with the sleeve of her top. “You should’ve heard the bullshit the head archaeologist just spouted at me about alphas and omegas.”

My spine stiffens. There’s nothing I hate more than all the shit we get told about ourselves, about our natures. It’s why those stupid articles were so infuriating. He’d targeted me because I was an alpha and part of a pack. People love reading juicy stories about both those things.

Perhaps we had been a little wild when we’d first found each other and formed our pack, enjoyed partying together. But most of the things written about us were figments of that man’s twisted imagination.

“You didn’t put him to rights?” I ask.

“I was about to, but Jake beat me to it.” Her gaze flicks momentarily to meet mine as if she’s wondering what I’ll make of that.

“Good,” I say simply. Then pause. I probably shouldn’t say what I’m about to say next but then when has that ever stopped me. “I hear you don’t exactly have the most enlightened opinions about alphas yourself.”

“That isn’t true,” her shoulders tighten. “But I haven’t exactly had the most enlightened experiences with them.”

“Yeah, most of them are giant knobheads,” I agree. Her head snaps my way and her mouth hangs open in surprise. I shrug. “I grew up in foster care. So I came across a lot of dicks back then. My big mouth got me into trouble with a lot of them. I used to be a bit too honest with my feedback. Got moved on more times than you can imagine.”

“I’m … I’m sorry,” she says.

I shrug.

“It was lonely. It’s why the idea of a pack always appealed to me. I wanted to find a pack, a family of my own.”

“And you think a pack will give you that?”

“Your brother’s in a pack, right? Doesn’t he have it?”