Page 35 of Overeager (Extra Credit #1)

Apparently they were still on a first-name basis, never mind that it had been over a year since the last dinner party they’d both attended. One Richard had thrown.

“Tom,” Eli greeted, equally succinct.

The dean—Tom, to his friends—was an affable man with gray hair, a squashed nose, and a considerable paunch.

He reminded Eli a bit of his own father, but he’d be mortified to admit as much out loud.

Eli had always liked him well enough, but it didn’t make sitting in the hot seat any easier.

It was worse, in a way, to lose the respect of someone he generally admired.

Speaking of.

Tom gestured to the chair across from his. “Take a seat, Eli.”

Eli sat, and Tom was kind enough to lay it all out immediately.

“This meeting was by your request, but I’m going to go ahead and get it started, if you don’t mind.

” He didn’t wait for Eli to respond either way.

His face settled into a severe frown. “Richard called to inform me that you’re dating a student.

One currently enrolled in one of your intro classes. A certain Noah Teller.”

“Yes, sir,” Eli confirmed. First-name basis or not, it suddenly seemed wise to be extra polite.

Tom tapped at his desk. “You’re not refuting his claim, are you?”

“No, sir.” Eli clasped his hands in his lap, straightening his spine. “We’re involved. Although we met outside of class. I didn’t know he was a student, not initially.”

Eli wasn’t going to make excuses, but he wasn’t going to throw himself further under the bus than he needed to either.

Tom glanced at a paper on his desk. “And you haven’t been personally involved with any of his grading.”

It wasn’t a question—he’d clearly looked into it himself. But Eli answered anyway, “No, sir. His grades have all been done by one of my TAs.”

Tom leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his belly. There was a beat before he spoke again. “Do you know why we don’t have a written policy about professors getting involved with students?”

“Clerical oversight?” Eli offered up before he could help himself.

“Don’t be cute,” Tom chastised mildly. He cocked a brow. “You’ve never taken advantage of the university’s heat services, have you?”

Eli shook his head, cheeks heating a bit at this unexpected line of questioning. “No, I haven’t.”

From what Eli knew, the heat services consisted mostly of a roster of alphas and omegas trained and available to help someone through a heat or a rut, for those either unwilling or medically unable to use blockers and toys to get through on their own.

It was all organized by the university’s Health Services, and was a standard offering at most places with any sort of medical benefits.

Eli had never had need for it. He honestly had never given it much thought.

Tom grunted. “Thought as much. It gets complicated on a college campus. Some students sign on as part of their work-study programs, particularly those studying anything related to pheromone health, for obvious reasons. And then, of course, sometimes professors or TAs end up needing the services themselves. We try to keep things separate, but pheromones don’t listen to reason, so occasionally things get …

mixed.” He gave Eli a stern look. “But when that happens, the situation is monitored. Protections are put in place, for the teacher and the student.”

“So you’re saying I still …” Eli trailed off. He didn’t know how to finish his own sentence.

But Tom did. “Still fucked up massively? Yes.”

And here it was. The firing. Eli squared his shoulders, preparing himself for the inevitable.

“Lucky for you, I had a short meeting with Mr. Teller already. He confirmed your version of events. He was quite adamant that he was the pursuer in this situation.”

Eli had been aware Noah would have to tell his side. But he didn’t like the shifting of blame. He shook his head. “Still, I crossed the line. I—”

“You will wait until the end of the year,” Tom interjected, interrupting Eli’s attempts at self-recrimination, “before making any public appearances.”

It took Eli a moment to realize Tom was setting terms. He sat back, speechless.

“You will also be teaching whatever summer classes your department needs next semester. They’ve had a shortage of professors offering, and I don’t want to hear the complaints this time.

” Tom pointed a finger at Eli. “And you will not be discussing this situation with your department head. If he’s made aware, I won’t stick my neck out to save you. So it starts and ends here. With me.”

“So I’m not fired,” Eli said slowly, trying to help his brain catch up to Tom’s words.

“You’re not fired.”

Eli found himself wanting to argue. He’d been in the wrong. He knew that. The dean knew that. But for Noah’s sake …

Eli stood, almost overturning his chair in his haste. “Okay. Thank you, Tom. Really. I—um—thank you.”

As he hurried toward the door, Tom spoke again. “I never liked Richard much, you know. Good with the financial books, but kind of a dick otherwise. I was happy to hear you’d left him.”

Eli already had a hand on the doorknob, but he turned around anyway. There was a suspicion nagging at the back of his mind. “Sir … if the designations were reversed—if I was an alpha professor who’d been involved with an omega student—would you have made the same decision?”

Tom let him stew for a minute, and then he raised an eyebrow. “Is this the hill you want to die on, Professor Miller?”

“No, sir.” But it stung anyway, more than Eli might have thought. It was yet another confirmation of why Eli studied in the field he did. Why he taught the classes he did.

Richard wasn’t the only alpha out there with backward ideas about an omega’s role in the world.

But the dean was right about one thing—it wasn’t the hill Eli wanted to die on. He wasn’t going to sacrifice his relationship to make a point only he and the dean would know about. Maybe that made him weak or unprincipled, or maybe he was just too deep in love.

Either way, he walked out of there, nodding to Ashley dazedly on the way out as he went to hide away in his own office and lick his wounds.

He wasn’t even remotely surprised to find Richard waiting there.

Eli left the door wide open as he rounded his desk. “Leave, Richard. Now.”

Richard remained where he was, hovering by the visitor’s chair, his hands tucked into his suit pants pockets. He had a fading greenish-yellow bruise around his left eye that made Eli want to purr in satisfaction. Noah had done that. He’d put that bruise there to keep Eli safe.

“How did it go?” Richard asked in a tone as light as someone chatting about the weather.

“I remain employed.”

A flash of surprise crossed Richard’s face, there and gone. He’d clearly thought he was going to be successful in getting Eli fired. And then … what? He thought the devastation of losing his job would have Eli wanting to crawl back to him?

For once, anger made Eli calm instead of frantic.

He sat at his desk and folded his hands in front of him.

“I’m going to say this all at once, and then you’re going to leave, Richard.

I don’t know what exactly you thought would happen.

Why you thought I would ever take you back. Why you would even want me back.”

Richard looked like he might speak, but Eli continued on without pausing, “But we don’t fit.

The Eli you knew and maybe loved no longer exists.

I don’t think he ever really existed in the first place.

And it doesn’t matter. Because however we started, I ended up very, very unhappy.

There is no chance for reunion. None. Whether or not Noah is in the picture. ”

“You say that as if your relationship isn’t—”

Eli cut Richard off by slapping his hand on his desk, relishing the way the shock of sound made Richard flush with anger.

“You will not speak about my relationship. I meant what I said on the phone: If you pursue anything further, I will take legal action against you.” Eli cocked his head, narrowing his eyes at his ex-husband.

“You think I don’t know that you knew ? You were in my classroom a mere day before my heat.

We were married for a decade—you’re familiar with my pheromones.

You deliberately tried to approach me when I was at my most vulnerable. ”

Something flashed in Richard’s eyes. Fear maybe. Or guilt. Either way, Eli was getting through to him.

He shook his head, a small smile on his lips.

“You always did underestimate me, Richard. I am a goddamn expert in omega studies, and I know my rights when it comes to predatory alpha behavior. You try to touch Noah, try to make his life even remotely difficult, and I will bury you in litigation. How do you think your upstanding clients will feel about working with an alpha under investigation for something like that?”

Richard’s flinch was incredibly satisfying. Eli nodded to the door. “I won’t stand by any longer while you treat me and the people I care about like crap. Goodbye, Richard.”

It looked for a moment like Richard would keep arguing—like he might try to draw this out and make them both miserable in the way he loved to do—but then he shot Eli a hateful look, turned on his heel, and marched out the door.

He never had liked being stood up to. That much hadn’t changed.

But that was fine. He was out of Eli’s mind as soon as he left the room, other than the second it took Eli to spray some pheromone-canceling spray in the air, erasing that tobacco scent.

Vibrating in his chair, practically weightless with relief, Eli took his phone out of his pocket, staring at the lock screen photo for a moment.

It was a picture of him and Noah with Deadly between them, the both of them grinning like loons (Deadly wasn’t smiling, but if she’d been capable of flipping the camera the bird, she might have been doing that).

Eli grinned wide enough to match the expressions in the photo. It was time to call his boyfriend. Time to leave the past far behind him and focus on his present.

His future.