Page 23 of The Drama King (The University Players Duet #1)

seventeen

Dorian

The mansion settled into evening quiet as Mrs. Holloway cleared away the remnants of our dinner, her discrete footsteps fading down the main hallway. Corvus had excused himself to his suite for "strategic analysis," leaving me alone with Oakley in the warm intimacy of the study.

He sat rigidly in his chair, staring into the fire with tension that radiated through his scent like a warning. The contradiction fascinated me. This Alpha who challenged me on moral grounds but whose body language screamed submission whenever we were alone.

"You've been questioning me all evening," I said quietly, rising to refill my whiskey glass. "In front of Corvus. Undermining pack unity."

"I've been thinking," he replied without looking at me. "About what we're doing. About what we've become."

I moved to stand behind his chair, close enough that my sandalwood scent would wrap around him like a claim. His shoulders tensed, but he didn't pull away.

"And what have we become, Oak?"

"Hypocrites." The word hung in the air between us, dangerous in its honesty. "We condemn male Omegas like Robbie while engaging in our own... activities. We preach about proper designation roles while ignoring them when it suits our purposes."

My hands found his shoulders, feeling the knots of tension beneath his shirt. "Pack dynamics are different. You know that."

He finally turned to meet my gaze, his eyes bright with something that might have been pain. "Or do we just tell ourselves that to justify what we want?"

I squeezed his shoulders, not quite gently. "What we want is order. Structure. The natural hierarchy that keeps society functioning."

"By terrorizing a scholarship student?" His voice carried a challenge that sent heat through my system. Part anger, part arousal. Oakley had always been most appealing when he fought back, even knowing he would ultimately submit.

"By teaching her to understand her place," I corrected, my fingers finding the base of his neck where he was most sensitive. The touch made him shiver despite his defiance. "The way I taught you to understand yours."

The reference to our early dynamic, when young Alphas learned pack hierarchy through physical demonstration, made his scent shift, cedar warming with memories he couldn't quite suppress.

"That was different," he said, but his voice had lost its edge. "We were equals, exploring dominance and submission as partners."

"Were we?" I leaned down, my mouth close to his ear. "Are we?"

My teeth grazed the sensitive skin just behind his ear, and his breath hitched audibly. Three years of intimate knowledge meant I knew exactly how to dismantle his resistance, how to remind his body of its place in our hierarchy.

"Dorian..." His protest was weak, undermined by the way he tilted his neck to give me better access.

"You think our activities make us hypocrites," I murmured against his throat, tasting the salt of his skin. "But you're here. You're always here, submitting to me despite your moral objections."

"That's not true," He cut himself off with a soft gasp as I bit down gently, marking him with just enough pressure to remind him of his position.

"Stand up," I commanded quietly.

He obeyed without hesitation, rising from the chair to face me. The firelight played across his features, highlighting the conflict between defiance and desire that made him so compelling.

"You question our treatment of male Omegas," I said, circling him slowly like a predator assessing prey. "Yet you present for me whenever I demand it. You submit to Alpha dominance while condemning others for the same biology."

His hands clenched at his sides, jaw tight with the effort of maintaining composure. "It's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?" I stopped in front of him, close enough that our bodies almost touched. "The way you respond to my dominance, the sounds you make when I claim you. How is that different from what any Omega experiences?"

"Because I choose it," he said, his voice strained but determined. "I consent to our dynamic. Vespera doesn't have that choice."

The mention of her name sent a jolt through me. Possessive heat mixed with something I didn't want to examine too closely. "She will. When she understands what we're offering."

"And what are we offering?" His eyes searched mine, looking for something I wasn't sure I could give. "What's your endgame here, Dorian?"

I reached up to cup his face, thumb brushing over his cheekbone with deceptive gentleness. "The same thing I offered you. A place in our pack. Protection. Purpose."

"Through breaking her first?"

"Through teaching her surrender." My voice dropped lower, more intimate. "The way I taught you."

His pupils dilated at the reminder, body responding despite his ideological resistance. The contradiction was beautiful. This Alpha who could question our methods while melting under my touch.

"She's different from me," he said, but his resolve was weakening. "Stronger. More independent."

"Which makes her surrender more valuable." I let my hand drift down to his throat, feeling his pulse jump under my palm. "Imagine what she'll be like once she accepts her place with us. That fire, that talent, channeled into devotion instead of defiance."

"And if she doesn't surrender?"

I squeezed his throat gently, just enough to remind him of the power dynamics at play. "She will. They always do, eventually."

The possessive certainty in my voice made him shiver, and I could smell the subtle shift in his scent that meant his body was overriding his conscious objections.

"You're changing," he whispered, his hands coming up to rest against my chest. "This obsession with her. It's not like our other targets."

"No," I agreed, allowing honesty to creep into my voice. "It's not."

"What does that mean for us? For our pack?"

Instead of answering, I kissed him. Hard and claiming, swallowing his questions with the kind of physical dominance that had defined our relationship from the beginning. He melted into it with a soft sound of surrender, his body betraying everything his words had been fighting for.

When I pulled back, his eyes were dark with desire and defeat.

"It means you trust me," I said quietly. "The way you always have. The way you always will."

He nodded slowly, the fight draining out of him as biology and habit reasserted their hold. This was our pattern. Challenge followed by submission, moral questioning dissolved in the face of physical hierarchy.

"Go to my room," I ordered softly. "Wait for me there."

He hesitated for just a moment, the last vestige of his resistance flickering in his eyes. Then he nodded again and headed for the door, moving with the careful precision of someone whose body knew exactly what came next.

I remained by the fire for several minutes after he left, nursing my whiskey and considering the evening's revelations. Oakley's accusations of hypocrisy weren't entirely wrong. Our private dynamics did contradict our public positions on designation roles and proper behavior.

But that was the privilege of power: the ability to maintain different standards for ourselves than we imposed on others. Alpha meant never having to justify contradictions, never having to choose consistency over desire.

The phone in my pocket buzzed with a text message, and I smiled when I saw the sender, one of Corvus's surveillance contacts.

Subject left library 11:47 PM. Showing signs of stress and fatigue. No indication of heat approach yet. Continuing observation.

Vespera, working late despite her exhaustion, still fighting to prove herself worthy of remaining at Northwood. Still unaware that her fate had already been decided, that her struggles only made her more interesting to hunt.

I finished my whiskey and headed toward my suite, where Oakley would be waiting with the kind of obedience that proved some Alphas were more naturally suited to following than leading. The irony wasn't lost on me. We condemned male Omega submission while engaging in our own complex power exchanges.

But that was different, as I'd told him. We were pack. We were equals playing with hierarchy for pleasure and bonding.

The question followed me up the stairs, accompanied by the memory of Vespera's defiant chin lift during her showcase performance. She'd looked directly at me while delivering Lady Macbeth's madness, as if channeling her anger at our treatment into her art.

Beautiful. Infuriating. Irresistible.

I found him exactly as expected. Naked, kneeling beside my bed, hands resting on his thighs in the position I'd trained him to assume years ago. His cock was already half-hard, his body responding to anticipation despite his earlier moral protests.

The sight stirred memories I usually kept carefully compartmentalized.

Oakley during our senior year of prep school, when his father had finally revealed his true feelings about his son's "weakness" and thrown him out for being "unworthy of the Sinclair name.

" We'd been best friends since childhood.

Our families' estates neighboring each other, summers spent racing horses and winters plotting elaborate pranks on our tutors.

I'd found him in the abandoned boathouse on our prep school grounds after one particularly brutal confrontation with his father, the golden boy I'd grown up with reduced to something desperate and broken.

"Let me help," I'd whispered then, both of us eighteen and finally understanding that pack meant taking care of your own in ways our privileged upbringings had never prepared us for.

My best friend, my constant companion since we were seven years old, needed me in a way that transcended everything we'd been taught about Alpha pride and independence.

That first time had been tentative, desperate. Two young Alphas who'd been inseparable since childhood figuring out how dominance and submission could coexist within the same designation.