Page 37 of The Drama King (The University Players Duet #1)

twenty-six

Dorian

Snow continued to fall outside the windows, the thick flakes creating a curtain of white that obscured the campus beyond. I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, bourbon in hand, but my attention wasn't on the winter landscape or the expensive view that had cost my family a fortune to secure.

My thoughts were consumed entirely by her.

Vespera Levine. The scholarship Omega who had somehow burrowed under my skin like a parasite, consuming more of my mental energy with each passing day.

Even now, hours after our confrontation in the studio, I could still smell traces of her scent on my clothes, could still feel the phantom warmth of her skin under my fingertips.

But it was what I couldn't smell that was driving me to the edge of madness.

Three days she'd been in heat, broadcasting the most intoxicating scent an Alpha could experience, and I'd been denied even a trace of it.

Whatever industrial-grade scent blockers she'd used—and I suspected that male Omega Gao had supplied them through his family's pharmaceutical connections—had been thorough to the point of insult.

Not even the faintest whisper of her natural heat scent had escaped her dormitory.

I'd stood outside McArthur Hall for hours each night, breathing deeply, searching for even the smallest leak in her defenses.

Nothing. Just sterile air and the maddening knowledge that mere floors above me, she was burning with need, her body producing the exact scent designed to drive Alphas into claiming frenzy, and I was being systematically denied access to it.

"You're pacing again," Corvus observed from his position on my leather sofa, laptop open as he reviewed files for his political science final. "It's distracting."

I wasn't aware I'd been pacing, but sure enough, I'd worn a path in the expensive Persian rug between the windows and the wet bar. The restless energy had been building for days—the biological frustration of being denied what my Alpha instincts recognized as rightfully mine.

"She blocked me," I said, the words tasting bitter. "Completely. For three solid days, I couldn't catch even a trace of her heat scent."

Corvus looked up from his screen, dark eyebrows rising with interest. "Scent blockers? Industrial grade, presumably."

"Had to be." I moved to the wet bar, pouring bourbon with more violence than the action warranted. "No over-the-counter blocker could have been that effective. Someone with serious pharmaceutical connections supplied her."

"The Gao boy," Corvus said immediately. "His family's company produces military-grade scent suppressants for covert operations. If he wanted to help her hide from Alpha attention during heat..."

"He gave her the chemical equivalent of a fucking bunker," I snarled, downing the bourbon in one burning gulp. "Do you understand what that means? What she denied me?"

Corvus closed his laptop entirely, recognizing that this conversation required his full attention. "You're describing deliberate avoidance of biological imperative. She actively prevented you from experiencing her heat cycle."

"She denied me something that should have been mine by right," I said, pouring another bourbon despite knowing alcohol wouldn't touch the deeper frustration eating at me.

"An Omega in heat—especially one I'd already marked as my target—doesn't get to hide behind chemical barriers. It's unnatural. Perverse."

"It's also remarkably strategic," Corvus observed with that clinical detachment that could be infuriating. "If she suspected you were monitoring her cycle patterns, preventing Alpha exposure during her most vulnerable state shows significant foresight."

I slammed the glass down hard enough to make the crystal ring against marble.

"I don't give a shit about her strategy.

She could have been claimed properly, could have experienced heat the way evolution intended, with an appropriate Alpha to satisfy her biological needs.

Instead, she chose to suffer alone with inadequate artificial substitutes. "

"How do you know she suffered?" he asked quietly.

The question stopped me cold. How did I know?

Because the thought of her in heat, burning with need, using cold silicon toys instead of accepting the claiming she was biologically designed to crave, made something possessive and protective snarl in my chest. Because imagining her alone, desperate, denying herself the satisfaction of proper Alpha attention, was almost physically painful.

"Because heat without claiming is torture," I said finally. "She put herself through three days of agony rather than accept what I could have given her."

"Is she winning?" Corvus finally looked up, his dark eyes studying me with that analytical intensity that made him both valuable and occasionally infuriating.

"Because from my perspective, she's a scholarship student who should have been broken and expelled months ago.

Yet here we are, approaching finals week, and she's not only still here but seems to have gained rather than lost confidence. "

I drained the bourbon in one swallow, the burn doing nothing to settle the restless energy coursing through me. "She's more resilient than anticipated."

"Or your methodology has been compromised by factors you're not acknowledging," he suggested, closing the laptop with a decisive click. "Tell me, Dorian—when was the last time you went this long without claiming an Omega during their heat?"

The question hit like a physical blow, though I tried to hide my reaction behind another pour of bourbon. "That's irrelevant."

"Is it?" He stood, moving to the window beside me with that fluid grace that reminded everyone he was just as much of a predator as I was, despite his preference for psychological rather than physical dominance.

"You've been increasingly agitated for weeks.

Snapping at pack members, losing focus during classes, spending hours researching campus security protocols and student schedules. Classic pre-rut symptoms, except..."

"Except what?" I asked, though I suspected I knew where this was leading.

"Except you're not entering rut for just any available Omega," he said quietly. "Your biology has fixated on one specific individual. Which suggests something far more significant than simple harassment or even casual claiming behavior."

I set the glass down with more force than necessary, the crystal ringing against the marble bar top. "You're overanalyzing."

"Am I?" Corvus moved closer, and I caught the scent of his curiosity mixed with something that might have been concern. "When was the last time you thought about anyone other than Vespera Levine? When did you last take interest in any of the Omega students who would be honored to warm your bed?"

The truthful answer was that I couldn't remember.

For weeks, maybe longer, my sexual fantasies had centered entirely on dark hair and defiant gray eyes, on the challenge of breaking down stubborn resistance and claiming complete submission.

Other Omegas had approached me—subtly, respectfully, making their availability known through scent and body language—and I'd dismissed them without a second thought.

None of them were her.

"This is temporary fixation," I said, more to convince myself than him. "Once she's properly broken, once she understands her place, the obsession will fade."

"Will it?" He was close enough now that I could see the skepticism in his expression. "Or will claiming her only intensify whatever biological imperative is driving this behavior?"

Before I could formulate a response, the door to my penthouse opened and Oakley entered, stomping snow off his boots and shaking flakes from his dark hair. His cedar scent carried notes of agitation that immediately put me on alert.

"We need to talk," he said without preamble, his usual easy demeanor replaced by something sharper, more confrontational than I was used to seeing from him. "About what happened during her heat. About what we all experienced."

The words sent ice through my veins, though I tried to hide my reaction. "What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean." He moved deeper into the room, declining my gesture toward the bar. "For three days, every Alpha on campus was on edge. Irritable, aggressive, unable to focus. Like we could sense something we couldn't access, something being deliberately withheld."

Corvus leaned forward with obvious interest. "You experienced symptomatic response to her blocked heat cycle?"

"We all did," Oakley said grimly. "But it was worst for Dorian. He barely slept, couldn't eat, kept disappearing for hours at a time to lurk around McArthur Hall like some kind of stalker."

"I was concerned about pack interests," I said stiffly, hating the defensive note in my voice.

"Pack interests," Oakley repeated flatly. "Is that what we're calling standing outside her dorm building at three in the morning, trying to catch traces of scent that never came?"

Heat rushed to my face. I hadn't realized my behavior had been so obvious, so pathetic. "I was monitoring the situation."

"You were losing your mind," he said bluntly. "We both were, but you... Dorian, I've never seen an Alpha react that strongly to blocked heat. It was like you were going into sympathetic rut for an Omega you couldn't access."

"That's impossible," I said, but my voice lacked conviction.

The three days of Vespera's heat had been torture—a constant, gnawing awareness of something missing, something I needed desperately but couldn't have.

I'd attributed it to wounded pride, to the frustration of being denied something I'd marked as mine.

But what if it had been something deeper? What if my biology had been trying to respond to hers, only to be thwarted by chemical barriers?