Chapter 1

Chapter One

H arper

Sunshine spills across my desk and over my study notes, and through the open window I can hear the splashing of water and smell the flowers in the garden – lilac, lilies, roses, and … and … alpha.

Shit!

Alphas that smell of a delicious masculine blend of pine, moss, and vanilla.

I rub at my nose and shuffle on my seat. Usually, I’m eternally grateful for my new bedroom. It’s about four times the size of the one in the apartment me and mom used to share. Plus, with my desk positioned up against the bay window, I can gaze down on the garden. It makes me feel less depressed about all the studying I need to do.

I twizzle my pen in my fingers and then take an aggressive chew of the end, my teeth snapping through the plastic.

Not anymore, though.

Now, the window is a massive distraction – one I am trying my damn hardest to avoid. It’s not just the mix of scents floating through the window, it’s what’s lurking outside the window. It’s who’s lurking outside the window. Lurking by the pool in nothing but their swim shorts.

I roll my shoulders, straighten my back, and try to block out smells and sounds, focusing on simultaneous equations instead. Which I need to understand if I hope to pass the college entrance exams. Plus, they’re really very interesting if you give them half a chance.

Much more interesting than the three half-dressed alphas down by the pool. The alphas who are probably glistening with water under the midday sun. The alphas who are built like brick houses with more muscles between them than exist in the whole of some small nations.

I sigh and push my notes aside.

This is hopeless, completely hopeless, and has been ever since my new step-brother returned home from college with his two best friends. Since then, my study schedule has taken a steady decline. I glance at the timetable I made myself with pretty highlighted colors and specific deadlines. I’m behind by three days now and judging by this afternoon’s study session, I’m going to slip even further behind.

In the old days, when I lived with mom, I’d high-tail it to the library whenever the apartment was too noisy to study. But now we live in the expensive suburbs of Rockview and the nearest library is a 45-minute walk away – something I won’t be doing in 95-degree heat. Dehydration and heatstroke won’t help with the study schedule.

I slam closed the window and yank up the air con. I’ve always hated A/C — I can smell the chemicals in the air. It irritates my omega sinuses and gives me a headache. However, a headache is probably better than another slick tsunami – I’ve been destroying my way through panties at a rate of knots (no pun intended) ever since Daxton arrived, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, best friends in tow. My panties have been a disaster zone ever since. Which is entirely inappropriate and really darn wrong. Crushing on your step-brother? Crushing on your step-brother’s best friends? Not wise. Not sensible. Not a good idea at all.

Yeah, but completely unavoidable.

Of course, it would help if they wore more clothes.

It would also help if they didn’t smell so good. God, I’ve always loved the smell of the forest. Always found my stomach rumbling at the merest hint of vanilla.

And it would definitely help if they weren’t so hot. All of them.

It’s unfair. Especially on a single omega trying her darndest to study for her exams.

I pick up my pen again and, though I try my best (honestly I really do), I can’t help peeking towards the window. Big mistake. Because I’m just in time to see Dax drag himself out of the pool, tossing his dark mop of hair out of his eyes. Glittering water runs down his chest and his abs, and his swim shorts cling to something that looks too big to be true in the groin area.

I let out a little yelp, my body definitely liking what I see as I flood yet another pair of panties.

I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that my stepbrother is good looking – all chiseled jaw, sharp cheekbones and dark eyes. His dad topped the list of eligible beta bachelors for several years before my mom – a nurse and also a beta – snapped him up.

What I definitely was entitled to be surprised about was the fact that my step-brother – the dude who never turned up to my parents’ whirlwind wedding on account of being ‘too busy’ with college – is an alpha.

Yeah, it would have been nice to have that piece of information before he showed up for the holidays and ruined all my study plans.

I tug my notes back across the desk and ignore all the electricity pulsating around my body to enjoy some good old math.

Who needs alphas and orgasms and knots when you can have complicated arithmetic? Yay!

I’m sucking on my pen again, which I’m sure is totally not a phallic substitute, ignoring the fact I’m sure I can smell alpha even stronger now despite the closed window, when my bedroom door swings open and there is an alpha himself towering in my doorway, wearing nothing but his swim shorts.

Owen. The blond, blue-eyed one who looks like a surfer – a surfer who wins championship after championship and has a posse of girls following him across the globe. Of course, he isn’t a surfer – not a professional one anyway – like my step-brother, he’s studying to be a doctor. Something I think is truly unfair. Imagine a consultation with Dr. Owen. Your heart rate would be racing, your skin flushing – he’d diagnose every patient with a fever.

“Ahh, sorry,” he says, with a lazy lopsided smile and a dimple. “I thought this was the bathroom.”

I gape at him. There’s a sign on my door, stating quite clearly: Harper’s room.

“Erm, nope,” I say, snatching the pen from my mouth and hoping I’m not drooling down my chin. “It’s two along that way.” I point towards the left.

“Right,” he says, not moving, his nose twitching instead. He stares at me. Okay, he doesn’t stare, he does that thing guys do, sweeping his sky-blue eyes right down my body in a way that makes me feel like he’s caressing his hands over my skin.

Which makes no sense. I’m dressed in shorts and a tank, my hair scraped up in a messy bun, my glasses balancing at an odd angle on my nose (because I sat on them yesterday) and no make-up in sight. Don’t get me wrong. I can turn heads when the occasion demands. This isn’t one of those occasions.

“You’re studying,” he says. And oh lord, it isn’t just the scents and the abs and all the other muscles that make these men hot. It’s also their voices. All low and gruff and totally suited to some action movie.

I bet these three have girls stumbling over one another back at college.

“Yes, I’m studying.”

Or trying to study.

Not perving on him and his friends out the window.

Totally not doing that.

“What are you studying?” he asks, stepping into the room, his alpha scent of moss sweeping into the room with him – in fact flooding my room – and making my insides spin. It reminds me of grass – wet grass right after a thunderstorm.

I chew on the inside of my cheek, hoping the strength of his own scent and that chemical tang from the A/C disguise the perfume of my slick-soaked panties. Hoping, as he leans right over me to peer down at my notes, his scent completely engulfing my sinuses, the heat from his body palpable and the close-up view of his muscular chest tantalizing, that he doesn’t trigger another of those slick-tsunamis.

What is actually wrong with my body? It’s acting like I’m on the verge of a heat – all horny and way too sensitive.

“Aaah, yeah, I remember this,” he says, resting one hand on the back of my chair, his fingertips grazing my shoulder and sending tingles all over my skin. He shuffles the piece of paper around, reading through the practice questions I’ve been attempting to do and not gazing at the three alphas outside my window. “It looks like you’ve got the hang of this. You should take a break. Come and hang out with us by the pool. It’s a beautiful day.” He leans a little closer and I swear he takes an inhale of breath.

“Oh no,” I say, concentrating with all my might on unsexy, unrelated topics and not slicking my panties. “I’m still a little rusty when it comes to this topic.”

“Daxton says you’re an A-grade student.”

I peek up at him. Daxton said that? I’m surprised Daxton knows my name, let alone anything else about me. He’s hardly said two words to me since he arrived two weeks ago. Although, that is partly on account of the fact I’ve been hiding in my bedroom and avoiding the three hot alphas that do strange things – inappropriate things – to my body. Luckily, my mom and his dad have been out of town for the last two days, which means I’ve only had to endure two excruciatingly painful family dinners. I won’t have to sit through another for at least one more week before they return home.

“Well … I mean … I guess … I am. But only because I work hard.” I’ve learned the hard way, boys don’t like smart girls. They definitely don’t like girls who are smarter than they are. And they most certainly do not like omega girls who are smarter than they are. The other girls can be just as mean.

I’ve been hiding my grades and downplaying my smartness for as long as I can remember.

“Working too hard,” he says, stepping towards my bed and perching on the edge. My little omega heart starts to flutter. An alpha in our bed. I remind her that the alpha is on our bed, not in it. He gives me that heart-stopping smile again. “You’ve been studying non-stop since we got here. It’s not good for you. You need some relaxation time. Doctor’s orders.”

“You’re not a doctor yet,” I point out.

“We’ve been studying omegas this term,” he says, and is it my imagination or does his voice drop even lower? Either way, he has me shivering. “I know what’s good for them.”

“You’ve been studying omegas in your course?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.

“Something like that,” he says. His eyes flick to my wardrobe. “You have a swimsuit? Although, if you don’t–”

“I have a swimsuit,” I snap with an accompanying eye-roll.

“Good,” he says, jumping up from the bed. “That’s decided then. We’ll see you by the pool in five.”

“I … erm …” I stutter, but he’s already out the door.

I stare at the empty doorway, my heart still racing and my stomach still fluttering.

I mean, I could go for a swim. I have studied all morning. Sort of. And it is hot. Despite the blasting A/C, I’m positively boiling. Maybe a little swim, to cool me down, would help the revision. I’d come back to my notes all refreshed and able to focus.

Which is definitely the reason I’m heading for my wardrobe and flinging out every piece of swimwear I possess, and not the three tempting alphas down by the pool.