No preamble. Just the address dropped like a dare. I check the map. Fifteen minutes on foot, campus-adjacent. The anticipation settles into my body, easy and warm and certain.
I grab my jacket off the hook. Close the sketchbook and shove it in my bag.
"Heading out," I tell Mars.
He looks up, looks at my face, and makes a sound that roughly translates to something I'm not going to repeat.
"Don't start."
"Don't be late tomorrow," he says, which is Mars for goodbye.
Halfway out the door, my actual phone buzzes. Mom. Her name on the screen, the photo from last Christmas. My thumb hovers over the green button. It's been a week since I called. Last time she called on a weeknight, it was about Dad. The new facility, the insurance, all the weight in her voice I couldn't do anything about from two hundred miles away. If I pick up now, it's an hour of things I can't fix, and I've got somewhere to be. I pocket the phone and let it ring. I'll call her tomorrow. It's fine. I'm fine. I'm always fine.
The walk takes fourteen minutes. Campus-adjacent streets, student apartments stacked on top of each other, music playing too loud out a window. The cool air feels good on my neck. I'm running through openers in my head. Something easy. Something that shows I'm not trying too hard. I'm betting his attitude holds up in person. Something about the way he texts tells me he'd be just as mean with his mouth, and the thought sends a rush of heat straight to my groin.
I find the building. Third floor. I take the elevator because showing up winded isn't the look I'm going for. Door 3C. I stop for a second, fix my beanie, run my tongue across my teeth. Do I look like I rolled out of bed looking this good, or does it look like I tried? The answer should always be the first one.
I knock twice.
Light footsteps inside. A lock turning.
The door starts to open, and the scent hits me before I even see a face.
It hits me like a physical blow. My knees go soft. My cock goes painfully hard against my zipper. The air spilling outof the apartment is thick with something warm and sweet, underscored by a sharp, familiar edge. My brain flatlines. Every smooth line I rehearsed evaporates. I'm leaning forward, my heart hammering against my ribs, my hand still raised to knock on a door that's already opening.
I'm standing on the threshold with absolutely nothing.
Benji
I’ve been pacing for twelve minutes, I’ve changed my shirt twice, and I look incredible. Which isn’t the point. Except it is absolutely the point, because when I open this door and Knox Rivera sees the omega he ghosted standing here looking like the best thing he ever threw away, I want the image to ruin his life.
The apartment is empty. Shay’s at the library, Soren’s at a study group, and I made sure not to talk them out of it. This is a solo operation. I don’t need witnesses for what I’m about to do. The plan is clean: open the door, let him see my face, watch his cocky little hookup smirk fall apart, deliver the line I’ve been rehearsing for an hour—I haven’t settled on the exact wording yet, but it involves the phrase "you're a fucking joke" and ends with the door closing in his face—and then I’m done. The catfish of the century, pulled off by an omega with a grudge, a fake profile, and exactly zero forgiveness.
I check the mirror one more time. Black skinny jeans, the ones that make my ass look like a weapon. My good band tee with the sleeves rolled up. The blue streak in my hair is fresh, my nosering is catching the light, and I look like someone you’d kill to keep. Exactly the aesthetic I’m going for.
My pulse is running fast. I tell myself it’s adrenaline, not nerves. This is going to be good. This is going to be so fucking good.
The knock comes. Two sharp raps, and my heart slams against my ribs so hard my teeth ache.
I take a breath, fix my face into a deadpan glare, and walk to the door.
I pull it open. Knox is standing in my hallway.
Even though I planned this—engineered it, pulled every string to get him here—seeing him in person after six months hits me somewhere I wasn’t braced for. He’s in a dark jacket and a beanie, his tattoos crawling up past his collar, taking up the entire doorframe the way he takes up every room he walks into. My body reacts before my brain gets a vote. Heat pools in my stomach. A heavy tug low in my gut. I shove it down. I’m not here for that.
His face does the thing I came for. That easy, insufferable hookup smile freezes, glitches, and crashes. His dark eyes go wide. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. I watch the recognition land: confusion first, then the drop. The exact moment he understands who he’s been messaging, who lured him here, who’s standing in this doorway with six months of rage behind his teeth.
"You—" he starts.
This is my moment. I open my mouth, the revenge line right there on my tongue, ready to go.
Then his scent hits me.
It doesn’t build. It doesn’t arrive gradually. It crashes through the open door. I’ve smelled Knox before—months ago, in a packed bar, three drinks deep, his scent mixed with a hundred other people—and it was still the best thing I’d ever breathed.But that was noise. This is a quiet hallway. I’m stone-cold sober, there is nothing between us, and he smells like ink, metal, and pure, unfiltered alpha. It gets into my lungs and my blood, and I can’t fucking think.
My knees go soft. My skin prickles everywhere at once. Slick floods between my thighs so fast I gasp—hot, immediate, soaking into the cotton of my underwear in seconds. My cock jerks hard against my zipper. My hands are trembling, and every part of me that I keep leashed and quiet goes completely feral. Not purring. Screaming. And the word it’s screaming ismate.
I refuse to hear it.