He didn’t think so.
2
Greg
Greg strode along the chemistry building corridors, glowering down at his phone.
On the screen, a voicemail awaited: one minute and thirty seconds of a message from his father, the president of Meadowfall College. Greg hadn’t listened to it yet, and he didn’t want to. Half of it would be about his future. The other half would be about finding a good omega, like Greg hadn’t heard it a hundred times over.
He wove between the students, nodding at the people who waved. Then he stepped into an empty spot between a potted plant and a pillar, glancing down at his phone.
On the lock screen, there was an old photo of himself and Tony, back when they were still in high school. In that picture, he and Tony had been dicking around on a rowboat at the Salton Sea, back on that camping trip four years ago. Before the fire.
Greg swallowed, tapping the passcode to unlock the screen.
He probably shouldn’t still be using that photo. But his grief had faded with time, and the picture was a reminder of his mistakes. He needed to remember not to make promises, not to stupidly think the future would always be there for him.
Greg scrolled through his email, glancing briefly at the basketball team’s newsletter. They’d named him MVP. Kind of cool, really.
He wished he had someone he could tell outside of the basketball team. Maybe his mom.
It was three minutes before the lecture when he glanced around, waiting for Professor Kinney to show up. Kinney was almost always late, and Greg didn’t expect him to appear until a minute before the bell rang. His stomach flipped anyway.
Since he spotted Dale Kinney last semester, rushing out of a lecture hall in a fluster, Greg had developed a bit of a crush. But the professor wasn’t here yet, and he might as well get the voicemail over with.
“Haven’t heard from you lately, Greg,” his father said in the recording, his voice tinny. “I hope you’re doing well with your classes.”
As the college president, Bernard Hastings was one of the highest-ranked alphas in Meadowfall, rubbing shoulders frequently with the mayor, the police chief, and other important alphas. Greg understood why his father placed such importance on education.
But Greg didn’t want to hear him talk about the future. His dad hadn’t been there when the vacation cabin burned down. Bernard hadn’t seen Tony gasp for breath, hadn’t seen Greg carry him out of the fire, pumping his chest, trying desperately to make him breathe.
Four years ago, Bernard Hastings had found his son at the hospital, burns on his calves. He’d taken Greg to the morgue. He knew Greg no longer believed in a future, but he’d been pushing Greg to find an omega anyway.
As though Greg could promise an omega his future, when he couldn’t even save his best friend.
“You’ll have to decide on a major soon, Gregory,” his father said on the voicemail. “You need to focus. Make the most of your life. You’ll get nowhere if all you do is finish Year One of ten different majors.”
Yeah, well. It wasn’t like Greg knew what he wanted to do right now. He hadn’t been able to concentrate in med school. Then he’d tried law, and it was damn boring. So he’d switched to chemistry last year, and it had seemed interesting. Quiet. Not quite as rigorous with the schoolwork.
“Your mother and I have discussed it. If you don’t find an omega by the end of this year, we’ll match you up with someone.”
Greg pulled the phone away from his ear, his pulse thudding. His dad had said the same thing through his previous course change. But this time, Greg wasn’t planning on jumping ship.
Not with Dale Kinney as his professor.
He hit Delete on the voicemail, then shoved the phone into his pocket, looking up. And there, on the other end of the atrium, Dale Kinney hurried out from a stairwell, a harried frown on his face.
For an instant, Greg forgot to breathe.
Professor Kinney was a lithe man, his auburn hair threaded with gray, his eyes striking green. He was half a head shorter than Greg, with a pair of steel-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, his lab coat fluttering around his thighs.
But what Greg liked about him was how easily he could read this man, how Kinney’s lips pursed when he frowned, how his hibiscus scent teased when Kinney brushed by. He was pretty. He seemed lonely. With him around, Greg didn’t have to think about his dad, or Tony.
Kinney stopped by the lecture doors, rubbing his nose.
Greg had been in Kinney’s office twice. Unlike his father’s office, there had been no plaques in it, only a mess of paperwork, some picture frames, and Kinney’s laptop. And that plush red couch in the corner that smelled like hibiscus, even though it looked like no one had spent any time on it.
Greg would bet a hundred bucks Kinney slept over in his office, all curled up on that couch, and he woke with his hair mussed and his shirt rumpled, and none of his thoughts were about how to get rich, or rank higher, or any of that crap.
And unlike all the other omegas Greg’s age, Dale Kinney had no idea how to react when Greg asked him out for coffee. He fumbled and stuttered and always said no, but Greg’s instincts said Dale was interested.
Except the professor also smelled like birch, like that alpha TA in his lab, and gods fucking damnit, Greg was jealous of that woman. He wanted Kinney. Wanted this omega as his own, wanted to pin him and kiss him and taste those lips.
The professor frowned up at the lit In Progress sign above the double doors. The students from the previous lecture were starting to trickle out. And this always happened to Kinney’s classes, somehow. The other professors seemed to know he always ran late,
