Oops, You Bullied the Alpha Queen novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Cold Lake

Mercy holds back the shift in a freezing lake, the Alpha pulls her out and his wolf knows her, and the morning roster makes her Peyton's personal omega.

The lake was black and flat, with mist lying on it.

I didn't stop at the edge.

I walked straight in, boots and jacket and all.

The cold hit my shins like a slammed door.

Then my knees. Then my waist.

My wolf screamed inside me.

She wanted out, and the moonflower was holding the door open for her.

I went under.

Cold is the oldest trick there is. My father taught it to me in the river below Stonecrop when I was nine.

A wolf can't shift when every muscle is busy shaking.

I came up gasping and went under again.

The ring burned so hot the water around my thumb fizzed.

I counted.

Thirty. Forty. Sixty.

My fingers stopped working. My teeth sounded like dice.

The pull in my spine eased, one notch at a time.

I came up the last time and the ring had gone pink instead of white.

I was going to make it.

Then I tried to stand, and my legs didn't answer.

The mud took my boots.

I went under without meaning to.

A hand closed on the back of my jacket and hauled me up into the air.

"I've got you."

Cade Halloway stood waist-deep in the lake in his clothes, holding me up by the collar.

"What are you doing?" he said. "It's forty degrees."

"Swimming."

"In your boots."

"I'm modest."

He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh and pulled me against his chest.

He walked us out of the water.

On the bank he set me down, stripped off his canvas jacket and wrapped it around me.

It was warm from him. It smelled of cedar.

I stopped shaking long enough to breathe.

"Who was it?" he said.

"Who was what?"

"Who chased you down here? Was it Hagan? Was it Peyton's crowd?"

He crouched in front of me with his hands on my arms.

He thought I was hiding.

He thought an omega had run into a lake in the dark to get away from bullies.

It was the best lie I'd been handed all day, so I took it.

"Doesn't matter," I said.

"It matters to me."

"Why? I'm in the wrong room, remember."

"You're on my land, in my lake, drowning. That makes it my room."

I looked up at him.

He had water in his eyelashes. His wet T-shirt clung to his chest.

His hands were warm on my arms through the jacket.

Then his eyes changed.

The brown went gold from the center out, like a struck match.

His wolf was looking at me.

Not at an omega. At me.

Through the ring, through the cold, through the lake water.

My own wolf, who I'd just spent ten minutes drowning, lifted her head and leaned toward him.

He let go of me so fast I nearly fell over.

He stood up and took two steps back.

"Go to the infirmary," he said. His voice had gone rough. "Tell them I sent you."

"I'm fine."

"You're blue."

"I'm told that's my color."

He didn't smile this time.

He was staring at me.

"Keep the jacket," he said.

Then he turned and walked up the path toward the ridge, wet to the waist, and didn't look back once.

I sat on the bank and pulled his jacket tighter.

The ring was cool again.

My wolf was not.

She was pacing.

Lark found me ten minutes later with a flashlight and a towel.

"I thought you'd drowned! Why does your eyeball do that? Is that an allergy?"

"Your mom didn't send that tea."

She stopped.

"What?"

"Moonflower. It forces a shift. It'd make you shift too, but you drank cocoa."

She sat down hard on the wet grass.

"Who'd waste moonflower on an omega? It costs a fortune."

"Somebody who thinks I'm worth it."

She looked at the jacket I was wearing.

"Is that Coach Halloway's jacket?"

"He fished me out."

"He touched you?"

"He held me up by the collar. Like a kitten."

"Mercy, that man doesn't touch anybody. Peyton's been trying to touch that man since she was nineteen."

We walked back up the path together.

I left his jacket folded on my bunk.

I didn't sleep.

At six in the morning the service roster went up on the board outside the dining hall.

Omegas crowded in front of it to see their jobs.

Kitchen. Laundry. Gym floors. Bathrooms.

The twins got the laundry again.

Lark got the bathrooms again.

And at the bottom, typed in bold, a line nobody had ever seen on a roster before.

RAINIER, M. Personal omega to Peyton Daltrey. Effective immediately. Thirty days.

Behind me, somebody laughed.

I turned around.

Peyton stood at the top of the dining hall steps in a fresh pink cardigan, holding an empty coffee cup out to me.

"Extra hot," she said. "Two sugars. And this time you kneel when you hand it over."

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