Oops, You Bullied the Alpha Queen novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Kneel
On her first day the new omega refuses to kneel for the Beta's daughter and drops the varsity captain in front of the class, then sees who's standing beside the Beta at the pack assembly.
The first thing I saw at Madrone Ridge College was a girl on her knees, wiping coffee off a boy's boots with her own sleeve.
The second thing I saw was the boy laughing.
He sat on a desk in a green varsity jacket with MR stitched on the chest.
A blonde girl in a pink cardigan leaned against the lockers beside him, filming on her phone.
"Slower," she said. "Get the laces too."
The girl on the floor had a brown ponytail and a navy hoodie two sizes too big.
Her hands were shaking.
Half the class watched. The other half pretended not to.
Nobody moved.
I stood in the doorway with my bag on my shoulder and the transfer slip in my hand.
It said OMEGA in red letters across the top.
The blonde girl saw me and lowered the phone.
She smiled.
"Oh good. The new one."
She sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose.
"Omega. Smells like a basement."
The boy in the jacket laughed again.
"Omegas kneel when a warrior walks in," the blonde girl said. "That's the rule here. There's more coffee on the floor. Lick it up, new girl."
The girl in the hoodie looked up at me.
Her eyes said, please just do it.
I looked at the puddle.
Then I looked at the blonde girl.
"No."
The room went quiet in a way I knew very well.
It was the quiet before a fight.
The blonde girl blinked.
"Sorry, what?"
"No," I said again.
I walked over, put my hand under the hoodie girl's elbow and lifted her to her feet.
Her sleeve was soaked brown to the wrist.
"You're done," I told her.
"Rhett," the blonde girl said.
She said it.
The boy slid off the desk.
He was big, maybe two hundred and twenty pounds, with a grin that had never been told no.
"Peyton asked you nicely," he said.
Then he grabbed the collar of my leather jacket.
The ring on my right thumb went hot.
It was a plain band of pale moonstone, and for the next thirty days it was the only thing standing between this boy and my wolf.
I felt her lift her head inside me.
I told her no.
So I didn't use her.
I used my hands.
I caught his wrist, turned my hip into him and stepped through.
His own weight did the rest.
He went over my shoulder and hit the floor flat on his back.
The desk he'd been sitting on went over with him.
Somebody gasped.
Somebody else said, "Holy crap."
Rhett lay there with his mouth open and coffee soaking into the back of his famous jacket.
I let go of his wrist.
The ring was burning now, a line of fire around my thumb.
I breathed until it cooled.
"She's an omega," Peyton said to the room. Her voice had gone high. "She can't do that. Omegas can't do that."
"Then I guess I didn't," I said.
"What is going on in here?"
A man stood in the doorway.
He was tall, with dark messy hair, a black canvas jacket and scarred knuckles.
Every wolf in the room dropped their eyes.
Even Peyton.
I didn't, and that was my first mistake of the day.
His dark eyes moved from Rhett on the floor, to the puddle, to the wet sleeve, to me.
They stayed on me a beat too long.
"Coach Halloway," Peyton said quickly. "The new omega attacked Rhett."
"Did she."
"He grabbed her first," the hoodie girl said.
Everyone turned to look at her.
She wanted to die.
She didn't take it back.
The coach looked at the coffee on Rhett's boots, and the coffee on her sleeve, and did the math.
"Hagan. Detention. Two weeks."
"For what?" Rhett said from the floor.
"For getting thrown by somebody half your size in my classroom."
A few people laughed, then stopped fast.
The coach looked at me again.
"Name."
"Mercy Rainier."
"You're in the wrong room, Rainier. Omegas aren't allowed in combat."
"Nobody told me."
"I'm telling you."
He held the door open.
I walked out past him, close enough to smell cedar and cold air on his jacket.
Something in my chest pulled toward him.
I kept walking.
The hoodie girl caught up with me in the hallway.
"I'm Lark," she said. "You're insane. Also thank you. Also Peyton is going to kill you."
"She can try."
"No, you don't get it. Her dad's the Beta. He runs the board. He runs everything."
"Who was the coach?"
Lark looked at me.
"That's Cade Halloway. He's the Alpha."
That night the whole pack gathered in the gym for assembly.
Four hundred wolves on the bleachers.
The omegas stood at the back by the doors. Lark showed me where.
Cade stood at center court with a letter in his hand.
I knew that letter.
I'd sealed it myself, four days ago, three hundred miles north.
"The Queen of the Forty-Nine has written to us," he said.
The gym went dead silent.
"She says Madrone Ridge is the last free pack in the Cascades. She says by the full moon, we'll be hers."
Somebody on the bleachers growled.
Cade folded the letter.
"Forty-nine packs knelt to her. We won't. When the Queen comes at the full moon, she'll find me waiting."
The gym roared.
Lark grabbed my arm and whispered, "He'll die. Everybody says she's a monster. Eight feet tall. Eats Alphas."
"I heard she's shorter than that," I said.
A heavy man in a gray suit stepped up beside Cade and raised a hand.
Peyton sat in the front row, smiling up at him.
"The Beta," Lark whispered. "Her dad."
"One more piece of business," the Beta said. "The new moon Run is in two weeks. Our newest omega will run first."
He looked straight at the back of the gym.
"Welcome, Miss Rainier."
Four hundred heads turned to look at me.
I didn't look at them.
I was looking at the man who had just stepped out of the shadows at the Beta's shoulder.
Sandy hair. Short beard. A long dark wool coat.
He had taught me to throw a punch when I was twelve.
He had knelt to me as my Beta four years ago and sworn to guard my packs while I was gone.
Garrick Barrowcliff was supposed to be three hundred miles north.
He bent and said something in the Beta's ear.
Then he looked across the whole gym, found my face, and smiled.
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