Page 25 of Daughter of Garnet

“Wait, Zoe⁠—‚”

“I'm fine, Viv. Seriously. Stay and have fun.”

She tries to convince me to stick around, but once she drains her third drink, I convince her to agree to hang out without me. If she had pushed much harder, I would’ve caved and let her come back with me, and I really want to be alone right now.

Every interaction I have with an Alpha makes it harder and harder for me to tell myself that what happened during my ceremony was my imagination.

I replay that day over and over in my head.

I stripped off my robe and handed it to one of the high priests, and then touched the first stone, counted to five in my head, and then moved to the next. I felt nothing when I pressed my hand to the pearl, quartz, or emerald, but I followed the rules.

And then I touched the garnet, and warmth traveled through my body.

My body didn't change, though. I didn’t burst out of my skin, becoming a beast that I would have to learn to coexist with.

All it was was a voice in the back of my mind that told me to take my robe, so I did.

It was my subconscious.

That’s the only explanation.

Except…

“Good, Omega. Tell no one.”

Why would my subconscious say that?

I’m nearing the edge of the forest when a hand wraps around my bicep and pulls me against a hard chest. My hands go up to push him away, but I recognize Ray’s cologne, and the familiarity makes me pause.

Before I can shout, demand he let me go, he wraps an arm around my waist and claims my lips in a brutal kiss. It’s not gentle or romantic. It’s wild, animalistic, and uninhibited. For a moment, I’m frozen, and then I lean into the sensation, parting my lips when his tongue traces them.

My body is betraying me, and I grow slick between my thighs as my senses are flooded with him. I want to purr, to wrap my leg around his waist and rub myself against him, hoping that he is as affected by this as I am.

I gasp into his mouth as he nips at my bottom lip, a growl rumbling in his chest and making my knees weak.

His kiss is so rough that my back is bending with every press of his lips. But his grip on my waist is solid, and I am not at risk of falling over. For the first time in weeks, my mind is quiet, and all I have to worry about is the way he dominates my mouth with every breath.

I have no idea how much time has passed when we break apart, and I stand panting, my fingers still clenched in his shirt.

Words escape me. I want to yell at him for touching me, to call him a dick, but a larger, louder part of me wants to pull him back to me, to taste him again, to drown in him.

Ray’s chest is heaving as he dislodges my grip on his shirt and steps away. In the moonlight, I can see a wildness in his eyes, as if his beast were barely below the surface. His lip curls as he drags his eyes up my figure before lingering on my swollen, tender lips.

“I guess the fucking perfume works.”

And then he stomps away, leaving me with a churning feeling in my gut that begs me to scream at him to come back.

CHAPTER 14

Zoe

As much as I know that I need to be doing research for my anthropology course and running through practice problems for calculus, I’ve got my nose in Fate of the Fire.

I can’t shake the feeling that there is something in here I need to know. Something important. Will I know it when I see it?

I woke up with the sun this morning and have been holed up in the library since. I know I'll have to grab something to eat at some point, but I want to avoid that for as long as I can. After Ray kissed me last night, I don’t want to risk running into Viv.

What do I tell her? That after berating me publicly, her brother hid in the woods, then grabbed me and kissed my brains out?