Page 66 of For What It's Worth
“It’s true then?” Professor Stockfield demanded. Several classmates had stopped making their way inside to watch our interaction.
“Is what true, Professor?” I did my best to look innocent, but the scent of his hatred, matched with his glare, made me glad Jen wasn’t here to see it. Usually Stockfield ignored the betas, graded us harder, but he mostly kept his opinions to himself. Having passed as a beta for my whole life, it wasn’t really unique treatment, but more like the expectation.
“You took a perfectly good alpha for your selfish self?”
I opened my mouth to agree, but Aidan beat me to it. “She didn’t take anything,” he growled.
Aidan was quick to anger. I’d been exposed to Separatist alphas, and even some betas, as long as I could remember. Even if no one had directly spoken this harshly to me before, I’d witnessed it. Seen it in media. Watched it happen to other students. I’d been too afraid to help them. But in a world that treated alphas with respect, Aidan wasn’t equipped to handle toxic elites. And I didn’t know how to stand up for myself against someone who controlled if I graduated. With that thought, panic seeped in.
Professor Stockfield snorted, his disgusted gaze turning toward Aidan. The two alphas sized one another up, but the posturing between them was quick. Aidan was younger, stronger, and more dominant. When Professor Stockfield tore his gaze away, he sneered at me but didn’t say anything else, which was a miracle itself. I didn’t doubt Aidan was the reason he didn’t give me a detailed description of how he felt regarding my life choices.
Aidan’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he got it out, handing it to me without even looking at the screen.
“Hello, Jen,” I said, tentatively. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but worrying him was my fault.
“What happened, Koda bear.” It wasn’t a question but a demand for answers. Jenson’s strict teacher-voice sent a shiver down my spine, letting me know if he wasn’t pleased with my answer I wouldn’t be going to my next class. The students that had stopped had already moved on, but we still had some passersby staring and whispering.
“Nothing. Aidan handled it.” It wasn’t really a lie even if it wasn’t the truth. The silence on the other end of the phone stretched for so long I pulled it away from my ear to make sure he hadn’t hung up on me. “Alpha?”
“I don’t like not knowing, little bear. And I know if you’re hiding what happened, you think I might take you home, so I’m trying to stay calm and not demand answers or just say, ‘fuck it’ and go find you.”
Jen let out a frustrated exhale before asking to speak with Aidan. We said goodbye again and, surprisingly, tears threatened to fall when I handed the phone over. I pressed my forehead against Aidan’s chest, almost like I was resting, as I tried to fight back the burn in my eyes and down my nose. I listened to the gentle purr and the reassuring tone of Aidan’s voice, both helping to remind my instincts I was fine.
When Aidan finally hung up, he said, “I didn’t except such overt anger.” I didn’t have anything to say about that, and there wasn’t really anything to say. “Your class is about to start. Are you ready?” His eyes looked between mine, waiting for my verbal answer as much as he was watching and scenting my reaction.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Aidan nodded and held the door open for me.
All the classrooms were set up the same, with a desk set up for the teacher in front of either a projection or a whiteboard or occasionally both. Chairs with a little platform, typically on the side which could be pulled up, filled the rest of the room. Whereas Jen’s classroom you entered from the back and had to walk down the stairs to get to the teacher’s desk, Professor Stockfield’s door was right next to his desk, making the students walk up the steps to find a seat.
When Aidan and I walked in, Professor Stockfield was clearing his voice in his signal he was going to start class.
Instead of waiting for him to comment, I made a beeline to the stairs and started climbing. I took a seat against the wall so Aidan could have my other side. While my alpha started unpacking his laptop, I looked up, feeling eyes on me.
Professor Stockfield was glaring in our direction, and I could actually see him considering kicking Aidan out of the class.
Some of the students noticed him looking in my direction and turned around to figure out what was distracting our diligent professor from starting class. But they only saw me and Aidan. Just when the whisperings started, Professor Stockfield got his focus back and started class, managing to ignore me for the rest of the time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Now that classes for the day were done, we were finally all home, and I felt the weight of the day fall off. My back and shoulders felt sore, like the tension I had carried all day was too heavy for me to bear.
I was adding the finishing touches to an essay due later tonight, sitting at the kitchen bar despite the perfectly available studying somewhere in the house. Jen had showed me all the studies that I could’ve used, but I’d wanted to be near my alphas, not tucked away. Of course, I could’ve done that at the dining table, but it looked too fancy for me to be hunched over, reading the same sentence again and again. I couldn’t figure out why it sounded like I’d had a stroke in the middle of explaining which quantities were worth paying attention to and which should be ignored.
I let out a frustrated exhale, making Enzo laugh. All of my alphas were in the kitchen with me—Enzo cooking, Jen setting up his lecture for tomorrow, and Aidan on a phone call with some new-name whiskey distributor who wanted to be sold in his clubs.
“Need a break, Orsetta?” Enzo didn’t try lowering his voice at all, which had Aidan glaring at him.
Of course, Aidan didn’t leave. He just returned to tapping his pencil against his mostly blank notepad.
I nodded to Enzo, shutting my laptop—property of Braker Academy—and placed my head on it.
“Here. I made them to go with dinner, but you can dig in now. Just don’t tell my mamma.”
I grabbed the thin breadstick, expecting it to be soft and fluffy but finding it more like the consistency of a hard pretzel. Little crumbs fell on my laptop when I broke off a piece, but it tasted really good.
“You made these? Like, from scratch?” I whispered.