Beta Bully (F/M) - Chapter 8 Luca's POV (Winter Exclusive) (Patreon)

Hair Clip

Like a tiny rabbit, Darcy could slip out of Luca’s sight through the tiniest of gaps. It was infuriating. And she seemed to be putting in even more effort to avoid him since he had kissed her in the nurse’s office. The chase fuelled his wolf’s natural instinct to hunt her, and rewarded him with a natural high while he did. Every time he caught her the rush would really hit, though, normally to his dick. And then he wanted to do more than kiss her.

Luca was supposed to be in Chemistry. More importantly, he had lost sight of Darcy almost a full hour earlier. The corridors had cleared, allowing him to patrol them with purposeful strides. A teaching assistant spotted him from an office doorway, but quickly turned away at Luca’s irritated expression, daring him to approach and try to reprimand a beta.

Darcy was supposed to be in PE, but Luca ensured to glance down every corridor on his way there, just in case. Not a hint of her bouncy brown waves in sight.

The gym had only the teacher and one changed student waiting inside, so Luca slipped around behind the building to the changing rooms. He found a clean patch of wall to lean on and waited.

The submissive genders trickled from their changing room, long after the dominants had already made their way into the gym hall. A few of them started at the sight of him, but he kept his eyes on the doorway despite the stares he could feel on the side of his face. They were of no interest to him.

After a few minutes of empty doorway, Luca peered inside. Empty room. Her scent wasn’t present either. A tight feeling twisted its way up his guts. Darcy was not like him, she attended all of her classes. He was the only nuisance that could get in the way of that. He took off at top speed, taking a last look into the gym to make sure she hadn’t evaded him on her way in. There was no one small enough to be an omega in the group awaiting the teacher's announcement of their teams.

Luca tore through the school, looking into every classroom with a bold-eyed stare. A couple of the submissive-gendered teachers jolted if they spotted him looking in. Darcy was not in any of them. Every corridor was empty.

As he power-stomped through the locker hallway, a once-colourful piece of curled plastic caught his eye. Left on the floor amongst the dirt and litter was Darcy’s hair clip. Luca snatched it up, looking it over to confirm what he already knew. He would recognise it anywhere, it had sat on the top of Darcy’s head from the first day they met. And with how small she was, the top of her head was his most common view of her. Seeing it anywhere but attached to her was beyond worrying. The twisted feeling was turning into a knot inside of him. He dusted off any dirt from the plastic with the corner of his top, it only gave him a few seconds of distraction.

There was no where left to search.

His last resort was the front office, the old biddies there would be able to tell him if she’d gone home early. They weren’t supposed to give out that information, especially to a member of another pack, but older women loved a young, charming beta. He hurried there, the clip squashed in his fist.

Relief punched him in the face when the faint scent of his mate met him a few metres from the front office. A tiny omega with mousy-brown waves was crouched over the lost and found crate. No doubt searching for the very clip that was in his hand. Her hair was falling in her face without the clip to hold back the front section, she looked a little wild. And very flustered.

Flustered was Darcy’s default setting, though, so Luca strode over filled with silent confidence. He couldn’t wait to tease her and see even more of her adorable flustered reaction. Black eyes blown wide whenever she stared up at him. She was so innocent, it made it even more fun to play with her.

“Lose something?” he called out.

Darcy ignored him.

Darcy, his omega mate (according to MYSTIKA) was ignoring him, her beta. Either she needed her ears cleaning, or she stored her wolf hierarchy understanding in the clip. Her hands had stopped digging in the grim bin, she had definitely heard him.

“Your ears not working, puppy?” he suggested. He had lost his teasing tone, irritated by her attitude. He only wanted to give her back her clip. And make sure she was safe. Possibly escort her wherever she needed to go. Omega these days were so ungrateful.

Again, she pretended not to hear, staring straight ahead in her squat position. Luca was going to take a calming breath, just as his alpha often told him to, but his body moved instinctively first. He snatched her by the scruff, pinching the pink flesh between his fingers and pulling her upright. A sweet little noise squeaked out of her and he released the skin feeling just a little guilty. He wrapped his arm around her tiny waist, the one holding the clip. He popped the hand open to stick the stupid thing under her nose.

This time, she reacted. Darcy let out a gasp that almost morphed into a sob. Luca did not like the sound, it almost caused him to reflexively squeeze her. He thought she would be happy to have her old clip back, she wore it every day, it had to mean something. Instead, she sounded upset.

She spun inside the circle of his arm to face him and he realised he had read her reaction completely wrong. The relief on her round face turned his joints to goop. She was far too cute for her own good. It terrified him. He hadn’t even reached mate maturity yet and she had softened him into a dopey moron without any natural mate urges needed.

Once he turned eighteen, he was doomed. He would be eating out of her teeny tiny palm in public. And MYSTIKA could just be a kooky old crone. What would happen if she had just tricked him? If he fell in love with Darcy, only for his real mate to appear on his birthday? He didn’t like the thought of it being so easy to fall for anyone else but your mate. Maybe that’s why he chose to put all his eggs in MYSTIKA’s basket. He was probably too far gone now anyway. That terrified him even more.

“Where did you find it?” she croaked.

He shrugged as coolly as he could, but her reaction had stroked his ego just a little. Especially after being ignored. By his own mate, no less.

Possibly his mate, he corrected. He had to stop getting ahead of himself.

“Saw it on the floor,” he said.

“How did you know it was mine?” she asked, dark eyes full of wonder and partly covered in runaway locks of hair. He almost laughed at the question, as though he hadn’t seen her every day since they started high school, sat side-by-side.

“Never seen you without it.” He dropped his head down a little. She was always so far away, she needed a little stepping stool backpack to boost her up closer to him. “You’re practically naked,” he added directly into her ear. It turned pink immediately. “You should be more careful.” He lifted the clip and pinched it open. With his other hand he brushed back the loose strands of wavy hair that had fallen into her face. He twisted it back the same way she usually did and clipped it as carefully as he could. She didn’t wince, so he could only assume he hadn’t hurt her. With her face bare once again, he couldn’t resist pecking a kiss to her forehead. It turned pink, too.

“I didn’t lose it. It was stolen,” Darcy said, so softly he could have missed it with human ears.

He frowned, and repeated, “Stolen?”

“Your… friends. They tried to touch me. When I ran away they pulled it out of my hair.”

Luca’s blood boiled within him. A switch had been flicked, setting his body temperature to lava level. Those idiots he called his friends, a collection of misfit dominants that were only good at following barked orders. And they couldn’t even do that right now. He had ordered them all to stay away from Darcy, but he hadn’t told them why. Too risky. The humiliation of her not actually being his mate would kill him if MYSTIKA turned out to be a hoax. He’d never have any authority again. Those meat heads would learn, though. Luca would ensure it.

“How many?” he snarled. “What did they look like?”

The outline of Darcy’s body seemed to turn blurred. Her expression nauseas. The pink of her skin turned patchy. Luca couldn’t tell if she was reacting to the mere thought of those morons, or if her lunch was coming back for vengeance.

After a few awkward seconds of silence, she seemed to compose herself. “Two,” she said on a slow out-breath. “One was tall and gross. The other one was short and gross.”

A laugh slipped out against his best attempt to hold it in. He loved Darcy’s sassy side. If only she could be so upfront all the time. Now was not the time to laugh at something like this, though. He schooled his face again to promise her, “they won’t touch you again.”

“Thanks,” Darcy whispered.

Luca took a few of what his alpha called ‘puffs of peace’. Long breaths to level his head. He was a beta, it would be his duty one day to stand alongside the next alpha and help keep pack peace. At the very least he needed to get a grip on his own personal peace-keeping. Darcy watched him with wide eyes.

Once he had reduced the flames inside at least a little, he said, “I know you’ve been avoiding me. This is another reason why you need me nearby.”

She said nothing in return and it irritated him again. Being snubbed was bad enough, but his desperate craving for her attention only served to piss him off more. It wouldn’t matter if he didn’t want it so badly.

Darcy dropped her eyes in a sweet and submissive way to look at her interlocked fingers and Luca’s heart squeezed. He couldn’t even force himself to stay pissed.

He slipped his hands up to take hold of her jaw, pulling her up as far as her tiny body could stretch and lowering himself the rest of the way. Nose tips brushed. Hers soft and round, his pointed. He pressed in, sealing their lips. Darcy was watching him with fluttering lashes. Flustered and adorable as always. It sent a possessive shot through him, to clutch the cute thing close and claim it. He dug his fingers into her deeply curving sides and squeezed her in deeper. Soft, squishable skin was caged in against him. She would reek of him after this, and it satisfied something in his gut to know it. He bit her bottom lip and growled into her mouth to round off the claim. A pretty little whine had his dick jumping to attention. She twisted her face a little defiantly, rosy cheeked and eyes darting anywhere but his own. He kissed her more in retaliation.

A bang echoed down the hallway. The noise sent a jolt of ice-cold fear through his veins. Luca jumped back from her to check the intruder. An old man shuffled from one of the offices at the other end of the hallway and out of the building. It was no one he knew and hadn’t even given them a once-over. When he caught his breath, Darcy was running away yet again.

He followed. She seemed furious, but if it was because he pulled away, that was an important tactical manoeuvre. Gossip was worth more than gold in this school, mirroring pack mentalities. It would do no good to have people talking about them like that. Luckily, the teacher hadn’t even noticed them. Darcy should be celebrating. She said nothing, staring straight ahead as she walked.

She was very late for class once she had led him to the gym, and the teacher shoo’d him off like a pest when he approached the changing rooms. He did a wide loop of the building and snuck back to the entrance again, but Darcy hadn’t left the changing rooms. Her scent, mixed with his, was still coming from inside.

He waited against the wall until the end of the lesson to walk her to her bus. Her furious silence was all he got for gratitude. She hadn’t even thanked him for finding the clip. He watched her pack bus leave until it was completely out of sight before heading to his car.

He wasn’t a coward. People could know he had taken an interest in her. They could know he had ordered them to stay away from her. But he couldn’t go around shouting about MYSTIKA’s prediction. If there was even a one percent chance the old bat was wrong… he may never recover his pride back. He had to help lead a pack for the rest of his life, his reputation meant something. The respect he received from others would determine the way he fulfilled his role. With only a month to go, they could keep the relationship low for now. It wouldn’t do any harm if the psychic was right or wrong. Either way, they would find out on his birthday. Darcy couldn’t avoid him then.