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

Hair Barrette

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

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 his 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. Darcy's scent wasn’t present either. A tight feeling twisted its way up his guts. Darcy was not like him, he attended all of his classes. Luca 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 Darcy hadn’t evaded him on his 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 thin plastic caught his eye. Left on the floor amongst the dirt and litter was Darcy’s barrette. Luca snatched it up, looking it over to confirm what he already knew. Luca would recognise it anywhere, it had sat on the top of Darcy’s head from the first day they met. And with how small he was, the top of his head was his most common view of him. Seeing it anywhere but attached to him was beyond worrying. The twisted feeling was turning into a knot inside of him. Luca dusted off any dirt from the plastic with the corner of his top, it only gave him a few seconds of distraction.

There was nowhere left to search.

His last resort was the front office, the old biddies there would be able to tell him if Darcy had 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. Luca hurried there, the barrette 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 barrette that was in his hand. Darcy's hair was falling in his face without the barrette to hold back the front section, he 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 him and see even more of his adorable flustered reactions. Black eyes blown wide whenever he stared up at him. Darcy was so innocent, it made it even more fun to play with him.

“Lose something?” he called out.

Darcy ignored him.

Darcy, his omega mate (according to MYSTIKA) was ignoring him, his beta. Either he needed his ears cleaning, or he stored his wolf hierarchy understanding in his hair accessory. Darcy's hands had stopped digging in the grim bin, he had definitely heard him.

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

Again, Darcy pretended not to hear, staring straight ahead in his 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 Darcy by the scruff, pinching the pink flesh between his fingers and pulling him upright. A sweet little noise squeaked out of him and Luca released the skin feeling just a little guilty. He wrapped his arm around Darcy’s tiny waist, the one holding the barrette. He popped the hand open to stick the stupid thing under his nose.

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

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

Once he turned eighteen, he was doomed. Luca would be eating out of Darcy’s teeny tiny palm publicly. 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? Luca 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. Luca was probably too far gone now anyway. That terrified him even more.

“Where did you find it?” Darcy croaked.

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

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

“Saw it on the floor,” he said.

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

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

Luca 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. Luca had ordered them all to stay away from Darcy, but he hadn’t told them why. Too risky. The humiliation of Darcy not actually being his mate would kill him if MYSTIKA turned out to be a hoax. Luca would 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. His expression nauseas. The pink of his skin turned patchy. Luca couldn’t tell if he was reacting to the mere thought of those morons, or if his lunch was coming back for vengeance.

After a few awkward seconds of silence, he seemed to compose himself. “Two,” he 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. Luca loved Darcy’s sassy side. If only he could be so upfront all the time. Now was not the time to laugh at something like this, though. Luca schooled his face again to promise him, “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. Luca was a beta, so 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.”

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

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

Luca slipped his hands up to take hold of Darcy’s jaw, pulling him up as far as his tiny body could stretch and lowering himself the rest of the way. Nose tips brushed. Darcy's soft and round, his pointed. Luca 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. Luca dug his fingers into Darcy’s slightly curving sides and squeezed him in tighter. Soft, squishable skin was caged in against his. Darcy would reek of him after this, and it satisfied something in his gut to know it. He bit Darcy’s bottom lip and growled into his mouth to round off the claim. A pretty little whine had his dick jumping to attention. Darcy twisted his face a little defiantly, rosy cheeked and eyes darting anywhere but his own. Luca kissed him more in retaliation.

A bang echoed down the hallway. The noise sent a jolt of ice-cold fear through his veins. Luca jumped back 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.

Luca followed. He 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. Instead, he said nothing, staring straight ahead as he walked.

Darcy was very late for class once he had led his back to the gym, and the teacher shoo’d Luca 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. Darcy's scent, mixed with his, was still coming from inside.

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

Luca wasn’t a coward. People could know he had taken an interest in Darcy. They could know he had ordered them to stay away from him. 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. Luca 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.