The library was blissfully cool when I stepped inside, the A/C humming like a lullaby for my nerves. The scent of paper and disinfectant filled the air, blessedly sterile compared to the storm that had brewed in my dorm just two days ago.
The shameful, stupid storm. God. I’d barely slept since.
It had been an experiment, I’d been telling myself firmly. A one-time application of my studies in real time. Yes, it had been wildly unprofessional, but the dangers had been mostly mitigated by the controlled environment of my dorm and I’d kept control over the situation. And the academic results were undeniable. Max Vaughn, the walking meathead paradox, had actually learned something.
More importantly, he’d felt confident in himself.
I hadn’t thought it possible that he, of all people, could lack confidence. Yet there he was, nearly reduced to tears by calculus in my dorm room—a moment I’m still convinced involved actual tears, though I had a feeling he’d never admit it. While I firmly believed a bit of humility could only benefit an alpha as insufferably cocky as Max Vaughn, witnessing it firsthand had been… well, horrifying. Utterly, bone-deep horrifying.
That was why I’d allowed it. Why I’d entertained his ridiculous, pleading expression and taken my patch off. To give him confidence. Not because the idea of his brain responding to me was fascinating in ways I didn’t dare unpack and certainly not because I was curious how far it could go. And definitely not because the idea of Max relying on me, of needing me, had stirred something deep in my chest.
I set my bag down on the table in the corner I’d reserved for us, unpacking my materials with mechanical precision. Today's tutoring session was going to be different, because it had to be. Max would learn the way every other student learned: through persistence, repetition, and discipline. Not by exploiting scent dynamics.
I was halfway through arranging my pens when I heard his heavy footsteps echo across the floor. He was wearing that stupid Ridgeline Athletics hoodie again, and it looked even more rumpled than usual, like he’d slept in it. His hair was messy in a way that was definitely intentional, but his eyes looked… off. He had dark circles under them, and there was a restless energy in the way he dropped into the chair across from me.
“Vaughn,” I said crisply, adjusting my glasses. “You’re late.”
“Sorry,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. “Didn’t sleep great.”
I ignored the pang in my chest. His sleeplessness wasn’t my fault. “That’s not an excuse to waste my time,” I said snippily, flipping open my notebook to the study worksheet we’d left off on. “Let’s get started. What’s the derivative of x squared?”
Max blinked at me, then groaned, slumping forward onto the table. “I can’t think right now.”
And the laziness was back. Great.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You have to think, Vaughn. It’s Saturday, and your test is Monday. If you don’t pass—”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted, huffing out a sigh. “Coach benches me, scholarship at risk, yadda yadda. Can we not?”
“Can you focus?” I snapped, my patience already thinning. A small part of me had hoped that despite the unprofessionalism of yesterday's session, it would've... I don't know, caused some sort of breakthrough? But obviously not. He may as well have been a broken record, playing an endless loop of self-pity and lack of effort.
Max fidgeted, his knee bouncing under the table. “It’s just… it’s hard, okay? Today’s the rivalry game. My team’s out there without me, and I’m stuck here doing this. It’s messing with my head.”
A lesser omega might've simpered under the pout—yes, a whole pout—he slanted at me, but I folded my hands over my notebook and leveled him with a glare. I refused to entertain any more excuses.
“Then perhaps you should have considered your academic responsibilities before failing calculus."
His jaw tightened, and for a moment, I thought he was going to argue. But then he just exhaled sharply, leaning back in his chair. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”
“Gladly,” I said, flipping to the next problem. “What’s the derivative of 5x to the third?”
Max stared at the paper like it was written in ancient Greek. “Uh…”
I waited. He squirmed.
“Is it, uh, fifteen x squared?” he guessed.
“That’s correct,” I said, my tone clipped. “See? You’re capable when you actually—”
“I was just guessing,” he admitted, cutting me off. Frustration sparked in my chest and I barely resisted the urge to snap my teeth at him.
My hand curled into a fist. “You’re impossible,” I muttered under my breath. “Do you want to fail?”
“No, I don’t,” he snapped, leaning forward suddenly. “You know what I do want? I want to take your patch off again.”
The words hit me like a slap, and for a moment, I could only stare at him, aghast that he'd made such a statement aloud. My heart skipped a beat. “Excuse me?” I said, my voice low and sharp. "You what?"
It was like his entire demeanor changed. Instead of petulant and slouchy, he squared his shoulders as he leaned even closer, his eyes drilling into me like lasers. The expression on his face was... intense, in a way I didn't entirely know how to process.
“You heard me,” he said, matching my quiet tone, his jaw set stubbornly. “It worked last time, didn’t it? I actually learned something. Let’s just do it again."
For a moment, I thought I’d heard him wrong.
Yesterday I'd assured him that he wasn't dumb, but now I was having second thoughts. Was he serious? Did he think I was dumb? Taking my patch off in the privacy of my dorm was one thing, but to repeat the same mistake in a public space, where any alpha could walk in and scent me…
It wasn't just inappropriate, it was appallingly irresponsible. To think that he thought he could simply ask for such a thing. I needed to shut it down. Right now. Being unpatched on campus property was grounds for expulsion, full stop.
“No,” I said immediately, my voice trembling with barely contained anger. “That was wildly inappropriate. It will not happen again.”
Max’s expression darkened, and he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why not? You said it yourself—omega scent stimulates the brain or whatever. You studied this stuff. You know it works.”
I did know how it worked, enough to know patch-wearing was mandated for a very good reason. And I'd even told him that yesterday—sort of. And here he was, less than twenty-four hours later, already demanding another hit of me like my scent was some sort of drug.
“That’s not the point,” I snapped. “There are boundaries, Vaughn. Boundaries that you’re clearly incapable of respecting.”
“Boundaries?” he repeated, his voice rising. “Oh, so it’s fine for you to take your patch off, but if I even suggest—”
“I said no,” I cut him off, my voice downright icy.
The tension between us crackled like static. The energy pouring off him didn't belong to the happy-go-lucky, goofball version of Max that I'd come to expect. In this moment, he looked every bit the alpha he was—demanding, entitled, and intense. I knew he wanted me to yield, to give in, but I wasn't going to.
I glared back at him with a straight spine, willing him to get it out of his thick skull that I was going to simply fall at his feet or melt into a puddle under his alpha influence. Unfortunately for him, it would take so much more than an alpha who couldn't do basic math to cow me.
Max’s snarl rattled out into the air—a low, ugly, deep-throated noise that sent a shiver down my spine. The moment stretched impossibly long, every sound muffled but the rushing of blood in my ears.
I looked down, intending to redirect his attention to the next problem. But when I looked back up at him, I caught sight of his hand moving to his neck, fingers curling around the edge of his patch. As if he… no, surely he wouldn’t be so stupid?
“Vaughn—”
There was a split second—a heartbeat—where I almost thought he wouldn’t do it, that common sense would win. But no. With a single sharp tug, he ripped his patch off. The tiny polymer square fluttered to the ground, and I could do nothing but watch it fall. I realized, too late, that I'd inhaled in shock.
No. No, no, no.
You big, stupid, meathead alpha.
It hit me like a physical force, thick and cloying, spreading through the library like smoke. My grip on the edge of the table tightened as my body reacted instantly, instinctively, in ways I couldn’t stop. This was biology. Just biology. A cascade of chemical signals triggering primal, deeply embedded responses in my brain. Nothing more.
And yet, it felt like so much more.
Max’s scent wasn’t subtle. It was sharp and woodsy, layered with warm, earthy undertones that shouldn’t have been as appealing as they were. My logical mind—the part of me that prided itself on rationality—tried to catalog it clinically. Alpha androstenone, likely elevated by his natural baseline pheromone output, influencing the olfactory bulb and, subsequently, the limbic system. But the other part of me—the instinctual, omega part—refused to care about the science. It cared only about the way my skin flushed, my breath hitched, and my thoughts scattered.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The scent didn’t just hang in the air. It wrapped around me, saturating every inhale with something maddeningly warm and grounding. My pulse quickened, my heart hammering in my chest like an alarm that wouldn’t stop blaring. My body felt restless, hypersensitive, every nerve alive and buzzing with energy I didn’t know what to do with.
It was wrong. It was overwhelming. And, worst of all, it was unfair.
I gritted my teeth, willing myself to resist the pull. But Max’s scent wasn’t just a scent—it was a presence. An oppressive, suffocating weight that demanded to be felt. It pressed against my defenses, whispering promises of comfort, of safety, of something primal and undeniable. My logical mind scrambled to maintain control, to assert my professionalism, my distance, my composure.
But my body had other ideas.
My muscles tensed, my thighs shifting subtly beneath the table as I tried to ignore the traitorous heat pooling low in my stomach. The back of my neck prickled, my skin too hot, too tight. I gripped the table harder, focusing on the sharp edge digging into my palms as if it could anchor me to reality. This was just pheromones, I told myself. Chemical manipulation. Nothing more.
I opened my mouth to tell him to put his damn patch back on, but his pheromones slithered past my parted lips, hooking me even deeper, curling around my insides like a net. My gaze flicked up to Max before I could stop it, and my breath caught in my throat as I saw him through the lens of his scent.
I’d thought of him previously as attractive in a vague, objective way, like a particularly well-sculpted statue I had no personal connection to. But now, with his pheromones clouding my thoughts, I saw the sharp cut of his jaw, the slight scruff lining it, the way his messy hair fell across his forehead like he’d just rolled out of bed. And his eyes, warm and brown, looked at me with an uncomfortably predatory glint and... something else that I couldn’t quite place.
Something that made my chest tighten and my breathing hitch. This was the exact thing that I studied, but knowing the science didn't prepare me at all for how it felt.
I blinked, my thoughts spiraling faster, my body betraying me in ways I didn’t even want to think about. My mind conjured an image, unbidden and unwanted: Max leaning across the table, his big hands reaching for me, pulling me close. His lips crashing against mine, his broad chest pressing me against the wall, his scent overwhelming me until I couldn’t think about anything but him—
I clenched my thighs together, heat flooding my face as the image burned itself into my mind. I hated it. Hated him. Hated the way my body was reacting, the way my instincts screamed at me to submit, to lean into him, to let him do whatever he wanted.
The idea of being with an alpha had always repelled me. Betas had been safe, steady, predictable. They couldn’t make me feel like this. They couldn’t make my thoughts spiral or my body burn or my instincts flare in ways I couldn’t control. They didn’t make me wonder what it would feel like to be kissed so hard I forgot my own name. To be held down, pinned, claimed—
I jerked my gaze away, gripping the table harder as the mortification swallowed me whole. I knew I had to re-establish control. This was dangerously close to spiraling out of control, if not already. I forced myself to meet his gaze, my face burning.
“Put your patch back on. Now.”
For a moment, he just looked at me, his brows furrowing slightly, like he didn’t understand what the big deal was. But then his gaze flicked to my hands—white-knuckled and trembling against the table—and something shifted in his expression. His lips curved into a slow, knowing smirk.
“Vaughn,” I managed to grind out, my voice low and furious. “Put. It. Back. On. Now!”
“Why?” he asked, leaning forward slightly, his eyes studying me with far too much interest. “It’s not like there’s anyone else here.”
“Because,” I gritted out through clenched teeth, my nails digging into the table. “You’re—” What? Too hot? Too strong? Too alpha? God help me, I couldn’t even find the words.
“Alright, alright,” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “No need to bite my head off.”
Max watched me for another beat, his expression unreadable. Then, with agonizing slowness, he retrieved another patch from his backpack and pressed it back to his neck. Just like that, the scent was gone.
I sagged back into my seat, breathing out through my mouth as I struggled to collect myself. We were the only ones here, as he'd said, but I still found myself casting a furtive glance around. My body didn’t relax immediately—my heart was still racing, my palms still damp with sweat. It took a moment before the sharp edge of need dulled, leaving me with nothing but a hollow ache and a deep, bone-deep shame.
There was no denying that I was shaken. I wanted to leave immediately. I certainly had reason to. This tutoring arrangement had officially crossed one too many lines and to stay was six different kinds of foolish. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that a tutee would do something so stupid, so reckless.
“Now you know for your research purposes,” he said, smirking slightly. “I won’t do it again… unless you want me to?”
That did it.
I didn’t look at him as I stood, my chair scraping sharply against the floor, the sound cutting through the heavy silence like a blade. My hands shook as I swept my notebook and pens into my bag with more force than necessary, each movement a deliberate effort to appear composed, though I could feel the heat radiating off my face.
I slung my bag over my shoulder, my spine stiff as a rod, and turned toward the door without so much as a backward glance, ignoring how he called out after me. I told myself with every step that I was done. Absolutely, irrevocably done.
And yet, even as I stormed out, his words lingered, curling around me like smoke—a taunt, a promise, and a challenge all at once.
----------------------------------------
At least, I tried to storm out. But I barely made it out the door and into the hallway before a massive shadow loomed into my path, blocking my way like a walking brick wall.
“Whoa, hey—wait!” Max’s voice was too loud, too Max, and I skidded to a halt just before I slammed into his chest.
His stupid, broad, alpha chest.
“Move,” I bit out, my voice shaking with a fury so potent it felt like it might crack me open. I kept my gaze locked on the emergency exit sign behind him because looking at his face—his earnest, dumb face—might make me combust on the spot. “Get out of my way, Vaughn. Right now.”
“No, wait—just listen!” Max shifted to block me again when I tried to dodge him. His massive body moved with startling ease for someone so… hulking. He raised his hands like he thought he could calm me down, but all it did was make me feel boxed in. My entire body was vibrating, and my brain shrieked at me to run.
Because this was not a controlled experiment. This was not a lab. This was my life, and Max Vaughn, reckless, obtuse Max Vaughn, had once again managed to bulldoze every carefully drawn line I tried to put in place.
I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached. “You have three seconds before I—”
“I’m sorry, okay?!” Max blurted. His voice pitched up, the words crashing into each other. “I wasn’t thinking, and I didn’t—I mean—”
“You didn’t think?” I snapped, snapping my gaze up to glare at him. He looked frantic now, hands still raised like I was about to throw a punch (I was considering it). “You ripped your patch off, Vaughn! In a public library! You’re lucky I’m not reporting this—”
Max flinched slightly, his shoulders hunching under that rumpled hoodie like a guilty puppy. “I said I’m sorry!”
“You should be!” I hissed. “Do you have any idea what you just did?!”
His mouth opened and closed, his brows furrowed like he was scrambling for an answer. His eyes went wide as his nostrils flared ever so slightly. “Uh… is that—?”
“No.” I swung my satchel into his shoulder with a satisfying thud. “No. You do not finish that sentence!”
“Hey!” Max winced, stumbling half a step back. “I didn’t mean—ow! Ainsley! Quit—”
I swung again, the bag landing with another thwack. “You absolute cretin! You sniffed me!”
“I didn’t mean to sniff!” Max protested, holding up an arm to defend himself from further blows. “It’s just—it’s right there! I can’t help it!”
I froze mid-swing, the bag still clenched in my trembling hands. “Right there?” I hissed, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
Max, being Max, didn’t pick up on the warning. He grimaced sheepishly, rubbing at the spot where I’d hit him. “I mean, yeah? It’s—uh—you smell… you know. Sorta… nice?”
Even in the haze of fury, a whisper of curiosity itched at the back of my mind—had his elevated androstenone levels affected his cognition, too? Was there a link between pheromone response and impulsivity?
Outwardly, I could only gape at him, horror rendering me speechless. Did he—did he just say—
“Nice?!” I screeched, lunging forward and beating his arm with the satchel again. “I am leaving and you are never speaking to me again!”
Max’s laugh was more of a wheeze as he tried to dodge my increasingly frantic blows. “I didn’t mean it like that! Ow! Stop—wait! Just let me explain!”
“Explain what?” I shouted, punctuating each word with another swing. “Explain how you’re a complete disgrace to the alpha population? Explain how you’re biologically incapable of not being a feral imbecile?”
Max ducked another swing, his stupid brown eyes going wide. “I swear I didn’t know it was gonna—uh—do that to you!”
My face burned hot enough to melt through the floor and I turned, fully intending to walk away, except Max moved faster than he had any right to, grabbing ahold of my satchel. I tugged uselessly against his grip, but his stupid, unfair strength refused to give.
He looked desperate now, his voice softening again as he said, “I’m serious, Kerrigan. I didn’t—I don’t know all the scent rules or… or risks or whatever! I wasn’t trying to mess this up. I just—I thought it worked last time, and you wouldn’t hate me so much if I was actually, like… learning stuff.”
The sheer meatheadedness of that confession stunned me into silence for a moment. It was almost as if he… “You fell asleep in alpha-omega safety classes, didn’t you?”
Max blinked at me. “…Kinda?”
“Kinda?” I repeated incredulously.
His expression shifted, his gaze flickering over my face—then down. I knew exactly what he’d picked up on because his pupils darkened just slightly, and his cheeks turned red as he cleared his throat.
“Okay, uh… but we’re fine now, right?” he said quickly, loosening his grip on my satchel but not quite letting go. “I’ve got my patch back on. Crisis averted. It’s all good.”
“All good?!” I sputtered. “You could’ve triggered my heat, Max. Also, removing your scent patch on campus is grounds for expulsion. You think that’s all good?”
His ears turned red and, because I felt like it, I swung the satchel at him again. Hard. I felt like a feral idiot, but I couldn’t stop.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry!” he yelped, stumbling back as I finally yanked my bag free. “I messed up, Kerrigan, okay? I wasn’t thinking about the rules, or how it might affect you. I just… thought it would help me, and I didn’t realize how much I was crossing the line. I get it now. I swear I’ll never pull something like that again. I swear I’ll be better—please, Ainsley. Don’t quit. I need this. I need you.”
The raw sincerity in his voice froze me in place. I didn’t want to look at him—didn’t want to see those stupid, puppy-dog eyes—but I couldn’t help myself. He looked wrecked. Embarrassed, frustrated, and genuinely desperate. As he should, I told myself.
“I’ll sit down,” he pleaded quietly. “I’ll shut up. I’ll behave. Just… don’t go.”
For a long moment, I stood there, breathing hard, torn between storming out entirely and slamming my bag over his head again. My face burned and I hated that part of me was swayed by the honesty in his words.
I wanted to yell at him more. Better yet, I wanted to leave and never speak to him again. But beneath the anger, there was a thread of something else, something frustratingly soft. As mortifying as this entire situation was, I could believe that he hadn’t actually meant to hurt me. He was too much of an idiot to be malicious.
And maybe it was the lingering effects of his scent in my nose, but I didn’t like the idea of leaving him like this—desperate, apologizing, and entirely unmoored. I could genuinely believe that he didn’t understand the dangers of what he’d done. Maybe if I could set appropriate boundaries from here on out…
“This is your last chance, Vaughn,” I said sharply, straightening my spine and glaring daggers at him. “No more patch stunts, no more pushing boundaries, and no more treating this like a game. If you pull anything like that again, I’m done. And I mean it.”
Max nodded so quickly I thought his head might fall off. “Got it. No more stunts. I’ll be good. Scout’s honor.”
“Stop saying that,” I hissed. “You were never a scout.”
“…I could’ve been,” he muttered.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I told him. “Go back to our table and wait for me.”
Without waiting to see his reaction, I turned on my heel and walked away, my heart pounding in my chest. One more chance.
That’s what I’d said, but even as I put distance between us, my chest tightened with unease. Max Vaughn wasn’t just testing my patience—he was testing me. My professionalism. My control. And I hated how much I wanted to prove that I could handle him, no matter how much he tried to push my limits.