RECLAIMING HIS REJECTED MATE

Brooks

Girls like me shouldn't want boys like Levi Hawthorne. 

He was the alpha prince, the most popular boy in school whose name was on the lips of every single girl. I was the wolfless omega, the orphan who only got to breathe in the same air with him because of a welfare scholarship. 

But still, I wanted him. 

I thought about him every day. Sometimes, I'd look at him only to catch him already looking at me, and his eyes would linger on me for a minute longer than necessary, but I was certain that was just a figment of my imagination. There was no way he'd look at me, but still, I fantasized about him every minute to the point of slipping my fingers between my thighs in the dead of the night when the other girls at the foster home were asleep to relieve myself of the ache there. 

It was a secret, my dirty little secret that only my journal and I knew until I opened my locker one day and met its absence. 

I panicked, turned everything upside down, searched the whole school, turned trash cans inside out, and even went back to the foster home to look for it. It remained nowhere to be found. 

My panic grew tenfold. I was done for if the journal fell into the wrong hands. If the contents were ever revealed to the school, I wouldn't be able to lift my head again. 

I couldn't find it, and my worst fear came true the next morning when I walked onto the school premises and realized most of the students were staring and pointing at me. Some chuckled. Others cackled and whistled while my hands tightened around the straps of my bag. 

I heard some of their whispers, but it wasn't until I walked into the lobby that I confirmed what they were whispering about. 

Pages from my journals were plastered on the big notice board that welcomed everybody to school!

My stomach dropped. I couldn't bring myself to read what I had written, but I didn't have to. The students around them were already reading them aloud. 

She must really be delusional. She wants Levi to take a shower with her? 

This is disturbing. She imagines his tongue on her pussy? 

Someone needs to check on this wolfless omega. She wishes she were the alpha prince's mate. 

Doesn't this count as a sexual assault? Writing all these sexual details with someone you're not in a relationship with. 

This is why those welfare scholarships need to be stopped. We can't just allow any stray to attend our school. 

Their ugly words grew more vicious while my heart broke, and my palms grew clammy with it.  I didn't have time to process what was happening because I had to get out of here, get into a toilet, and stay there for the rest of the day, but just before I could get away, someone called my name. 

I looked up to see Seraphine Drahzar walking up to me while the crowd around us turned to make us a spectacle. She was the school's queen bee, the cheerleader, and an effortlessly pretty girl from a wealthy family. She was the kind of girl who belonged beside Levi, and there have always been rumors that she would become Levi’s chosen mate. 

She stopped in front of me with a scowl on her face while I tried to act like I wasn't falling apart inside. Her expression turned distasteful as she eyed me up and down, and her eyes narrowed when they settled on my cheap, second-hand shoes. She was probably offended that someone like me had the audacity to have a crush on Levi. 

“Brooks Beauregard,” she spat out, “don't you think you owe Levi an apology? Writing about him that way is not only disgusting, but it's also borderline abusive and psychotic. That's more like a sexual violation, and you should apologize for it.”

My eyes dropped to the ground as the whispers grew around us. 

“Well, cat got your tongue? You weren't embarrassed writing all those things about him, but now you're speechless?”

“I… If I have to apologize, that should be between us, don't you think?”

She froze for a while before she let out a sarcastic chuckle, “You don't get it, do you? There's no us with you and Levi. You're nothing but an omega. He'd never look at someone like you and…”

“That's enough, Sera,” the deep masculine voice that I've always heard in my head, almost every single minute of the day, interrupted her. 

My spine straightened instinctively, and my mouth dried. The whole lobby quietened down as his alpha energy overpowered everything. I didn't need to turn to know that he was now beside me. His scent was everywhere: my nose, my mouth, my eyes, my skin. 

It clung to me and was driving me fucking insane. 

He stopped beside me. “Brooks is right,” he told Seraphine. “This is between us, and I'm going to get whoever stole her journal and posted it punished.”

“You're joking, Levi,” Her voice sounded like she was on the verge of breaking down. “She's the one you should be punishing. She basically verbally abused you in a sexual way and…”

“Drop it, Sera.” A warm palm wrapped around mine, and it took me a full minute to comprehend the fact that Levi was holding my hand. My mouth dropped open. I looked at our joined hands, then looked at him with his bright face and blue eyes that locked with mine for a second, and made me stagger back from the intensity of what I was feeling.

The lobby started whispering again. 

“Do you understand it now?”

“No way, Levi,” her face contorted into ugly shades of fury, “why are you holding hands with her? Why…”

Levi didn't reply to her. He only pulled me out of the lobby. Seraphine let out a hysterical scream and made to follow us, but was pulled back by a boy I recognized as Theo, Levi's closest friend. 

Levi didn't let go of my hand even after we left the lobby behind and walked down the rows of locked offices and classrooms to get to a classroom that had been converted into a living area for him and his friends. 

By now, I could hardly breathe again. My heart was pounding so hard from being this close to him and having our skin touching. I was supposed to be anxious and embarrassed that he now knows my deepest secrets, but instead, my body was coming alive in a sexual way. 

Even my wolf, ever dormant, and who couldn't shift, was prancing within me. It felt like if he didn't drop my hand soon, I might combust. 

“You should let go of my hand now,” I told him quietly once the door shut behind us. Now I was hyperaware of everything, of the fact that we were both alone in this fancy room, of the fact that he was standing right in front of me, and of the fact that there was no anger in his eyes. 

Just a terrifying shade of hunger and need. 

I took two steps back, wondering why Levi was suddenly looking at me like a man would look at a lady they've been dying to have. 

He was looking at me like he had always looked at me in my imagination. 

“Do you mean any of those things that you wrote?” his voice was a guttural strain that settled as an ache in between my thighs, “have you always fantasized about me fucking you, Brooks Beauregard?”

“I…” My mouth dropped open, then clamped shut again. I couldn't believe this was happening. I couldn't believe that Levi was staring at me like a man starved and ready to feast after years, but it was happening, and so many things were going wrong with my body at the same time. 

I started shaking my head, but when I opened my mouth, I let out a breathy yes. The word had barely left my mouth when Levi pushed me against the wall and covered my mouth with his.