can have a lot of power,” Cait pointed out.
Grant nodded. “That’s why I decided to teach at Omega University,” he said. “I was offered a job at Shifter U. It paid more. But I thought of Marisa, and how her life might have been different if she had had someone to help her see why it was important to belong to a pack—to learn the role of the omega and to surround herself with people who cared about her and valued her for what she was. I wanted to do what I could to help other omegas since my mate was gone.”
“And now you’ve imprinted on me,” Cait said. “What does that mean? You were already mated to someone else...”
“Marisa is my past,” Grant said. “She’ll always be a part of who I am. I’ll always be affected by having loved her. But this—you—you’re my present, Cait. You’re my future. Everything I feel now is for you.”
“Are you sure?” Cait asked.
“I know you feel it too,” Grant said. “The connection between us. It’s powerful. It’s visceral. You feel it, don’t you? It’s like we’re being pulled together.”
“I don’t think I could ignore you now even if I wanted to,” Cait admitted. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to go back to class and act normal around you in front of the rest of the students.”
“But you have to,” Grant said, feeling a faint prick of alarm. “You know that, don’t you? We can’t allow anybody else to know what happened between us here.”
“I’m not going to try to get you in trouble with the administration,” Cait said. “You know that, right? It was a bitchy thing to try in the first place, but I’d never do that to you now. Not after...after everything.”
“I know that,” Grant said. “But it’s not just going to the administration that I’m worried about, Cait. You can’t tell anybody. You can’t tell your roommate. You can’t tell your friends—”
“What friends?” she scoffed. “I don’t have any friends at this school.”
“Nobody. Nobody can know. It’ll be bad for both of us if they do.”
“Still?” she asked. “Even though you imprinted? That doesn’t change the way people would look at it?”
“Definitely not,” he said. “If anything, that makes it worse.”
“But we couldn’t help it,” she said. “It’s not like it was something we planned. It just happened.”
“I know,” he said. “But there are already enough people who feel doubtful about allowing alphas to teach at Omega University. There are plenty of people who think we pose a threat to the omegas’ learning environment, of course. And there are others who think it gives us an unfair advantage, that it leaves us free to take our pick of the young and fertile omegas before any other alphas can get to them.”
“That’s not why you teach here,” Cait protested. “You’re here because you want to help omegas, not mate with us.”
“I know that,” Grant said. “And you know that. But how does it look when I say I’ve imprinted on one of my students? If you already suspected that I was here to find a mate, how would that strike you?”
“As suspicious,” Cait admitted.
“People will think I’ve been taking girls out into the woods all these years just hoping to find the one I could imprint on,” he said. “Some might even think that I didn’t imprint at all, that it’s just a story I’m using to justify sleeping with you. Even you didn’t think it was the truth at first.”
“I believe it now,” she said quietly.
“You have to promise me that when we go back, you’ll keep it to yourself,” he said. “We can’t allow anyone else to know.”
“But what does that mean for us?” she asked. “Will we still be able to be together?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re the most important thing to me, Cait. We’ll find a way to see each other, no matter what. We’ll just have to be clever about it. We’ll have to make sure no one else catches on to what we’re up to.”
“I can be clever,” Cait said. “I snuck into Shifter U, didn’t I?”
He glanced at her skeptically. “You were caught in less than twenty-four hours.”
“A fluke,” she said. “I can be stealthy. No one’s going to catch us.”
He nodded, hoping she was right.
Chapter Ten
CAIT
It was strange to be back on campus, back in class. It was strange to leave her dorm with her backpack slung over her shoulder as if nothing had happened.
At least Cait didn’t have