Omega's Wish (Fairhaven Academy Book 1), page 1
OMEGA’S WISH
FAIRHAVEN ACADEMY: BOOK ONE
CARA BRYANT
Copyright © 2022 by Cara Bryant
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Cauldron Press.
Created with Vellum
For my grandma, who always loved a bit of spice in her stories.
Miss you every day, Grammy.
CONTENTS
Content Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Want more of the Fairhaven Academy series?
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CONTENT NOTE
The Fairhaven Academy series is a paranormal academy reverse harem omegaverse romance. There are no shifters in this omegaverse. This series contains explicit sexual scenes between the heroine and one or more partners at a time. This is a “sweet” omegaverse, meaning there is no dubious/non-consensual sexual activity between the heroine and her love interests. While there are no male/male scenes in this book, future books will contain explicit male/male scenes.
This book contains: dark themes, magical violence, references to inappropriate behavior toward a minor by a medical professional, controlling behavior by a parent, strong and sometimes derogatory language, references to sex and sexuality, misogyny, sexual assault, stalking, medical trauma, mistreatment by a law enforcement officer, and other themes some readers may be sensitive to.
CHAPTER 1
I stand tall in Rose Manor’s expansive three-story foyer, shoulders back and head held high, my gaze averted, as my father prowls in front of me. Lightning flashes bright enough to blind in the windows behind him, throwing long, menacing shadows across the marble floor.
“The stipulations again, Juniper,” he orders, the alpha growl in his voice a warning as clear as the rumble of thunder that chases the lightning across the Connecticut coast.
Today I leave behind the sprawling Greenwich estate of Rose Manor, bound for Fairhaven Academy for Mages. Tucked away on the wild western shore of Deer Island, south of the magical enclave from which it gets its name, Fairhaven is the most prestigious magical academy on the Atlantic Coast.
My father has three stipulations I must adhere to if I’m to attend Fairhaven Academy, and attending Fairhaven could very well be my salvation.
I squeeze my hands behind my back where he can’t see them, my nails cutting crescents into my palms. “I will always behave in a manner befitting a Rose,” I say. “I will not dishonor you.” All those academy diversions my older brothers and sister enjoyed—Hawthorn especially—are off-limits, because I’m an omega, trapped in a cage of rules and expectations. I won’t attend parties. I won’t engage in the campus tradition of midnight Capture the Flag on the Feast of Marmora or dance around the Night of the Fallen bonfires. There will be no stolen kisses, not even a sniff of impropriety.
Because if I don’t remain pure? I dishonor my family and the alphas my father will pick to bond with me.
“When I graduate,” I continue, “you will begin soliciting alphas for my mating contracts. My actions during my time at Fairhaven Academy will honor my future pack. I shall endeavor to learn what I can to be a good omega to my alphas.” It’s what he expects from me, what society expects from omegas, and I’ve tried to be a perfect omega daughter. Saints only know how hard I’ve tried. But something inside me must be broken because I don’t want the things other omegas want, the things my father wants for me—the alphas my father wants for me. Bile sears, bitter and burning, at the back of my throat, and my nails break skin.
I know the type of alphas my father will select for my future mates: the sons of the influential men that move in his circles, scions of industry, pillars of government. He paraded me in front of them at countless society events as I remained at his side, ever the dutiful daughter, even if I had to pretend. I’ve acted the part of the perfect omega heiress enough to scare me, to fear that the role I play will one day blot out every last part of me. But what choice did I have around those alphas? Their scents should have drawn me in, but they stung in my nose, caustic and repellent. They stole touches from my barely legal body: a hand on my waist as they moved past me, a graze against my breasts that could never be called accidental. But it was the presumption, the possession, in their every word that truly sickened me.
If I had my way, I’d never see any of those alphas again.
If my father had his way, I would stay cloistered in Rose Manor or by his side until he picked my future mates. In the end, it was the pressure of his peers that finally forced him to consider my enrollment when I presented him with my acceptance letter. After all, his peers want their alpha sons to mate an omega of some—but not too much—substance. Though I’ll never be as powerful as any alpha or beta mage, I should receive exemplary marks to show my intelligence and dedication. After all, an omega getting top marks should be far too preoccupied with her studies to spread her legs.
“Finally,” I say, “I am to remain in the company of my honor guard at all times, and I am to go nowhere he is not permitted to follow, save for designated omega-only spaces on campus.”
“Good,” my father says, his voice clipped, but there’s a begrudging pride in his words. Ever since that shameful day my nature revealed, I have been as perfect as any omega daughter can be. Biddable. Obedient. Cultured and refined. Perfection is rewarded in the Rose family, and anything less is punished.
My reward is Fairhaven Academy and four years where I can enjoy the tiniest sliver of freedom before I’m mated.
In truth, it’s little more than a stay of execution.
But saints above, part of me hopes it’ll be so much more. That I’ll become such a talented mage that my father will rethink my matings and bring me into the family business like he did my alpha sister. That, if I behave well enough and the fates allow, I might even be allowed to choose my own pack.
I chance a peek up at my father through my pale eyelashes. Like him and my brother Aspen and sister Willow, I’m fair, my skin a milky porcelain, with white-blond hair and pale blue eyes, but where I am soft and yielding as an omega should be, my father has all the hard, punishing lines of an alpha. Strong in body and in presence, Redwood Rose is everything an alpha in his position should be. The CEO of Rose Pharmaceuticals, my father’s hard work has made my family wealthier than any previous generation of Rose mages. The new treatments brought to the market under his leadership have improved lives all around the world and ushered in the next stage in bio-magical medical advances. My father is a man of many, many accomplishments, and I am but his latest.
Tires crunch on our long gravel drive and I squeeze my hands together. My honor guard is here to whisk me off to Fairhaven Academy in one of my father’s town cars.
“About time,” my father barks as the door opens behind him. He doesn’t turn as one of the house staff greets the alpha at the door, their voices lost in the heavy drumming of the rain, doesn’t look away from me for even a second as he draws his scribe. “Now, Mr. Haley, show me you’re worthy of protecting my daughter.”
As thunder cracks overhead like an omen, as lightning splits the sky, the hex flies from my father’s slim platinum wand, a brilliant flash aimed directly at my heart.
Sigils flash before my eyes as my honor guard’s shield snaps in front of me, my father’s hex crashing against the silvery magic in a shower of sparks. My father’s hex clashes against the wall of my honor guard’s magic, but my father doesn’t relent, pumping more and more power into the hex, trying to break through the shield around me. I see my honor guard then, behind the silver shimmer of his magic. His chest heaves as he dashes across the foyer until he stands before me, his scribe still raised as he channels more magic into the shield. He’s pure power, not only in his magic but in the strong cords of muscles revealed by the gray Henley that clings to his powerful back and broad shoulders, plastered to him by the unrelenting August rain. He risks a glance over his shoulder, gray-green eyes flash like sunlight catching water as it tumbles over river rocks, as he takes me in, ensuring I’m unharmed.
My father relents with an indifferent, “That will be sufficient, Haley. You’ll do.”
I don’t let the whimper of fear trapped in my throat slip free when the shield around me drops, don’t wheeze out the stuttering breath burning in my lungs. I dig my nails into my palms and hol
“Do not embarrass me, daughter,” he growls, low in my ear, and then he’s gone, striding out into the rain, a shimmering magical umbrella overhead, his briefcase in hand. There’s an unspoken “or else” in my father’s warning, a reminder that he controls me, that he can make my life one of comfort or misery.
I crumple, throwing a hand up over my mouth to catch the ragged sob that rips out of me. My father tried to hex me.
“You’re bleeding,” my honor guard says quietly.
I draw my hand away from my mouth, tasting copper on my lips. Sure enough, I’m bleeding from the four little moons I dug into my skin.
He towers over me and I flinch away from the sheer power he radiates until I catch his scent: winter wind and forests of snow-covered pine. It soothes the terror inside me in an instant, in a way no other alpha’s scent ever has, and I let him take my hand. He draws sigils in the air over my cuts with his scribe, and they sink into my skin, warm and electric, slowly knitting my flesh back together.
“Go get cleaned up, Miss Rose. I’ll load up the car.”
I stumble to the small bathroom off the foyer and splash cool water on my heated cheeks and wash my hands. The sparks from my father’s hex flash like fireworks when I squeeze my eyes shut and fight the tears burning in my throat.
Marcus Haley may have saved me from the first hex I’ve ever had fired at me, but damn it, I’ll be the one to protect myself from the next one. Whatever it takes, I won’t feel this helpless again. I dry my hands and square my shoulders. I may not be an alpha, but I am a Rose, and there’s power in that. Because while omegas are rarely stronger mages than alphas? I tested higher than every single alpha in my family in my aptitude test.
And, saints save me, I’ll do whatever it takes to be the most powerful Rose mage the world has ever seen.
Marcus meets me at the front door, the canopy of his magical umbrella held out for me. I step under the glowing sigils even as rainwater spikes his short brown hair. Bitterness pours off him just as rain pours off the edges of the umbrella rising above his silver scribe, souring his scent.
As soon as I’m in the car, he dries us both with a quick spell and then pulls out of Rose Manor’s half-moon driveway.
After my father’s hex, I’m desperate for a distraction as we make our way north to Deer Island through the pelting rain, but Marcus stoically resists every attempt I make to pull him into a conversation.
“So, you’re from out west, right?”
“Yes.” No elaboration.
“Have you been an honor guard for very long?”
“No.”
He reacts to one question and one question only, and his grief is so palpable that I feel it all the way in the backseat.
“Any brothers or sisters? I’m the youngest of four.”
A pause. “No.”
There’s something more in that pause, in the torment in his gray-green eyes, but I don’t dare ask.
When I finally give up on trying to draw him into a conversation, we’re only two hours out from Greenwich, seven long, silent hours stretching before us on the road to Fairhaven. Just me and Marcus Haley and a silence too big to be contained in one of my father’s fancy town cars.
I shrink low in the leather seat and sigh. Marcus will be my shadow for the next four years, and I had hoped we could be friends, that I could find a companion and confidante in the quiet, disciplined alpha in the front seat, but as the miles slip away on the rain-slick highway behind us, that seems less and less likely.
Friends—and never anything more, though he stirs something inside me that sends yearning spiraling through me. It’s so unfamiliar, this reaction I’m having to him, to his scent, to his presence. But while I might yearn for him, for that brief tenderness he showed me in the foyer of Rose Manor, Marcus will never yearn for me. My personal scent and the omega pheromones I put out that make me so tempting to other alphas have no effect on him at all. He’s wholly immune to me, a quirk in our biochemistry that makes him uniquely qualified to be my protector. For most omegas, finding an honor guard is a process that takes no more than a blood sample, a smear of our scent on a scent card, and a few weeks’ wait as the results are processed against a database and potential matches screened. It took months to match my profile against Marcus’, to find an alpha immune to my scent, and every day that passed, I feared no match would be found, and I would be forced to turn down my admission to Fairhaven.
But the match was finally made, and now I’m safe with an alpha who will protect me my entire time at the academy. While my pheromones will draw eligible alphas to me, drive them to distraction, to violence even, there’s no risk of that with Marcus. My scent will never stir so much as a hint of desire in him, my omega and his alpha hormones so at odds as to render us completely biologically incompatible. It’s the other alphas I’ll need to worry about. Alphas who would find me easy prey if not for my honor guard protecting me. It doesn’t take much to compromise an unmatched omega’s honor and trap her in a matebond for life: only a bite received in a moment of passion–or forced submission.
I trace the pad of my thumb over the soft skin where my neck slopes into my shoulder, that sensitive spot where I’ve always imagined I’ll get my first mating bite. Growing up, being mated had always seemed like a distant, romantic dream.
All those beautiful castles I’d so carefully built in the sky came crashing down when my doctor promised my father that his grandchildren would be strong, alpha mages. The day my fate was sealed with an omega blood panel. “Your daughter, Mr. Rose,” my doctor had said, “is an exemplary specimen. One of the most potent omegas I’ve ever seen. Ideal for breeding. Truly, you couldn’t have asked for a better omega daughter.”
Potent, exemplary omega daughters make their rich fathers even richer. I’ve always believed my father wants what’s best for me, but now doubt squirms in my belly and sparks flash behind my eyes when I squeeze them shut. Am I only worth the sum of my mating contracts to him? The four contracts will go for millions of dollars each, and I’ll be mated to a hand-picked pack of strangers.
Now, as my fingers tremble against my collarbone, a touch I had once longed for sends nausea rolling through me. I yearn for the cozy comfort of my nest back home and scowl at how immature that makes me. The smallest sliver of reality makes me want to hide away.
I’m just a weak little omega and that’s all I’ll ever be.
Naive. Deluded.
Stupid stupid stupid.
What was I thinking, accepting Fairhaven Academy’s offer of admission? It’s only a way station between gilded cages, four short years of freedom before a life of being little more than a well-bred, high-society broodmare, my belly forever round with the next generation of alpha mages. I’ll be the porcelain doll wife and mate on the arms of powerful politicians and mage CEOs running the biggest companies in the world.
I press my fingers to my mouth, trying to hold in a sob once more, but it wrenches free from me, a hot pain surging up inside me, as violent as the storm raging outside the car.
Stupid, naive omega, believing in fairy tales, building castles in the sky, daydreaming of perfect alpha princes.
The low mechanical ticking of the turn signal beats a steady tempo as Marcus pulls off the highway, and then my teary world is awash with neon lights. A bright pink omega symbol blazes against the drear like a beacon, and the moment the car slips beneath the gas station’s canopy and rolls to a stop beside a pump, I throw myself from it, stumbling through the automatic doors, past the freezer cases and into the designated omega and mother’s room. I slam the deadbolt shut and slump against the door, sliding down until I’m curled on the cool tile floor.
