50. Joey
50
Joey
"How could you let him say those disgusting things? Why didn't you object?" Nolan's voice is steady, but I can feel the undercurrent of violence that threads through it.
"I did when I could, but you heard the judge! There were no grounds," Alicia replies, her voice dripping with frustration as she rubs her temples. "This is a theft trial, and unfortunately, I had no grounds to push back on the language used. But did you look at the jury? There is no love lost there. I don't think he did himself any favors. I am still confident we'll win this." She leans forward and snatches her glass of whisky from the top of our dining room table, where we've all gathered after the trial.
All of us except Nora.
She was silent on the drive home and immediately went into her nest upon arrival. She hasn't spoken since.
"I told you it was a bad idea to let her be there today," Alicia continues, spinning the glass in her hands. "I know she wanted to be there, but you should have put your foot down."
"We're not like him," Chase growls, slamming his hand on the table. "We're not taking her choice away from her."
"Was it worth it, though?" I ask. All heads swivel to me. I'm probably the last person they expected to speak up about this. Well, that's not true. Levi is the last person suspected, but I'm not far ahead of him in that race. "I'm not sure what is going through her head, but it can't be good."
"Levi, maybe you should reach out to your father?" Blaine suggests. The hacker has kicked off his shoes, leaving them haphazardly in the corner of the room, and tossed his tie and button-up shirt over the back of a chair. Now, he leans against the wall, half-dressed. "Maybe he can get through to her?"
Levi jumps to his feet, his face a mask of fury that does not match his normally gentle demeanor. "No! No. This isn't his mess to clean up. It's ours. We should have known better than to let her listen to that vile man!" The small Alpha wraps his arms around his abdomen, squeezing tightly as she shuts his eyes. "She just listened to hours of people dehumanizing her and being told who she is as a person doesn't exist. That can't be fixed by my father giving her some sweets. We're her Alphas, her pack. This is on us."
The room is silent, all of us staring at the others, trying to figure out the best course of action to take care of our Omega. Alicia drains her glass and stands up. Her conservative blue suit is rumpled from a hard day of work. She rubs her face, exhaustion evident. "I'm going to go. Don't bring her tomorrow. We don't need to give Dr. Greene another chance to victimize her." With those parting words she leaves us to once again clean up the mess Dr. Albert Greene made.
"We did the right thing letting her listen," Chase mutters. "She has the right to face her abuser. She knew it was going to be difficult."
"That wasn't difficult, Chase. That was torture. I thought I was going to hurl," I say, loosening my tie. "You weren't sitting beside her. You didn't see it how I did." I don't want to tell them about the way her hands turned white as she gripped them or the crescent moon cuts on her palms from her nails. They don't need to know the number of times I stopped her from yanking out her hair.
But the longer Dr. Greene spoke, the more the fury and despair drained out of her. Suddenly, Nora's posture had changed. Her shoulders pushed back further, her hands clasped demurely in her lap, her ankles crossed. To an outsider, it could have looked like she was sitting and growing with confidence, but I knew that wasn't the case. The glazed look in her eyes made it clear to me that she had become the Perfect Omega.
When Dr. Greene said that there was no Nora, she believed him.
It was like I watched months of therapy and hard work crumble like dried flowers before my eyes.
"We need to go talk to her," Nolan says. "We need to make sure she's okay."
And we planned to. All of us agreed to go to the nest to help our girl.
But when we head to the stairs, we find Nora in the kitchen.
A pink ribbon is tied around her hair, pulling the wavy blonde hair off of her face. It's grown out since the mirror incident, but it's still not back to its original length. She's got a pale pink dress on that cinches her tiny waist and flares out at the bottom. Tall nude heels click across the tile as she moves around the kitchen with the efficiency of a seasoned chef.
She notices us and looks up, her big blue eyes rimmed in red and her neck and chest splotchy, but a huge, strained smile stretches across her face. "Alphas and Just Joey. I'm working on dinner now. Can I make you a cocktail or get you a drink while you wait?"
"Honey…" Blaine whispers, taking a step towards her. Chase sticks his arm out, halting the other Alpha's movements. The look he gives us all is indescribable.
"We're good, Omega," he says gently. "What are you cooking?"
"I'm glad you asked!" If I didn't know Nora so intimately at this point, I wouldn't notice the film of sorrow that covers her throat and clings to her words. "I've got a bruschetta for an appetizer, and then I'm going to do a steak with roasted potatoes and chimichurri. Unless you would like something different?"
"That sounds lovely, Omega. We'll wait in the dining room, okay?" Chase's voice is softer than I've ever heard from him, but I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish here by encouraging her regression.
We all shuffle back into the dining room and sit at the table as Nora places the bruschetta in front of us. Once she leaves, Nolan pins Chase with a glare. "What are you playing at, Chase?"
"Fuck, it's like you guys forgot what it was like when we first brought her home. How many times did we make her cry by asking her not to do Perfect Omega shit?" My best friend runs his fingers through his bleached hair, loosening the gel that Nora insisted he apply this morning. "Like it or not, Nora just got restored to factory default settings."
I don't even have time to take a breath before Chase falls out of his chair, clutching his face. Beside him, Levi is on his feet, fist still raised, panting.
"How the fuck could you say that?" he seethes. The gentle Alpha is shaking with a fury that is entirely foreign to him. "After all of the dehumanizing shit they said about her today, you decided it was a good idea to come home and continue that pattern?"
"I can't believe I just got punched out by a guy in a tweed jacket," Chase mutters, climbing back into his chair. I hand him a napkin to mop up the blood that drips from his nose. Nolan takes the ice bucket from the bar cart, and Levi shoves his fist in it.
The tension in the room is so heavy that none of us know how to interact with one another. While Chase was crass, he was not wrong. It feels like the first day we brought Nora home.
"Do you guys feel her, in the bond I mean?" Blaine asks quietly, where Nora can't overhear from the kitchen.
Levi strokes a hand down his sternum. "Not at all. I don't know if she blocked me out or what, but it's like static." He drops his eyes to the tabletop, and I can almost see the despair that weighs his shoulders down. "Why would she block us out?"
"I have no idea." Nolan crosses his arms over his chest. "Maybe it was done to not feel us? Like she doesn't what to know what we think of this?"
Chase closes his eyes and scrubs his hands across his face. "She doesn't want to risk feeling disapproval from us." His voice is barely over a whisper, but he may as well be screaming. "Fuck! This is on me. This is on how I treated her."
"I mean, probably," I say honestly. "But it's on Dr. Greene most of all."
We sit in awkward silence, spiraling as we try to come up with a way to help our girl.
After she arrives with dinner and sets plates in front of each of us, she clasps her hands in front of her and bows her head. "If you do not mind, I would like to retire to my nest. Please, come fetch me when it is time for me to do the dishes."
She doesn't wait to be dismissed; she just walks carefully, delicately out of the room. None of us have an appetite, but we also know Nora will be devastated if we don't touch our food. Of course, it's delicious, expertly cooked, and beautifully plated. Chase could employ her at Bea's, and she'd be right at home.
"We shouldn't all go talk to her at once," Nolan says, breaking the silence. "She'll get overwhelmed. Maybe we take turns?"
Blaine pushes his half-eaten plate away, resting his elbows on the table to support his head. "It shouldn't be me. I always put my foot in my mouth."
"I can go," I offer, pushing my chair back to stand.
"No, wait," Chase says quietly. "It needs to be me."
Nolan narrows his eyes at the other Alpha. "Why you?"
"Especially after that comment you just made," Levi tacks on.
"I… Look, I know I fuck stuff up. I know I fucked up at the beginning when we brought her home. But after her heat, I found her in the shower having a breakdown, and I got her out of it." He stands up, shoving the sleeves of his black button up to his elbows. A look of true vulnerability flashes across his face. "I need to do this, guys. It's my fault he took her back."
"It's not, though," Levi says quietly. "If you fought, they would've arrested you."
"Maybe," Chase concedes. "But I didn't even try. And I know I got her back, but that's also why this trial is happening now. Please, just let me try."