Chapter 2
TWO
LANI
I step onto the sun-kissed porch of my grandmother’s house – my home for the summer – ready to embrace the freedom that comes with a much-needed break from reality. My life has been a shit show recently, no thanks to my deadbeat dad, and this summer is going to be my salvation. I can feel it.
No, I’ll make sure of it.
The salty breeze caresses my cheeks, whispering promises of lazy mornings and endless possibilities. Well, on the days I don’t have to work anyway. I have to remind myself that I’m here to get a job and earn back a little of what my father stole from me, not to have a holiday.
At least I don’t have to worry about heats.
Whatever my father did, it worked.
There’s…something inside me that wants more, that always has been, but wanting doesn’t mean anything when you’re not built to tip over into instinct.
I’m a beta. That means I get to choose. No instincts. No bonds. No one else deciding for me.
Just choice.
Still, hope stirs beneath my skin, relishing the change in air, the absence of my father’s cloying, whiskey-laced scent. Here, I can breathe. Here, I can be free.
I take a break from searching for the key that my grandmother said she’d leave right under the plant pot on the porch – because the entire porch is like a damn greenhouse covered in pots – and I glance toward the monstrous house next door, all modern glass and steel sharp lines.
A song I don’t recognise is blasting from inside the house somewhere and the bi-fold floor to ceiling wall of glass is open and stealing my attention.
It couldn’t be further from my grandmother’s house in terms of style, age and design, though it’s definitely more in keeping with the other properties around me. Everything is shiny and modern and new. Designer. Fancy. My grandmother’s crumbling old house doesn’t fit, even though it was here first.
Seems unfair to me. That the natives, the locals, are being pushed out and priced out by the city folk who only want to appreciate this place for a few short months of the year when it’s in its prime.
They don’t hang around and support the local businesses or the struggling economy out of season, and now people who have been born and raised here their entire lives can’t afford to live in their childhood neighbourhoods.
I shake myself out of my internal rant, but before I can return to my key hunt, I feel it.
A presence. Not just awareness.
Pressure.
My eyes lock with a captivating stranger leaning against the white picket fence bordering our properties and a surge of electricity dances along my skin when I realise that he’s been watching me.
In this single moment of my grey-blue eyes meeting his fathomless brown orbs, I know, without a doubt, that the scorching summer ahead holds far more than sun-soaked days and tranquil nights – it holds a host of tantalising possibilities, which could all start with the enigmatic man before me.
My cheeks flush and my mouth turns parched, which has nothing to do with the midday heat beating down on me.
He’s not just an alpha – no. A Prime Alpha. The kind who could have me on my knees with a single command if I wasn’t careful. And that’s without biology getting involved.
No, I’d choose to submit to him—
The thought hits hard enough to make me suck in a breath.
And then I shove it away just as quickly.
I don’t know him.
And I don’t lose control like that.
He is fine. Hot. Gorgeous. Whatever adjective you want to describe him, he’s them and more. Everything about his presence is so commanding. Mr tall, dark and handsome, ripped and built and stacked.
He looks like he could be here to make all my summer fantasies come true.
Except…why is he scowling at me?
“You’ve got the wrong place,” he calls over the fence. The gruff timbre of his voice sends shivers down my spine and distracts me from his actual words.
“Sorry, what?” I call back, raising my hand to shield my eyes from the relentless sun, in the hopes of seeing him better. It doesn’t work, and dark spots dance across my vision. I blink them away rapidly and try to focus on the handsome, stroppy shirtless stranger.
“I said, you have the wrong property. That house isn’t one of the summer rentals.”
“Oh, I know that,” I reply cheerily, shooting him a wide smile. “I’m not here to rent it.”
“Well, it ain’t for sale either, so clear off.
” He scowls at me and my heart plummets.
Not just because my sun, sea, sand and sex fantasies just went up in smoke, but because I was hoping for a friendly face, a nice neighbour I could count on in a pinch.
Especially if one of the area’s legendary storms hits this summer.
I don’t ever want to be alone in a storm.
Plus, my trauma has me wanting to please. I want to be loved…or at the very least, liked. And this alpha scowling at me makes me want to quiver in distress, shrinking under his reflection.
I tamp that shit down.
Lani, think like a beta. You are a beta. It doesn’t matter about DNA. Yours has been irrevocably altered. This is your lot now. Accept it.
Anyway…clearly, my knight in shining armour won’t be him.
“Sorry, I’m not trying to buy the place or rent it. I’m staying here for the summer.”
He scoffs. “Course you are, kid. I’ve been nice but now I’m telling you: piss off. You’re in the wrong place.”
His tone riles me almost as much as the derisive way he calls me kid. He can’t be that much older than me…though I know I look younger than my almost nineteen years, but still. He’s not exactly old and wrinkly.
“What makes you think I’m lying?” I counter, cocking my head to one side and trying to decide if his amazing looks can outshine his rather shitty demeanour. I’m not convinced.
I guess it would all hinge on his smell. I’d like to think he’d smell as sour as his attitude, but I know the world doesn’t work like that. I can never catch a break, so I just know he’ll smell divine.
More’s the pity.
Though of course, betas don’t react to scents the way alphas and omegas do – nothing instinctive, nothing that grabs you by the spine. Still, I can appreciate a nice odour or two.
“I know the owner of that house and it ain’t you. Unless Old Doris has gone on holiday, come back three months early, and has somehow found the secret to becoming the female equivalent of Dorian Gray.”
“Doris Gray?” I tease, but his scowl doesn’t falter. “Are you calling my grandmother old?”
“Grandmother?” He shakes his head sharply. “No way. Doris doesn’t have any family.”
His barb stings but I keep my face neutral. I don’t need to bare my soul to a stranger, even if my father always chides me for wearing my heart on my metaphorical sleeve. I’m like my mother in that respect, it’s not like I can help it.
Though my father certainly tried.
You can take the omega out of the girl, but apparently not everything she inherits.
“Do you know where she’s gone?” I ask.
“What?”
“On her holiday. Do you know where she’s gone?” I repeat calmly.
He glowers at me, crossing his toned forearms over his muscular chest. I have to be imagining the veins popping in his arms from this distance surely.
Do not swoon, Lani.
“Why should I tell you?”
“I don’t need you to tell me. I know where she is.” I shrug.
“Then why ask?” he snaps.
“Because,” I huff, losing patience with him. “If you don’t know her well enough to know where she’s gone on holiday, then how the hell would you know who her family is?”
“I’ve lived here, beside Old D, for my whole life. I’ve never seen a single family member visit her in that time.”
“Just because we didn’t visit, doesn’t mean we don’t exist.” I have to swallow the lump in my throat. I’m using the royal ‘we’ here. Up until a few short months ago, I had no idea that she existed. Yet another thing my father stole from me. The chance at knowing my mother’s family.
“Well, why visit now when she’s not here? Some family you are,” he says with a sneer.
That fucking stings.
“She’s given me the use of her house for the summer.”
He stares at me until the silence between us becomes uncomfortable. Or maybe I’m the only one that’s feeling uncomfortable.
It’s true, I’ve never visited my grandmother here. I’ve only met her once before, six months ago when she reached out to me through social media and arranged for us to meet in secret, so that my dad didn’t find out.
Nanny D, as she asked me to call her, is not a big fan of my dad. I don’t blame her. There’s not a vice out there that he hasn’t been addicted to.
Hence getting fired from his high-paying, government-backed omega-research job – and turning his experimentation on me instead.
He was convinced presenting me as a success story would earn him his job back.
Delusional.
But still, I had to run. When I discovered that he’d taken all of my savings – meant for my accommodation payment at university this autumn – I knew I needed to get away from his toxicity. And that I needed a new job to try and save up all over again.
He got me fired from my last job by attempting to rob the place.
The only reason he’s not in prison right now is because my last boss was a nice guy and he took pity on me.
That, and I paid the money back. It wasn’t much anyway.
Stupid fool tried to hold the place up for twenty quid to buy a bottle of vodka at the shop across the street.
Never mind that he could have just stolen the vodka. No. Why would he, when he could fuck up my life instead?
After that, I made a quick call to Nanny D and she had the seemingly perfect solution, to come stay at her place while she’s away to get some much needed space from my dad, and to re-earn the funds that were taken from me.
She offered to help with some of the funds that were taken – I never told her how much – but there’s no way I’m taking money off a little old lady who I only just met.