Chapter Ten – Jess #2
I want to. I want nothing more than to dig into him right now, but… crap. I can’t. Not when something’s clearly wrong with him.
“Well, now I can’t,” I huff. “You took all the fun out of it.”
That gets him to stare at me again. “And how did I do that?”
“You’re… being weird.” It’s all I can say. I don’t know him well enough to explain this mood or how vacant he looked mere moments ago, but I trust my gut on most occasions, and something is definitely bothering him.
Mason scoffs, though it’s half-hearted. “You don’t know me,” he echoes my previous thoughts.
“Just say what you want and leave me alone.” All I do is stare back at him, which causes him to add, “Look, I didn’t come to this cabin to be worried about losing an omega in the fucking forest, and I didn’t come here to hang out with my brother, either.
I came to be alone, and you and Asher are fucking ruining it. ”
“How are we ruining it?”
“Do you want an honest answer to that question?”
“Sure, hit me with it.” I take on an attitude, unable to swallow it down. Whether or not that attitude will eventually turn around and bite me in the ass, I don’t know yet.
“Asher’s my brother. When he asks for help, I can’t say no.
And you… you’re important to him, for whatever reason.
You’re an unmatched omega coming up to her first heat.
You’re trouble with a capital-T, and my brother’s too blind to see it.
You’re not only ruining this for me, but you’re going to ruin things for him, too. ”
Okay, I understand this jerk wanted to be alone, but not being alone for a little while isn’t that big of a deal, especially in a house this big. And as for his brother… “How am I going to ruin things for Asher?”
The look he gives me then is sharp enough to cut through bone. “Do you really think he’ll be able to stay away from you when you’re begging for a fucking knot?” His crass language would make me blush if I wasn’t so annoyed with him.
“I’m not asking him to sit outside the door and listen to me when I’m in heat.”
“Doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t beg for it, he’ll want to give it to you.”
I still don’t quite know how that would ruin things for Asher, but as I let Mason’s words sink in, I realize that, while this one is the definition of a moody kind of furious, he’s really only concerned about his brother’s future.
“Listen, if you think this is some ploy to nail your brother down, it’s not,” I tell him, meaning it wholeheartedly.
“I don’t have friends. I don’t have people I can talk to or trust. Asher was…
he was the only person I could think of to ask, even though we haven’t spoken in years.
I didn’t do this to hurt anyone or ruin anyone’s future plans. I’m doing this for me and me alone.”
His hazel stare drops to the floor again, his jaw tensing even though he doesn’t say a word. He keeps his gaze averted as he mumbles, “Sure. Whatever you say.” A switch must’ve been flipped inside of him, because suddenly he doesn’t sound so pissed off.
No, actually, he kind of sounds sad.
I don’t know what makes me say it, but the words are out of me before I can think better of them: “Are you okay?” Truly, I shouldn’t care.
He’s a jerk, an asshole through and through.
He’s prickly around the edges, but underneath that hard outer shell, something else is there, something he probably doesn’t want anyone else to see.
My question causes him to snap his gaze back up to me as a disgusted expression tugs at his handsome features. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what it sounds like.” I shrug. “I’m asking if you’re okay. You seem—”
“You don’t fucking know me, so you don’t know how I seem.” With how aggravated he is when he says it, I can tell I’ll get nothing more out of him. He’s shutting down, he doesn’t want to talk to me any longer.
That’s fine. I can’t make him open up to me. Like he said, I don’t know him. He’s a stranger to me.
Still, stranger or not, he’s Asher’s older brother, and because of that, I feel as if I know him. I feel as if I’ve talked to him before. I haven’t, but that peculiar familiarity is there, and now that strange feeling is accompanied by concern.
Is he okay? I don’t know, and I can’t make him tell me.
I don’t say a word more as I turn away from the über and head for the door. Every step I take feels… wrong, like I shouldn’t leave him. Like my instincts are screaming out at me to stop, turn around, and go back to him. Sit down on the bed next to him and hold onto him.
Whoa. That’s a desire I can’t say I ever had before. It’s totally weird I have it now, when the alpha in question is Mason Thompson.
Though a very large part of me wants to stop and do just that, I manage to keep going all the way into the hall, and I only let myself relax once I’m downstairs, with Asher again.
He’s waiting for me in the living room, his laptop resting on the coffee table in front of the sectional couch. When he sees me approach, he stands and asks, “How is he? Are you okay?” He fires off the two questions together, so I don’t have time to answer.
I can tell Asher is concerned about not only me, but his brother. It’s that genuine concern I see that makes me ask, “Is your brother doing okay? I mean, life-wise, in a general sense. You know, taking everything into consideration—”
Okay, now I sound like I’m rambling. Am I really that worried about that über? How ridiculous.
He isn’t expecting that question, because his blond brows raise on his forehead and he stares at me like I just spoke another language.
“Um, yeah? I mean, I think so. To be honest, we don’t really see each other much anymore.
I’m always so busy with classes and learning the ropes at our dads’ company, and he’s… ”
There it is. The way he trails off, like he can’t describe what his brother does with his life. I notice it. Surely he does, too?
After a moment, he says, “I don’t really know what Mason does, now that I’m thinking about it.”
“Did he say how long he was here before we showed up?”
“No. He just said he’s been here a little while—”
“Could he be living here?”
The possibility is one he clearly hasn’t thought of, because he’s immediately taken aback. “Living here? Why would he want to live here in the middle of nowhere?” Based on how he says it, he evidently doesn’t understand how nice getting away from the city actually is.
I could live here, easy-peasy. I don’t tell that to him, though. Instead, I ask, “But it’s possible, right?”
Asher folds his arms over his chest and glances around, as if he’s afraid his brother is going to pop up out of nowhere. “I guess, yeah, it’s possible. I don’t know why he would be, though. If he wants another chance at our parents’ company, I know our dads would love that.”
I meander around him and plop down on the corner of the couch, and he’s slow in sitting nearby. “Sure, but what if that’s not what he wants? What if… what if he doesn’t really know what he wants?”
It’s something I can understand. Everyone always assumes an omega knows what she wants, and sure, sometimes it’s true.
An omega meets an alpha, or a pack of them, and falls for them instantly.
There’s hardly a courtship or dating. Things spiral and happen quickly, move fast. But not for me. That’s not what I want.
I never thought about it before, but I suppose the same pressure is applied to alphas, too.
They’re expected to know what they want to do in life, to chase after the money and the power and whatever position would set them up for life, and then, once they have everything figured out, they’re supposed to find an omega and settle down if they hadn’t already done so while climbing that corporate ladder.
But if an alpha rejects the status quo… what then? I’ve heard of more omegas rebelling than alphas, to tell you the truth.
“I just got a vibe off him. I don’t know,” I whisper. “He seemed sad, beneath all that anger.”
“Sad?” Based on the way he echoes the word, I can tell he doesn’t quite believe me. Maybe all that anger and rage Mason exhibits is his way of masking his true feelings, feelings he doesn’t want anyone else to know about.
Like being sad, or maybe even depressed.
A depressed alpha. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those.
Not that I’m judging. I’m not. I know better than to judge anyone for what they feel or how they think.
If I was a normal girl who lived a normal childhood, if my parents were around and succeeded in raising me to be a typical omega heiress, I’d probably be judging him hard.
Heck, I wouldn’t even be here right now to witness any of this.
Though Asher is skeptical, I know what this means: we’ll have to keep an eye on Mason while we’re here. The last thing I want is to do, as the über said, is ruin everything for him, but at the same time, I don’t know that I can sit back and let things be.
I might be a bitch sometimes, but not all the time. I can be nice. I have it in me. And, beyond all that, for some reason it simply bothers me that Mason might have issues of his own he’s wrestling with.
No, while I’m here, I’ll get to the bottom of Mason’s attitude. At the very least, it’ll give me something to do, something else to focus on other than my impending heat.