Chapter Eleven – Kayla #2
My jaw grinds. For some reason, I don’t like the fact she’s reacting to him like this. I don’t like seeing the flush of heat in her skin, nor do I like the way she acts more coy than she did mere moments ago.
She’s attracted to him, and based on her body’s reaction, she doesn’t have a mate.
It shouldn’t bother me so much. I don’t care. It’s not like he’s mine or anything, and we’re courting. He’s just… Hayden. He’s Hayden. That’s all. I shouldn’t have those thoughts.
The elevator ride stretches on toward infinity, and I want to crawl out of my skin—after scaring off this beta receptionist, that is.
It’s like, deep down, my inner omega feels as though Hayden is mine.
My territory. My man. And she doesn’t want anyone else sniffing around him or batting their eyelashes his way.
Finally, after an eternity, the doors slide open and we step out onto the top floor of the building, where the head Alpha Life offices are.
The woman leads us to Mr. Bentley’s office.
As we walk, I can’t help but notice that, by now, everyone else has already gone home.
It’s an eerie kind of silence that permeates the space.
She knocks on the door, then opens it an inch or so to say, “Your six o’clock is here, Mr. Bentley.”
“Let her in” is all the alpha in the office says.
The beta turns to me and steps back, pushing open the door father for me. Though she wears a smile, that smile is mainly directed toward Hayden, who she is probably excited to spend some time with while I’m meeting with the elder Bentley.
As I walk into the office, I can’t help but toss Hayden an annoyed look, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy looking all around, taking everything in.
Whatever. At least he’s not zeroed in on the beta woman. Small mercies.
I step into Mr. Bentley’s office, and I see the elder über sitting behind his glass desk. The dying light outside creates an almost eerie glow from the tall windowpanes around him. He watches me enter, and he gestures to the leather chair on the other side of his desk. “Have a seat, Ms. Prim.”
I sit and cross my ankles, folding my hands over my lap as I wait for him to speak.
I don’t know what this meeting is about, but after all that buildup, I can honestly say I don’t feel very comfortable.
The last time I was here, I detected something off about him, but now that I have more backstory…
Yeah, I definitely would not trust this one with my life.
“How has your first week been?” Though he asks, it sounds as if he doesn’t give a shit either way. His mouth is drawn into a thin line, wrinkles deep in his skin. Though he has to be pushing seventy, he still looks prime beneath that fitted suit. His silver hair hasn’t thinned one bit.
Alpha’s, especially über alphas, don’t get old the way betas do. They age more gracefully. They get refined, dignified. It’s really not fair.
Then again, they say omegas age the same way. Omegas carry their inner beauty with them until the day they die. I don’t know about that, but the stereotype for alphas is apparently true.
“It’s been fine,” I say.
“Fine? Let me rephrase the question, then: how has my son taken to you?”
I’m not sure if rephrasing the question made things clearer. I blink as I let his words sink in, as I try to formulate an answer. “He’s… he was very standoffish at first, but I think he’s slowly coming to accept my presence.”
That sounds professional, doesn’t it? I’m not used to talking to big-wigs like this.
He rubs his jaw. “Frankly, that is surprising. I figured he wouldn’t ever accept your presence, as you so delicately put.
I thought your position would vex him close to madness, but perhaps I overestimated my son yet again.
I do have the habit of doing that—expecting more from him than he is capable of. ”
The way he talks about his son, there’s clearly no love lost between them. He sounds like he hardly tolerates his son. I don’t have a family of my own, but if I did, I could never imagine talking like that about any of my kids.
They’re your kids. But Mr. Bentley makes it sound like Bradford’s just an intensely disappointing employee he is tired of wrangling.
“I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Prim, I assumed my son would throw a fit the moment you walked through the front door.
I thought I’d be assaulted at every hour with calls and messages about how undignified it all is, but I haven’t received a single call from him, and that leads me to believe either one of two things. ”
I don’t know where he’s going with this, so I stay quiet.
Mr. Bentley goes on, “The first is that he has ceased to care about anything. That is a problem in and of itself, as I’m sure you’re aware.
For someone like my son to stop caring about anything…
he is, rather unfortunately, my only true heir, and therefore when I die, he will inherit this company—something he most assuredly does not deserve.
Alas, I have not found an acceptable replacement for him.
As much as he disappoints me, he is still my son. ”
This guy comes across so cold when he’s talking about Bradford, but the thing that sticks out the most is the one true heir thing. Does that mean this guy has other kids, but illegitimate ones? Ones born out of a pack, outside of a mating bond?
It’s rare, but it happens. You have to be a certain kind of asshole to do stuff like that.
“The other possibility is that he decided he appreciates your presence more than he wants me to know,” Mr. Bentley says.
“Normally, that would bring up multiple issues that would require the involvement of our human resources department, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if, perhaps, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. ”
Color me confused. “What do you mean?” I definitely don’t think Bradford likes me, if that’s what he’s suggesting, but maybe I’m not understanding him correctly.
“My son is not only known for his most recent failure, but also for never quite meeting the bar I set for him. It began when he was a boy. I tried everything to shape him, to mold him into the man he should be today. By now, at his age, he should have a mate and multiple children running about—the future heirs of Alpha Life and the continuation of the Bentley bloodline.”
Okay, this conversation is taking a very strange turn.
Mr. Bentley levels a hard look at me. “I’ve wondered, in the past, if perhaps he has purposefully held himself back from such things, or if he even desires any sort of union at all—whether it’s with a female or a male.
Obviously, if my son prefers the company of men or no company at all, there will be no future Bentley heirs.
The bloodline will die with him. You are very… omega-like in stature and appearance.”
When he says that, I want to slink away and hide somewhere, but I somehow remain rooted in that chair, waiting for the man to be done with this strange talk. I still don’t see where he’s going with this.
“This next request of mine is off the record, and of course I cannot force you to do anything you don’t want to do, but it has occurred to me that you might be the perfect test for my son.
” He shrugs, as if he’s suggesting what to eat for dinner and not, you know, something of this magnitude.
“You could get close to him, see if he’s receptive to someone like you.
If he is, then when that blasted ankle monitor comes off, I will have a list of possible matches ready. ”
He gives me a tight smile, though it’s a cold expression altogether. “I am an old man, as you have surely noticed. Furthering our bloodline now rests precisely on my son’s shoulders. I will see grandchildren before I die, one way or another.”
My palms are clammy in the worst way, and my head started to spin when I put together what he was asking of me—only without really asking. It was more of a suggestion on his part, and because it was a suggestion, there really isn’t anything I can do about it.
I’m a nobody. He knows it. I have no social standing. He’s the head of the company, from a founding family. No one would ever believe little old me over someone like him.
Class differences. It’s what it always comes down to, huh? Things never change, not really.
And if something happens to me? If Bradford snaps and hurts me?
I don’t think he would, but if he did… the crime would be easily swept under the rug.
He’d have an issue with Hayden, but who was Hayden to stand in Bentley Sr.’s way?
I’m sure the über alpha has crushed many people beneath his expensive shoes over the years.
Mr. Bentley stands. He walks around his desk and stops when he reaches me.
I stare straight ahead, my mind still discombobulated, when I feel his hand touch my shoulder.
The way those fingers of his curl around my shoulder make me want to shed my skin and regrow it, just so I could forget what it feels like to have him touch me.
Doesn’t even matter that it’s through fabric. Still feels nasty.
Dirty.
“Think about it,” he advises me as his hand squeezes my shoulder a notch or two above comfortable.
Even as wrinkly as that hand is, there’s a strength behind it, the kind of strength that can easily snap someone like me in two.
“I’m a man of results. If you give me results, no matter what would come out of it, I would make sure you and any other complications are taken care of. ”
Any other complications. Like a pregnancy? Holy crap. I need to get out of here, before he says something else that creeps me out.
I mean, yeah, betas have a monthly fertile window—smaller in scope than an omega’s, so a pregnancy is always possible.
That’s if I was a beta, though. I’m not. I’m an omega, and I don’t have heats because I starve myself. I am the farthest from fertile I could be, so I don’t think an accidental pregnancy is something I have to worry about.