Chapter Twenty-Nine – Kayla
I wake in bed, my mind still half-gone. I’m alone and utterly naked, and yet I’ve never felt more at home. A crazy thing to think, but you know what’s even crazier? My heat wasn’t that bad.
I mean, from what I remember. Some of it is nothing but haze and fog, but other parts are crystal clear, like most of the time with Hayden.
He was everything I needed him to be and more, and even though I remember asking about Bradford on more than one occasion, he always had a soothing answer ready to calm me down.
What did I do to deserve a man like that? I still don’t know, but at this point, I’m done asking those kinds of questions.
He loves me, and I think… I think I love him, too.
And I want to love Bradford, but I don’t know if he’ll let me. My heart feels strange, as if it won’t be full until I have the two of them. The three of us are like an ice cream sandwich. You need two cookies on either side and the ice cream in the middle, otherwise that sandwich isn’t whole.
I slowly sit up and move my legs to hang over the edge of the bed. I yawn, stretch, and get to my feet. I need to shower.
My phone rests on the nightstand, and I go for it to check the time—but the phone is deader than dead. Guess I forgot to charge it before my heat came. Frankly, it was the last thing on my mind, and now I don’t even want to think about all of the work I missed.
How am I going to explain any of this to Bradford’s father?
Will he even let me explain, or will he simply fire me?
At this point, I don’t know what I want.
Out of habit, I don’t want to get fired—a part of me still doesn’t want to disappoint Jeremy, even though I might never see my brother again. I don’t think Hayden would allow it.
And I don’t think Jeremy would be all too thrilled to see me, anyway.
But now, the bigger part of me… just doesn’t care. I don’t need this job. I don’t need to be beneath the thumb of a man who’d hurt his son as he had. Bradford’s father is no better than Jeremy.
I plug in my phone and then grab some clothes and head across the hall to the bathroom, where I shower under hot, steaming water and scrub my body as hard as I can, all over.
Hayden brought me into the bathroom on occasion these past few days, but the washing part always gave way to more sex.
I think my skin has about ten layers of dried sweat on it.
By the time I return to my room, my phone has come back to life and I can see how many missed calls and texts I have: a lot.
A lot of both, from my brother and from Bradford’s father.
My stomach sinks to the floor, a reaction born out of old habits, and I check my email to find his father had sent me numerous emails as well.
The most recent email? The subject line reads: CALL ME IMMEDIATELY.
I shouldn’t, but at the same time, maybe I should just quit and be done with it.
This job, even if I wouldn’t have gotten tangled with Hayden and want more with Bradford, would never have worked out, anyways.
I have no experience being an assistant, let alone to someone with as much wealth as Bradford.
I’m me. I’m a no one—but for the first time ever, I actually have a bit of hope that it’s enough, that I’m enough.
Man, it’s crazy how fast things change, huh?
I hold my head high as I start to pace the room. Calling an über alpha and quitting is not something I ever prepared myself for, but it must be done. If I’m not dealing with my brother anymore, I sure as heck don’t want to deal with Bradford’s father, either.
Phone in hand, I dial the elder Bentley, holding my breath as I wait for him to answer the call. My heart beats so fast in my chest everything in me feels tight. My throat is dry. My free hand is shaking.
I need to do this. I have to.
On the second ring, the older Bentley answers, “Ms. Prim, and here I thought I’d never hear from you again. How very interesting you should call me at this exact moment—I was just thinking about you and how you and I need to have another meeting to clear a few things up.”
I’d say he doesn’t sound happy, but something tells me the man is never happy. What kind of life is that? Not one I want to live, not anymore.
Still, it’s a lot harder to stand there and speak my mind. Even through the phone, I can hear the traces of dominance in his tone—or maybe that’s just my inner omega wanting to shrink away from this whole interaction.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I say, not sounding nearly as tough and bold as I want to be. “I was calling to—”
“Never mind that. You’re going to listen to me right now, Ms. Prim, and you’re going to listen well.” I stop pacing when I hear the growl in his voice. The dominance that was laced in his earlier words is tenfold now, impossible for me to ignore.
Yes, apparently, even on the phone an über alpha can command me. How sad is that? Maybe he wouldn’t hold such power over me if I was bonded to another alpha, but here I am, technically an unclaimed omega in her prime.
Sex doesn’t equal a claiming, not really. Only a bite to the scent gland does. It’s something I never thought I’d have to worry about.
He goes on, “I’m actually on my way there now.
My car tells me I’ll be there in less than ten minutes.
I want you ready to be picked up at the base of the driveway.
You will come alone—and you will not tell my son where you’re going.
In fact, I don’t want him to see you leave the house. Is that understood?”
A nagging, itchy feeling crawls up my spine, like a thousand spiders all tickling me at once. I can’t say anything other than a quiet, “Yes.”
“Good,” he says, and even though his voice makes me sick, my inner omega preens at the praise, the traitor bitch. “I’ll see you then.” He ends the call, leaving me to reckon with what I have to do.
And I have to do it. I don’t want to, but there’s not a single part of me that can resist an order from an über alpha, even through the phone. I’m so pathetic it’s not even funny.
Things might’ve been different if Hayden would have claimed me during my heat, as in, sunk his teeth onto my neck and pierced my scent gland with them, but he didn’t. So I am as unclaimed as an omega could possibly be. A bonding bite is about the only protection an omega has against other alphas.
But things aren’t different, and I have to do what the über told me to.
I try to find Hayden in the house—the one loophole in Bentley Sr.’s plan—but he’s not anywhere I can find him, which I take to mean he’s not currently here. He did mention he wanted to swing by his place.
Just my luck he happens to not be here at the time I need him the most.
When my search for the other alpha in the house proves fruitless, I decide to use some of his special cream.
I find it in his things. Scent-blocking cream that’s apparently strong enough to dilute an alpha’s scent as well as an omega’s.
I lather it on as quickly as I can, rubbing it onto my neck and even tugging down my pants and coating my inner thighs.
After my heat… I need to be careful. The more of this cream I can put on, the less I should smell like an omega. Maybe I can get through this meeting without alerting the big boss that I’m not the beta I was pretending to be.
And, beyond that, I have to imagine a beta is a safer thing to be than an omega when meeting with someone like Bentley Sr.
My time is ticking, and the way my heart rate speeds up on its own tells me I’m running out of time while I lather on the cream.
I end up leaving the tube on Hayden’s bag uncapped and hurry through the house.
On my way, I don’t see Bradford anywhere, and I’m able to slip out of the house through the front door, and soon enough I’m standing at the base of the driveway.
Just in time, too, because a sleek black car pulls up less than ten seconds after I arrive.
Every window is blacked out, and the car is small; I stare at a single door on the passenger’s side.
It’s a type of vehicle I’ve never seen before, and my mind instantly goes to the amount of money it must have cost to purchase something like it.
The car door opens weirdly; it doesn’t swing out like most. It lifts up, almost mechanically, in a smooth motion that really nails it in: this car probably costs as much as a small house.
The elder Bentley sits in the driver’s seat, and he doesn’t even look at me before he barks out, “Get in.” Dominance is once again laced in the words, a command I could not possibly resist.
Meekly, I duck my head and get inside the car, and he presses something on his side, and the door to my right closes on its own. I don’t look at him. I can’t. All I do is fiddle with the seatbelt while hoping the anti-scent cream will be enough.
Bradford’s namesake is just as I remember him: put together, his jaw clean-shaved, his hair combed back in a way very similar to how Bradford does it.
The elder über holds his head high, and his black eyes barely glance in my direction as he turns the car around and starts heading the same way he came.
The car ride is silent. I don’t have the guts to ask him what this is about, and he seems to have not deemed it necessary to speak.
The radio isn’t on, either, which I find odd.
What kind of madman doesn’t listen to the radio as he drives?
Or at the very least some kind of app he pays for that doesn’t have commercials?
I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s not downtown. Minutes pass by, and we drive through other neighborhoods full of huge, fancy houses with sprawling yards, estates that put the one Bradford lives in to shame.
And here I thought they didn’t get any bigger than that. Who knew there were this many rich people around? Take one look at how the majority of people live in that city, and these kinds of people are the opposite side of the coin.