Chapter 19 Mickey
Mickey
Locke
Oscar returns home. He’s thinking heavily about something, and it’s pressuring the bond. Kol comes out of the room to meet us. I’d cleaned up the mess from earlier and made a soup that’s on the stove.
My alphas both eat and wash their bowls, then come sit down for our nightly chat.
Kol looks disturbed. Oscar looks stressed.
“I met with the beta,” Oscar lets us know.
Kol perks up.
“I believe he was on a date with an omega.”
What the fuck? Is everyone being unfaithful to our scent match? My scent match. Our omega.
I swallow and push that insane feeling away. The beta doesn’t know we are courting an omega. Or rather, we want to court an omega.
“Was she pretty?” I ask unfairly.
“Aren’t they all?” Oscar says just to put me at ease. But no, that’s not true. They aren’t all pretty. “I didn’t get a good look at her, actually.”
I look at Kol, who won’t meet my eyes. The omega he was with last night was probably gorgeous if he’s feeling this guilty.
“Also, Locke, Mickey is going to be gone for a few days. I was down there chatting with him. He’s said that Legs is not sending a replacement. Mickey will be back on duty on Monday.”
Mickey and Oscar have a friendly relationship despite the fact Mickey would put a bullet in my head if his boss told him to, no hesitation.
“Is he off breaking someone else’s legs?”
“Wow!” Kol shouts.
“What?”
“Alphas attacked Mads and broke his leg. I don’t want you talking like that around him.”
He’s right, I didn’t even think that might come off shitty. The fact that Kol is thinking about this is curious. Is Mads always on the top of his mind now?
“Are we even going to be around him anymore? Didn’t he reject us?”
Oscar speaks up, “I told him to tell us what he wants so we can have him. We’re meeting with him tomorrow to work out the details.”
“And he agreed to that?” Kol asks.
“I didn’t give him much choice.” Oscar shifts in his chair. “Listen, we have to bond him by Wednesday. That’s when Angeline at the Institute is presenting another set of alphas to Acadia. We have to be on that list.”
“Bonded and registered,” I say.
“Bonded and registered,” Kol echoes.
“And since we will be Mickey free,” Oscar says to me, “I want you combing Cash City for your scent match. Every time Kol and I step out of this house, we run into another omega. She’s got to be out there. I don’t want to see you until Monday unless you’ve found her. Locke, I mean it.”
“Yes, I understand.”
We go over some other pack business, but our meeting wraps up quickly. I get my wallet and keys. I try very hard to keep my emotions steady.
Kol is drinking on the fire escape. I stick my head out of the window.
“What club did you go to? Maybe I’ll try my luck around there.”
He texts me the address to Urban Lounge. He doesn’t say anything at all to me. I take that as a sign to leave.
On my own little journey to find Acadia.
I find myself at a late night café downloading omega courting apps. I swipe through the profiles looking for a raven haired woman named Acadia.
She won’t be on these apps. I can feel it in my soul.
I go to a corner market and buy fruit snacks and little Japanese sodas, so by the time I reach the nightclub my blood sugar levels are high enough I won’t pass out.
I can feel him following me.
It’s our little game.
When I arrive, there’s a whole street filled with party people. Clubs. Bars. Nice restaurants. Homeless people. Peddlers. Men making hot dogs. Hundreds of women in small outfits. Hundreds of men in baseball caps. It’s hot and humid. There are even horses on the street.
I spot a few omegas, all surrounded by alphas. She’s not here. I know she’s not here. She’s somewhere safe, sleeping.
I just know these things. Just like I know Mickey is done following me and wants to change the game. I head back to the alleyway courtyard. There are more clubs back here, and a smoke shop, but everything is more quiet. More intimate. No cops.
I light my joint and wait for Mickey to approach me. I offer him a hit when he finally sidles up to me.
“Locke.”
“Mickey.”
I look over at him. He’s wearing a different outfit than normal.
He’s wearing his “Locke outfit”. It’s a gold soft t-shirt, black chinos, and shiny black shoes.
He always wears gold when he wants to see me.
I pick at the bottom of his shirt, and he smiles.
He associates this with me, but tonight I'm wearing my own style: yellow and orange floral shirt, comfortable khakis, and a leather belt.
The buttons are open to show off my chest hair and white tank top underneath.
“Are they asleep?” he asks about my pack mates. Oscar went to bed an hour ago. Kol is drunk. He won’t notice anything. He won’t notice when I shut them out from my feelings.
I didn’t lie. Mickey would shoot me point blank in between the eyes if Legs told him to. He may hesitate, but he’d do it.
Mickey was hired on as a muscle years ago, but never got his chance with me while we were in Salt Port. He wouldn’t get a chance ever, but we have an arrangement.
We don’t love each other or anything.
He’s not pack.
“Legs is getting anxious. He wants you back in Salt Port next week. He wants you there before her big birthday party. I’ve had to distract him twice from asking me to just throw you in the back of my car and drive you home.”
“Home,” I scoff.
“Is this home? You never leave the house. I should know.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Mickey is here to watch me, and he takes that very seriously. My stalker was assigned to stalk me. He’s exactly where he wants to be.
When he told Oscar he would be “gone for the weekend,” this was actually his way of telling me, “I want to see you.”
He probably saw us acting differently. Maybe he knows we found an omega…
“Did you get us a room?” I ask as I finish the last drag on the joint.
Mickey goes beet red. He nods his head vigorously. I extend my hand as if to say, lead the way, then. Mickey is stocky. Funny looking face. Enthusiastic. When he gets red like this, he looks even worse.
He takes me to a nice boutique hotel on the corner, The Nightingale. We check in and get our room. He’s nervous but hiding it well. I’m not nervous at all. But as the floors light up, taking us further and further up to the room, I feel guilty.
Mickey is a beta. An untrustworthy, nasty beta. He watches me with an obsession that I don’t trust.
He’ll never love me like Kol and Oscar love me. And they don’t even touch my cock.
But he does seem to worship me.
“I saw Oscar go into a jeweler. I went in after him and got his order. A silver necklace for a woman. With a pendant. He walked that necklace to the Institute.”
I grunt instead of replying. He didn’t ask a question, so there’s nothing for me to say. I knew it. He noticed us behaving differently, and now he’s here to collect.
“I still haven’t told Legs you all have been going to the Institute.
You know if he found out, you’d be done here.
He’d finish this. Take out Oscar and Kol.
Take you to do your duty with little Aurora.
He talked about making sure you are observed during her heats, so he can make sure you get her pregnant like you should. ”
He’s reminding me that he lies to Legs about my activity. Like how we were accepted into the Institute. And now he’ll lie about a courting gift.
If Legs found out we were courting an omega, he would stop it. By any means.
So yes, I mess around with Mickey to keep my pack safe from Legs. And they don’t know a thing. They are safe and happy.
I try and fail not to think about Acadia.
Would she understand?
Am I even capable of doing this, knowing she exists?
But if I deny Mickey—for an omega, a scent match—he’ll go right to Legs. His loyalty is known.
I shut the door, and Mickey grabs me and throws me up against the wall. His lips crash into mine, and it’s everything in me to return the lust. But I just want my omega.
Mickey strokes my dick over my pants. And I think about Acadia to get hard.
It works, thank god.
“What do you want, Mickey boy?” I ask because I’m not in the mood to play around.
He bites my lip, and when it snaps back to me, puffy and red, he answers, “We have all night. Don’t be impatient.”
He gets on his knees and puts his hot mouth over my pants, onto my cock. I need more than a single joint to get me through this. Thankfully, there’s a bottle of wine on the table with our names on it. Like we are on a honeymoon.
Oscar said he doesn’t want me back all weekend, and Mickey will know if I don’t go back home. I will have to be here all weekend. But there’s no way I can keep this up for two nights. At least sober.
Mickey takes down my pants to my ankles and licks the underside of my cock.
I reach out for the wine, and thankfully, it’s a screw top. I drink in three whole gulps of it and then pour some over my cock and balls for Mickey.
He loves it.
He really loves it.
I catch his eye and for a split second I see, instead, Mads down on his knees before me. Licking wine off my half-staff cock. Now that’s an image I can use.
“Come on, beta, suck me like you mean it,” I say to Mads. Not to Mickey. I never call Mickey by his designation, so it’s a gamble. But it pays off because Mickey takes my now fully erect member all the way to the back of his throat.
“Fuck!”
He works me with his whole body. His hand on my balls. His whole throat squeezing my cock. He’s moaning and undulating. It takes forever, but I keep imagining he’s Mads, and I come. He licks up every last drop.
“Fuck, I love you calling me beta. That’s hot.”
I nod and go into the bathroom, shutting him out.
I don’t look up at the mirror. I wash my hands and take off my clothes. Then I slowly open the bond back up so I can check in on my pack. Oscar is still asleep, but Kol is going through it.
I call him.
“Locke, it’s 1:00 am,” Kol says instead of hello.
“Yeah, I know, you just worried me.”
He sighs. “Tell me it’s going to be ok.”
Kol trusts me so much, I wonder if I deserve it.
“It is. It already is. Things are ok, and they will be ok.”
We sit there in silence, and I open up the bond even more. Dread and doom pass over to me.
“What’re you doing?” he asks.
“I’m at a hotel. She’s not out here. I’ll try again in the morning.”
“That’s good. I’m so sorry about last night. About the omega.”
“Hey, I have no leg to stand on. I shouldn’t have shamed you. You were doing what you needed to do.”
“Don’t be so understanding when I felt your real feelings afterwards.”
“Let me be a better person, Kol. I’m allowed to evolve.”
He laughs, albeit a bit strained.
He tells me he should go, and I let him go. Then I look up at the mirror. My long blonde hair isn’t even looking frayed. I look put together. My beard is trimmed. My eyes clear. I don’t match how I feel at all. I leave to go join Mickey for the night.