Chapter Eight
Assa
Assa sat next to his father’s big chair. Careful not to pull too hard, he propped the old man’s foot on the coffee table.
“I’ve got it,” Papa grumbled.
“I’m trying to help,” Assa said, glaring at his trembling leg. “The nurse said this new sprain was mild, but you need to take it easy.”
“Yeah? Well, I can still lift my foot. I don’t need my sorry excuse for a son coming around here embarrassing me.”
Assa straightened his spine. Despite their vitriol, he no longer cowered under his alpha parent’s harsh words.
It was never pleasant, but if he didn’t visit, no one would.
Assa’s omega father had passed away years ago, and he had no siblings.
Papa didn’t have friends, and he hadn’t endeared himself to the other residents at his assisted living facility.
Wes hated that Assa insisted on coming here. He blamed Papa—not incorrectly—for many of Assa’s insecurities and believed he should have cut off Jeral. One of the few things they argued over regularly was how much verbal abuse Assa put up with from his father.
Assa understood Wes’s frustration. He could banish Papa from his life, and nobody would blame him for it. Except he’d decided long ago not to do that.
Before his omega father passed away after Assa’s thirteenth birthday, he told him it would be understandable if he wanted to cease contact with his alpha parent once he grew up.
Daddy had spent much of Assa’s childhood protecting him from Jeral’s shouting and belittlement.
On his deathbed, he apologized for not living long enough to see Assa to adulthood, advising him to be docile and placating to avoid the worst of Papa’s temper until then.
But he also said that if Assa’s big heart wouldn’t allow him to turn his back on Jeral, it didn’t make him weak. It made him kind, and good, and stronger than Papa’s insults. Assa often recalled those words, imbibing how much Daddy loved and admired what others perceived as softness.
Yet even with his forgiving spirit, Assa would always suffer ill effects from spending his early years at the mercy of his father’s moody outbursts.
Papa used to shout at him and call him names, complaining that he was too loud, too messy, or just too much.
Assa learned to make himself as small as possible, to never speak unless he was spoken to.
As a result, he had trouble finding friends and his peers ridiculed him.
His low social status annoyed Papa even more, drawing further insults, perpetuating the cycle.
As an adult, Assa was better at ignoring or firmly rebuking his father whenever he acted like an asshole. But the damage had been done. Although he didn’t tolerate Papa’s venom anymore, a childhood spent doing so had resulted in bouts of self-doubt and, on his worst days, self-loathing.
Thankfully, those darker moments no longer defined his existence. After years of therapy and his loving relationship with Wes, they were fewer and farther between.
The first thing he had done when he arrived at college was take advantage of the campus’s mental health referral service.
His therapist helped him identify the lasting trauma from his upbringing—an unrelenting desire to love and be loved, marred by an inability to trust that he was lovable.
Their sessions provided a path for him to build his confidence and self-respect.
By the time he met his future husband, Assa was still cautious, but ready to accept Wes’s love.
Like Wes, his therapist told Assa that cutting Jeral off was justifiable, but he also supported Assa’s belief that caring for his parent was the right thing to do.
Papa’s abuse had never been physical, at least there was that, and he’d paid for Assa’s college, even if that financial support had come with a healthy amount of complaining.
Five years after moving out, Assa saw Papa as someone to be pitied, not feared. He wasn’t a scared teenager anymore. He understood that his father wasn’t going to change or suddenly start approving of him, so he’d stopped seeking that approval.
“Why do you think Jeral’s insults of choice are that you are an embarrassment or a disappointment?” Assa’s therapist once asked him.
“It’s not complicated,” he'd replied. “My parents were never able to have more children and he wanted an alpha son. Their marriage wasn’t happy. Then there’s the fact that Papa hated his job working as a lineman for the power company.
His whole life was basically one colossal disappointment, and I was an easy target for all that bitterness.
Even though I did fine in school and was a good kid, I was always going to come up short just by virtue of being a beta. ”
The therapist—also a beta—commiserated. Society was evolving, but the preference for alpha children still existed in many households, especially when couples had few offspring.
“To be honest,” Assa continued, “it’s almost easier that his dislike isn’t personal. I could be the most accomplished beta in the world, and he would still prefer the dumbest, most loathsome alpha for a son.”
“I’m glad you’ve made peace with it.” The therapist tapped his pen on his lips. “But since you’ve decided to continue having Jeral in your life, we need to find solutions for how that can be done in a healthy way.”
So Assa had learned to set boundaries and to understand his triggers. He developed a better method of communicating with his father and left the room whenever he began hurling insults. While Assa didn’t expect loving words from Papa, he no longer tolerated the harmful ones.
Including today.
Assa made sure his father’s foot was comfortable before he stood. “If you’re going to be rude, then I’m leaving,” he said. “I’ll check in with the nurse on my way out.”
“Wait, wait…sit down, boy. I’m fine with you being here.”
That was as close to an apology as Assa would get. He sat down in the visitor’s chair and they watched a few episodes of an old sci-fi show. As the TV droned, Assa noticed several residents grimace as they passed by the door.
Oh, well. Assa couldn’t worry about Papa’s lack of friends. He was doing what he could to be a dutiful son, or at least the big-hearted person Daddy had been so proud of.
He contemplated telling Papa about the meeting he and Wes had scheduled for that afternoon, then thought better of it.
There was no way his father would have a positive reaction to learning that he might become a grandfather.
And Assa couldn’t handle negativity. Not when the decision to adopt was still so fresh.
Also, he rarely mentioned Wes in Papa’s presence. Wes had zero tolerance for Jeral’s barbs, and their conversations often devolved into shouting matches.
Despite that, Assa questioned whether his alpha parent was a total lost cause. Deep down, he hoped he might get an apology someday. But if that day never came, he was still at peace with his choice to stay in contact.
His difficulty lay in getting Wes to accept it. And to recognize the small notes of progress when they happened. Such as this afternoon. Ten years ago, when Assa was thirteen, he and his father could never have peacefully watched TV together.
Stealing glances at his father’s profile, noting the sullen look on his face as he stared at the screen, Assa thought about why he’d been so hesitant to start a family.
He was terrified of his child feeling the way he had.
Never good enough. Even though Assa wouldn’t yell at his son or call him names, he wondered if he would be capable of making him feel cared for and special.
Assa had to believe he could do it. His father’s mistreatment shouldn’t condemn him to having a smaller life than he wanted.
He had Wes now, and a good job as a lab tech on campus.
He might not be a perfect parent, but he would do everything in his power to put his child first, so his son never felt like a disappointment.
He meant what he said to Wes the other night. Assa finally trusted their situation. And he had a lot of love to give.
That was part of the reason they engaged in non-monogamy, because sharing love never diminished it. It only made it bigger.
But their lifestyle was still considered unusual, so Assa and Wes planned to tread carefully.
They certainly would not be listing polyamorous on their adoption applications.
And once they had a baby, they would stop inviting others into their bed if it interfered with their ability to be good parents.
Still, the need to do so wasn’t a given. While uncommon, there were some high-profile examples of polyamory being not only tolerated but accepted.
In Bellwether Province, the famous omega rights attorney Teal McGinn was known to be in a five-man polycule.
Last year, after he won the right for omegas to own heat services in a High Court tribunal, Teal was nearly killed by deranged pro-alpha groups.
His partner condemned those actions, and the ensuing attention revealed that the couple was intimately involved with three other men.
They rarely discussed it publicly, but their polycule was raising five children and counting.
Assa hoped he and Wes would be able to have a family and maintain the sex life they enjoyed, but he was prepared to give up the second to have the first.
“So where is that lunatic you married?” his father grouched.
“He’s not a lunatic. He’s a college professor.”
“He’s a menace, is what he is. Always telling me how to speak to my own son. Not to mention other people. I was hoping since he wasn’t with you this time, maybe you left the bastard.”
“Alright, Papa. That’s enough. If you bad-mouth Wes again, I’m out of here. And you know full well that the reason he’s not here is because the last time he came, you two almost got into a fistfight.”
“He stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong!”
“He told you to stop insulting the nurse who was trying to take a blood sample.”
“That nurse was incompetent! Kept stabbing me over and over for no reason.”
“He was just doing his job, no thanks to you. You wouldn’t hold still, and then you called him a moron. Wes was right to tell you to be quiet and stop being a baby.”
“He embarrassed me is what he did. All bossy and shit. It’s bad enough I’ve had to deal with you my whole life, now I’ve got two betas trying to make me look stupid.”
“And that’s my cue,” Assa said, rising from the chair.
“Sit down!”
“No. I don’t think I will.” Assa put his coat over his arm, giving his father a two-fingered wave as he moved toward the doorway. “It really is a shame you don’t see how amazing your son-in-law is.”
“Pfft.”
“I’ll be back in a week or two.”
In his car, Assa sat in the driver’s seat, engine off, hands gripping the wheel.
It had been nice there for a moment, watching TV, or at least it had been closer to fine than bad. But in the end, Papa had reminded him who he really was.
Assa decided that if they successfully adopted, Papa would not be a part of their son’s life. He and Wes could handle Jeral’s disdain, but he would never allow a child to be subjected to it. He was glad he’d resisted the impulse to talk about their appointment.
Assa pushed a button on the dashboard to place a call.
“Hey,” Wes sounded like he was driving. “Are you close?”
“Yeah, about ten minutes out.”
“Everything okay?”
“Mm-hmm. I just wanted to tell you something now, so we don’t have to discuss it in front of the staff at the agency.”
“Alright,” Wes drawled.
“I’m sure they’re going to have a bunch of paperwork with questions for us, so I thought we should agree in advance that the only grandparents our child might have in his life are your parents.”
The five beats of silence spoke volumes before Wes asked, “Did something happen with Jeral?”
“Nothing beyond the usual. I just realized it’s one thing for me to put myself in the line of fire with him, but I’m not willing to take a chance on that with our child.”
Wes grunted, and Assa recognized the meaning behind it. His husband really wanted to tell him that Assa shouldn’t put up with the same crap he wouldn’t tolerate for his future son. But because Wes knew how that conversation would go, he said nothing, and Assa loved him for it.
“I’m on board with that,” Wes said. “See you soon.”
Someday Assa might feel differently about staying in his father’s life.
But that seemed unlikely given how quickly the old alpha was declining.
If he wanted to have a final reckoning with Papa and turn his back on him for good, time wasn’t on his side.
For now, he still believed caring for him—while maintaining the boundaries he couldn’t draw as a child—was the right thing to do. The kind thing. But his eyes were open.
He saw clearly that Papa had been a shitty father, never coming close to redemption.
And Assa would die before he gave him the chance to be a shitty grandfather.