Chapter 13
Mal
PAST
Vae is acting really cold with us. It’s taken me a while to realise something is wrong.
I follow her into the kitchen and hug her from behind.
“Get off me!” she snarls.
I’m so shocked, I drop my arms and step back.
“Vae? Are you mad at me? Have I done something wrong?”
She huffs a bitter laugh. “Look at the mess I have to clean up, I’m behind on my schoolwork. I can’t sleep because the three of you are fucking whatever omega you bring home.”
“We bought you the headphones.”
She turns and gives me a look of such disgust that I’m stunned.
Vae turns away, sweeping her long black hair into a loose bun. She goes to her room and slams the door in my face.
I blink hard at the door.
“What the?”
“MAL!”
I turn my head and spot Deacon, who flies at me.
“I GOT IT!”
I pick him up and swing him around, instantly forgetting Vae.
“I’m a Scorpion.”
He shoves Vae’s door open. She’s standing there in the middle of the room, her fists clenched at her side.
“Vae, I made it. I’m a Scorpion. Just like we always dreamed.”
“Congratulations,” she says flatly.
“Come celebrate with us.”
She hesitates. “I can't, I have to get this essay done.”
She does look exhausted. Is she sick?
Deacon shrugs. “All right. Next time. I need to text Tessa and see if she’s available.”
Deacon walks away, but I’m still standing here when she whirls around and slams the door in my face again.
PRESENT
I slam my hand on the washing machine. How can something that is supposed to be this simple be this hard? Water is pouring out of it. Not soapsuds, this isn’t a cutesy foaming room of bubbles. No, this is fountains of water, rising like a bubbling well and drowning everything in sight.
I turn the taps off and finally get the water to stop. But I just close my eyes and try to calm everything.
Deacon and I broke up with Indy again last night.
She seems to think we’re breaking up means in this moment, but we don’t mean it.
Vae’s face last night at the game said everything.
She was going to go off with Sloan, and then we hurt her feelings again, and she just had this face…
tired, sick of it all, beyond angry. Her expression terrified me.
“I’m losing her,” I whisper and press my lips together so the thought doesn’t come true.
I’ll be lucky if we ever see her again.
“Um…”
I jerk around so quickly I slip, landing on my ass with a splash.
Vae stares down at me with huge eyes. “What happened?”
“That evil machine hates me.”
She snickers and steps down into the laundry water, wading through the two inch deep water to the back door. She pushes it open and lets out a cascade.
I get to my feet, trying to think of something clever or smart to say, but I have nothing. What kind of alpha am I if I can’t even do the washing? Why is it a skill I didn’t ever learn?
Vae sticks her hand in the washing machine and fishes out my clothes.
“I don't know what I did wrong,” I stress, feeling acutely embarrassed, which is not a normal feeling I have around Vae. She’s seen so much of my life, why do I suddenly care how she sees me now?
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Mal. The machine is broken.”
Broken? “It’s not my fault?”
“No. It was on the list of things we needed to replace. We just never got around to it.”
We? I like that, we. When she says we, it’s comforting, exciting, and makes me smile, but when Indy said we, I felt cold and mildly nauseous.
She steps back but doesn’t realise I’m right behind her. My arms go around her, locking her to me. It’s a familiar hold; everything about her is familiar. So why does this feel so different? Ever since that kiss, I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind.
She smells of honeycomb candy. Has she always smelled like that?
“Mal?”
I push my thoughts aside and smile as I lift her up off her feet and deposit her back on the two steps out of the water.
“Stay right there.”
“I can help-”
“I’ll do it.”
She’s quiet while I work, and I find her watching me with a strange expression more than once. By the time the floor is water-free, I don’t feel any less confused.
When I turn around, she’s leaning against the frame, arms crossed, plumping her breasts up and looking a sort of way that I’ve never seen her look before.
“I…” I stop because I have no idea what to say to her.
All my thoughts are gone. The light is hitting her hazel eyes just so, making one look gold and the other green.
She’s combed her fingers through her hair, so it’s messy but still falls in a black wave that I have never truly appreciated before.
“Mal?”
I shake my head and walk towards her, stopping so only the two steps separate us. She unfolds her arms, and an expression I don’t understand crosses her face before she puts on the fake smile I know so well and steps back.
“Shall we?”
“What are we doing today?”
She just walks into the kitchen and leans against the counter. She holds her hand out, and I drop my phone in it. Indy had been appalled that I let Vae go through my phone all the time, but it’s Vae.
She unlocks it and does something, only to hand it back to me.
“What did you do?”
“Changed the alarm tone to something I know you won’t sleep through.”
I want to be annoyed, but, honestly, it’s so thoughtful and Vae that I can’t, right up until I realise she’s only doing this because she wants to leave us.
“There’s a party tonight; we're all meeting up at Slapshots. Come with us.”
She hesitates and then nods. “All right.”
The relief I feel confuses me more, so I turn and walk out of the kitchen and into my room, closing the door and reaching down, no longer denying that I have a semi for a beta I’ve denied wanting all my life.
Is it that…I actually do want to have sex with Vae?
The denials are weak and easy to drown out this time, but I can still hear Maria saying it’s wrong, telling us not to touch her. To make sure we only ever saw her as our friend. Faint and fading.
I grind my teeth as I remember the feel of her, that soft honeycomb candy scent. My dick fills with blood, getting rock hard in my fist.
I stroke from root to tip, a slow sensual squeeze, and I imagine her hand under mine. Her lips will part, and her eyes will be fixed on our hands. I’ll show her how to squeeze me, how to really get me going.
In my mind, Vae licks her lower lip, making it glossy, and looks up at me. I murmur her name. She steps in front of me and drops to her knees. When she looks up at me, I know I’m not going to last long. I stroke myself harder as the vision of her gets stronger.
I hear her murmur my name as she leans forward.
“Open your mouth,” I whisper to her.
My dream Vae opens her mouth, sticking out her tongue.
My balls tighten and toes curl. I’m so close. Vae, my Vae. I want to jam my cock down her throat. Hold her head there while she swallows all of me. Just picturing it sends me over the edge. I grunt and swipe up a t-shirt, catching my cum before I spray my bedroom with it.
I lean heavily against the door, breathing hard.
What did I just do?
Just thinking about the fact that I pictured Vae so vividly and came that hard is telling me I’m thinking too hard about this. It’s all her fault, putting ideas into my head. But, fuck, now that I’ve pictured it, I really, really want to experience it in real life.
Would Vae ever want to try? Has she thought about me like this?
I tuck myself away and toss the top into my laundry basket.
I lie on my bed on my back and stare up at the glow in the dark stars. Indy says they are childish, but Vae loves them. Whenever she comes to cuddle with me in here, she chooses a new favorite star and gives it a name.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been getting up after she leaves and writing the name on the ceiling beside the one she just named. When I get down to a couple of stars, I buy another packet and stick them up there.
If she leaves, this tradition will be finished. It will be over. I won’t get to do it again. I don’t like that at all. How can I fix this? How can I convince her to stay?
My phone rings, and I glance at it before I reject the call. Indy is done and gone. I was finished with her anyway, and I know Raynor was never really into her. Deacon broke it off, but she’s not listening to no.
I get up and rush out of my room, looking for Raynor. I find him in his bedroom and sneak in, perching on his bed. He’s sitting in his chair staring at a blank screen.
“What’s the plan?”
“Deacon is the one with the plans.” His voice is flat and lacks emotion.
“Deacon is too busy being hurt and angry. You’re the one with your head on straight, so how do we get her to stay?”
I get up and start pacing.
“I’ve tried anger, manipulation, and sadness. I’ve tried logic and honesty. Fucking hell, Raynor, I tried offering her what she wants. What else can we do?”
Raynor looks at me with dull eyes. “How do you fall in love?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I bark, confused.
“Fall in love with her.”
“What?” I ask aghast.
“That’s the answer; we need to fall in love with her. That’s how we keep her.”
I stare at him and sit back down, feeling my stomach bottom out. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love.”
“No, because you run from your emotions, hiding from them. Deacon has buried his capacity for love under his refusal to face consequences and reality, and I numb all my feelings by escaping into my music or whatever is distracting me. We are the typical dysfunctional foster brats. We’re too scared to love because the person we love might leave us. It’s classic.”
“You sound like a therapist.”
“Oh, I talked to them at length. It cost a fair chunk of money. But this was her answer. We are all too afraid of committing to anything. It’s why you guys aren’t part of the team, and you hold back, and why I have not gone further with my music career.
We won’t put our hearts on the line. Not for our dreams, not for love. ”
“But the bonds.” I protest.
“Didn’t we do the bonds just to stop the temptation for each of us to leave?
It was a way of forcing the others to stay.
But did we need to do the bonds? Not really.
We treat the omegas and betas we date as though they are here for a good time and then we cut them loose. No one but Vae has any power over us.”
“If that’s true, then the same can be said for her. So, why is she leaving?”
Raynor tilts his head back. “She doesn’t have a bond.”
“So?”
“So what if we leave her? There’s nothing holding us to her.
We keep dating and moving, following our dreams and living our lives, and she is just cleaning up after us.
She’s the only one with a choice or no choice, depends on how you look at it.
But maybe Vae has been watching us all these years and is sick of waiting for us to dump her. ”
I stare at him, and his words start to sink in.
“Vae thinks we’d leave her one day. She wants a family; that’s her dream, but she thinks we’d choose someone else? That’s stupid!” I shout.
“Is it?”
“Of course, it is! No one is like our Vae.”
“So…we circle back to the problem.”
Raynor stares at me until the question he asked earlier comes back to me.
“How do we fall in love?”
Raynor raises a glass in a salute while my stomach sinks.
I don’t have an answer, but I know that I will throw my all into figuring it out because no one matters more than our Vae.