Chapter 13
“Well then, isn’t this an unexpected development?” Keith sauntered into the entryway and approached Rupert Junior.
“Alpha Berger! Stop him! He’s attacking me,” Rupert Junior shouted.
“Keith, wait,” Brian said at the same time, reaching for his mate. He couldn’t let him walk into harm’s way.
“Everyone calm down,” Keith said and then laughed. “I can’t believe I just said that. When I’m the voice of reason in the room, we are definitely in the wrong room.”
“Keith, please.” Brian clutched his arm.
“Let me handle this.” Not that he had any idea what was going on or what he would do about it.
The Green Field Alpha’s son was in his house, telling him to kill his mate, while also somehow seeming like his mate.
He didn’t understand what he was experiencing.
It didn’t make sense. It was wholly different from his connection, draw, desire, and need for Keith, but something was niggling in his mind telling him that Rupert Jackson Junior was his mate even when his heart and his soul knew with absolute certainty that he wasn’t.
“He’s out of control! He needs to be stopped! You have to stop him,” Rupert Junior continued yelling. “Now. Now. Now.”
“Stop barking like a rabid dog.” Keith said. He kissed Brian’s cheek and then easily shook off his hold and walked over to Rupert.
“He’s going to kill your mate,” Rupert Junior shouted. “Do something!”
“I’m only planning on smelling you, but if you don’t chill the fuck out, then I might change my mind.”
“Keith, what are you doing?” Brian asked, feeling panicked that his mate was nearing a taller, broader, heavier, more seasoned Alpha.
“I just covered that. Give me a sec.” He leaned into Junior’s personal space and inhaled.
“What kind of Alpha are you?” Rupert Junior yelled at Brian. “Protect your mate!”
“You aren’t my mate,” Brian said. His mind was hazy and confused, but he could feel his mate in the core of his being, and it wasn’t this interloper.
Junior froze, his eyes wide and his chest heaving. “Wh…why are you saying that?”
“Don’t be offended, boo.” Keith was now centimeters away from Rupert, moving his nose up and down and breathing him in, and Brian was losing his mind.
“The only reason he’s saying that is because it’s true.
” He curled his hand around Junior’s throat, shoved him against the wall, and leaned his face forward. “Stay still.”
“He’s killing me,” Junior rasped. “Help.”
“He isn’t killing you.” Brian considered the scene in front of him. “Keith, are you killing him?”
“Not yet.” Keith straightened, looked Rupert Junior in the face, and grinned manically.
“What’s the matter, baby doll, life flashing before your eyes?
What were the greatest moments? Let me guess.
The day someone voluntarily touched your private parts?
Oh, no, I know, that one time your daddy almost told you he’s proud of you?
” He shook his head. “Never mind, neither of those things happened.” He paused and tilted his head to the side. “Bacon cheeseburger?”
“Alpha Berger,” Rupert shouted. “Help me.”
“Not going to happen,” Keith said, his hand still wrapped around Junior’s throat.
“Why isn’t it working?” He grasped Keith’s wrist with both hands and tried to push him off, but despite his larger size, he didn’t get anywhere. “It worked before. It’s supposed to work.”
“What did you rub on yourself, Junior?” Keith moved his nose toward Rupert’s armpit.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s on your neck and your underarms. I can smell it combining with your natural stink.” He pulled Rupert Junior forward and then slammed the much larger man against the wall, making it shake. “Talk.”
“Aren’t you going to help me?” Junior choked out, desperately staring at Brian. “I’m your—”
“You’re not his mate,” Keith said, his voice even and calm. That tone on this man was more disconcerting than the chokehold he had on the big Alpha.
Rupert Junior must have felt the same way because his voice trembled when he said, “How do you know that?”
“Because I’m his mate.”
“She said you seduced him with sex. She didn’t say you’re—"
“Your friend Claire wasn’t here long enough to get all the details,” Keith said.
That made two of them. “Keith, what’s happening?” Brian had asked that question so many times since he had met his mate that he was considering getting it printed on a T-shirt.
“His spy told him she failed in her mission to seduce you because you like fucking male Alphas, so his always intelligent and level-headed father sent him over to do the job.” He pulled Rupert Junior forward and knocked him back again. “Isn’t that right, gumdrop?”
“I…I…I…”
“Your father’s a weak coward, but even I didn’t think he’d stoop low enough to whore out his own son,” Keith said.
“I’m not a whore!” Junior shouted.
If Brian hadn’t spent every day for over a month gazing at Keith’s face, he may have missed the slight upward tilt of his lips or the flash of satisfaction in his eyes.
He was intentionally baiting Rupert Junior and it was working.
Brian was still terrified that he’d be hurt, but he was also impressed enough to give him space so he could keep working.
“You came into an Alpha’s house and offered him your ass. What would you call that?” Keith goaded.
“That’s disgusting,” Rupert Junior said. “I wasn’t going to let him do that to me.”
“Your mouth then?” Keith said. “Daddy sent you to suck dick?”
“You’re sick! I’d never have sex with him, just like that stupid Omega never had sex with you.”
Keith’s posture relaxed and he nodded. “So you did it to me too. It was an oil or a cream of some kind that you made with my hair. You put it on Timothy Tillers. That’s how you got me to think he was my mate.”
“How…” Junior’s voice broke. “How do you know?”
“Well, whatever the fuck you rubbed on yourself isn’t affecting me so I can smell it and think clearly.
Being a grown adult helps too. You fucked with us when we were teenagers.
” He pulled and then pushed Rupert Junior again, causing his head to hit the wall again.
“Timothy and the Golden Valley Alpha family died, and I blamed myself for years. You and your father are sick monsters who need to be put down.”
“Keith?” Brian moved forward and put his palm on his mate’s back, horrified at the truth being uncovered. “Are you okay?”
“Yep.” He looked over his shoulder at Brian. “Leave the room.”
“Like hell,” he protested. “I’m not leaving you alone with him.” Even though his mate seemed to have the situation under control, Brian didn’t understand how he was overpowering Rupert Junior so easily and completely and he didn’t know how long it’d last.
“Brian, whatever he rubbed on himself affects him and you, but not me. When they did it to me, I lost my mind. I was exposed to it when I was younger, for longer, and more frequently, but we don’t know how it works so it could harm you even in small doses. Step away.”
He considered his swimming brain and the implications of what his mate said and moved back.
“We’re going outside where we have fresh air.
I don’t want you in the house with my mate,” Keith said.
One hand still firmly wrapped around Rupert Junior’s throat, he dragged him toward the door, yanked it open, and walked onto the porch.
“Jennifer,” he said to the pack member who had been waiting outside, “leave.”
“Alpha Berger said—”
“Go ahead and go,” Brian shouted from inside the house.
He waited until he heard the car drive away and then he hurried out front and gave wide berth to Keith and Rupert as he stepped off the porch and into the driveway.
From that distance, he could no longer smell whatever it was that had been invading his brain.
“Do you have a hose?” Keith asked.
“At the side of the house,” Brian answered.
“What are you doing?” Rupert Junior shouted. “Let go of me.”
“I’m going to wash that shit off you, you absolute fucking idiot.
” Keith yanked Junior off the porch. He planted his feet, trying to stop him, but that just resulted in him losing his balance.
Keith kept his hold on Junior’s neck and yanked him across the yard, his feet scraping the ground behind them.
“After you put this concoction on Timothy Tillers, he became completely psychotic and blew up the Golden Valley Alpha house with himself in it, and you thought it was a good idea to put it on yourself?”
“My father said it’d be different because I’m only using it one time and I’m an Alpha not a weak Omega.”
“And that’s a chance you were willing to take?” Keith shook his head. “You’re dumber than I realized and I already thought you were a colossal idiot.”
Brian followed them across the yard, keeping his distance but watching the chaos unfold.
“Who made the oil?” he asked. Now that they were outside and he could no longer smell Rupert Junior, he was thinking more clearly.
Alpha Jackson and his son couldn’t have done this on their own. They didn’t possess that kind of skill.
Rupert Junior didn’t respond.
“Answer him,” Keith said, and when Junior didn’t, he threw him against the house.
He flew through the air and hit it with a bang before landing in a heap on the ground.
“Junior, another mistake in your parade of stupid was coming here with no backup. Do you really want to mess with me?” He glared at the larger man, who was quaking at his feet.
“Remember what I did to you the last time you tried to fight me directly, RuRu? How old were you?” He paused.
“Twenty, twenty-one, maybe? Which means I was eight. How do you think you’d do now? ”
“Some witch chemist my father knows,” Rupert Junior hastily replied. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Probably.” Keith picked up the hose. “It’ll be upgraded to definitely if you don’t do what I say. Strip.”
“I’m not going to have sex with you!”