Kieran
“No,” I grumbled, setting it down on the desk with a thump. “I can’t concentrate. I’m sorry.”
She heaved a dramatic sigh, but looked somewhat amused as she nudged my chair so it twirled around and I was facing her. “What now, princess?”
“Cut it out,” I growled, planting my feet on the ground so I could swivel away from her searching eyes. “I’m not in the mood.”
“This is about Goldilocks, right? Like always?”
“What?” I snapped, glaring down at the desk. “You don’t think I have any other problems in my life?”
“Well, do you?” She countered.
I didn’t know how to answer without sounding pathetic, so I just didn’t say anything.
“You know we’re dead right now, Kieran. I don’t have anything else to do but bug you until you talk about it.”
“Why do you care so much?” I asked sharply, which I knew wasn’t fair. But when I turned around to face her, preparing to apologize for my tone, she was only giving me a comically wry expression.
“I remember what it was like when I met my wife,” she mused. “It’s unfamiliar and scary and everything feels bigger than it is. I know,” she reiterated. “But it gets better.”
“Jordy isn’t my wife,” I deadpanned.
“No, he’s your precious little angel,” she retorted. “That’s so different.”
Scoffing, I rolled my eyes and ignored the heat suffusing my face. I should never have explained the context for the tattoo he’d gotten.
“Anyway, how would you know if it’s going to get better for me?”
“I know parts of it are going to get better,” she assured me. “Once you bite him, anyway.”
My stomach tensed, my jaw clenching for a brief moment before I forced myself to relax and act like her words hadn’t sent a shock wave of pure horror, excitement, and misery rocketing through my senses by way of my ears.
“That’s- I… Don’t say shit like that,” I ordered, but I could feel heat rising up to color my skin. “That doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Kieran, you’ve been moody and restless and distracted. Maybe your beta parents don’t get what’s up with you, but I know.”
My heart and my pulse were suddenly racing, and for a moment all I could do was swallow.
“How would it…” I stopped, inhaling deeply. “Even if he wanted me to… How would it help?”
“There’s a calmness that comes with it. You won’t get so mad, and you won’t worry so much,” she explained. “You’re telling me you don’t know any mated couples?”
“Not that I’ve ever talked about this stuff with,” I muttered, embarrassed. I knew how it was in books and movies, but that stuff was designed to make love seem like this great and wonderful thing. Well, it wasn’t always great and wonderful for me.
“Well, I’m talking to you about it now,” she said, finally pulling up the little chair I had across the room and setting it down backwards, plopping into it so she could rest her arms over the back and stare at me pityingly.
“I didn’t know you needed it. I thought you were on drugs for a minute there,” she reminded me.
“I know,” I said flatly. Drugs were less addictive and would have been easier to quit than Jordy, anyway.
“What exactly is stopping you?” She wondered, and I could tell she didn’t mean anything insulting by it. She genuinely didn’t understand why I hadn’t tried to mark someone like Jordy Nolan. I wanted to laugh and scream and burn down a building.
“I… Nothing. I mean, everything!” I corrected myself. “We’ve never even talked about that anyway!”
Talk about it? I couldn’t even let myself think about it for more than a second, or my insides started going crazy like a fucking hornet’s nest that had been smacked with a baseball bat.
I couldn’t be his mate. I just couldn’t.
It didn’t matter that I loved him more than I’d loved anything in my entire life.
Or that I’d be perfectly thrilled to spend my life letting him deliberately, and somewhat sadistically, seduce me at the worst possible moments, and purposely get on my nerves because he thought my reactions were funny.
And listen to his stupid, silly, too-cheerful pop music and watch his gooey, sparkly romance shows.
I was never lucky. Good things didn’t happen to me.
“Gee, I wonder why.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, you’re not exactly the most cool, calm, and collected person to talk about deep stuff with, Kieran. I’m sure he’s well aware of that fact.”
“He… No,” I said, shaking my head. “He doesn’t hold shit back from me, okay? He’s the one who started this whole… thing, anyway! When he wants something, he lets me know.”
Did he want me to bite him? Did he actually think we could be mates? If he did, it was only because he was so naively optimistic to think that anything in life could be so fucking easy and convenient.
She raised her eyebrows, nodding slowly and in a very condescending fashion.
“So you don’t think you’re his mate,” she determined.
Those words were worse, so much worse than the others that had sent my blood pressure through the roof. These just caused a sharp desolation to bloom and spread in my veins, like a venom of depression and bitterness that would slowly kill me.
But if I wasn’t his mate, then that meant… There was some other alpha out there that he really belonged to. I didn’t think I could live through it.
“I don’t know. I… I don’t know!” I repeated, frustrated. “I can’t think about it. It freaks me out.”
“It freaks you out because you do think you are,” she pointed out.
“I don’t know,” I repeated. I sounded small and whiny and acutely pathetic, even in my own ears. But that was nothing new for me when talking to Barbie. She always somehow managed to force the dumbest, most embarrassing shit out of me like no one else could.
“Alright, well at least tell me what has you upset this time,” she said. “Forget the mate thing. Are you guys in a fight?”
“No. We don’t really fight,” I said, running a hand through my dark hair, relieved by the subject change. Whenever we did have issues, it was usually just because of me being an inconsiderate moron. But fighting just didn’t feel like the right word for anything we’d done together.
“So what is it? You better not still be giving him the hot and cold routine,” she warned me. “The boy got a tattoo for you.”
“It’s not that,” I assured her quickly and with a bit of guilt. “It’s just… He… He’s going on a date. With somebody else.”
“What!?” Her eyes widened, and she sat up straight in the chair, looking shocked. “Why would he do that to you?”
Groaning, I dragged my palms over my eyes. “I don’t know, it’s this stupid fucking charity auction thing for the youth center he volunteers at. They needed another guy for it, and he was too nice to say no.”
As she stared at me, I watched the genuine shock and indignation fade, until she snorted, and then threw her head back, letting a full belly laugh roll out. Completely and totally affronted by her reaction, I snarled, my lips pulling back to show my teeth for a second.
“You think that’s funny!?”
It took a few more moments for her laughing fit to ebb off so she could answer me.
“Oh my god, baby alphas are so cute. You precious thing.”
“Shut up!”
“That’s not a real date, Kieran! It’s for charity.” I remembered how he’d kept saying that to me back at home
“I… I know that!” I snapped. “I’m not stupid, okay? I just… I…”
“I know, I know,” she said, still chuckling a little as she shook her head. “He’s going to be out there without you, and everyone’s going to be looking at him and cooing over him, and you don’t want them to be.”
It was too close to the truth for me to disagree with, but also I didn’t want to validate her by saying she was right, so I just kept glaring and scowling.
“That’s exactly the kind of thing that will get better when you just stop being stubborn and-”
“I get it,” I cut her off, feeling that terrible heat rising up to my skin again. If she said the word bite again, I was pretty sure I’d spontaneously combust.
“Well, when is this date happening anyway?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “The stupid fucking auction is happening right now.”
“Now now?” She asked to clarify and I nodded slowly and miserably, shifting my glare down to the desk and my blank tablet.
“He got all dressed up in his little suit jacket and everything,” I added bitterly, only because I’d been so irked to see how adorable he’d looked. But he looked good in everything, whether it was fitted dress clothes or a ratty t-shirt he’d stolen from me to lounge around at home in.
“Did he look cute?” She asked mockingly, forcing me to slowly turn toward her with the flattest, most deadpan expression I could possibly muster.
“No,” I lied.
Sighing, though still looking completely and mortifyingly amused at me, she waved a hand toward the door out into the hallway.
“You know what, why don’t you just go?”
“Seriously?” I asked, but my muscles had already tensed like they wanted me to spring out of the chair like a striking cobra.
“Yeah, we’re dead anyway. Go make sure your precious little pop-tart isn’t being devoured by all the other evil alphas in the world,” she said, watching me jump up out of my seat. “But you’re coming in early on Sunday to do those drawings.”
“I’ll do them at home and send them to you before that,” I promised quickly. “Can I go?”
“You can go,” she conceded, jerking her chin toward the doorway again. “But for god’s sake, at least consider what I said. If not for my sanity, then for your own.”
“Fine, yeah. I’ll think about it,” I said, dashing out of the room, down the hall, and out to the parking lot into my truck. Would I think about it? Not if I could help it.
I sped down the road, wanting to floor it but also knowing that if I went too wild, my eternally bad luck would lead to me getting pulled over for the first time in my life. So I whipped toward the center as fast as I could justify, my heart banging like a drum in my chest.