JUSTICE
Justice
Angry flirting. We were not angry flirting. What the fuck does that even mean? Angry flirting? You don’t flirt with someone you hate. The fucking audacity. To look that good. Push all my buttons. The buttons only you know exist. And my name on your lips. The name I never let anyone use. Only you. Only ever you. And you sandwich these two omegas between us. The two omegas I can’t get out of my head. The omegas I follow around the ship like a lost puppy. But I’m too cool to command them to hang out with me. Omegas I can’t have. They’re all light and goodness. And they feel so fucking good. And I’m a fucking a leech. Finding reasons to touch them. My hand on Theo’s back. Mackenzie’s fingertips in mine. I can’t stop myself. And I don’t even have a fucking phone. I can’t take their picture, which might help. I can’t crack into their phones and drop a tracking bug to know where they are when they go off ship to know they’re safe. I can’t fucking do anything. Maybe they’re right. They’re all right. I’m losing it. Rut. Rut? Is this fucking rut? This place is too dark. Dark wood. Dark carpet. Dark like a closet. Door closing. Dark. No air.
“Just.” Again, he said it like a check, reached out to grab me by the throat. Gave me a shake. I inhaled and rejoined sanity.
“It’s gross, but the Port Haven elite can get away with a lot.” I said smoothly.
“I sort of thought you’d say Ren is exaggerating.” Mackenzie laughed, but it was a nervous laughter.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat, Mackenzie. If you have enough money or power or name recognition, official people will not ask a lot of official questions.”
I reached for the wine and topped off all our glasses, even Ren’s. Not because they needed it, but I needed to move and I couldn’t fucking pace the restaurant. No, because I’m Justice Twill, CEO, and I have to have my shit together.
“There’s a pack lead that’s missing right now with a few of his packmates,” I said, smoothing out my tie and sitting back down. “Nolan was challenged for pack lead at Fight Night. He and a few members of his pack haven’t been seen since.”
Ren crackled at the end of the table. That was the only word for it. Crackled. Mackenzie and Theo didn’t seem to notice.
“If Nolan is found, and his packmates are not.” I shrugged. “He’s pack lead, which in a way means he owns his pack.”
Ren continued enjoying his Wagyu skewers. Maybe it had been my imagination. What the fuck was I saying? Why am I talking about this?
“Nolan was born into a pretty prestigious pack, so his name alone carries some protection.”
That got a snort out of Ren. “Unless your name is Knightbridge, that does not hold true in Port Haven.”
“Your name…” I said.
Ren cut me off. “Case in point.”
Our dinners arrived and were placed precisely by the careful staff. Theo seemed pleased with himself, more pleased than an omega with a T-bone should be. He had that gooey omega look about it. If I touched him now? It might knock me on my ass. Next to him, Ren was… lying. He had promised Mackenzie, and that absolutely had been a promise, so every word out of his mouth was probably true. But he was still lying. The casualness, the nonchalance. That was a front. And I didn’t know what that meant.
And Mackenzie? Her fork danced around her plate, aligning the tiny glazed carrots, but she didn’t actually take a bite. She whispered something, but the sound didn’t carry. There’s something wrong here. Something I missed.
I took a breath to ask her what was wrong, but Ren stopped me. Not with a sound or a shake of the head. His face was neutral, but his eyes said “Don’t.” I broke eye contact first.
You’re reading too much into this. You don’t know these two. You met them days ago. You don’t know Ren either. Eat dinner. Be pleasant.
Now I was whispering to myself. Great.
Ren and Theo chatted softly about reverse sear techniques of all things while I mechanically ate my steak. It was fine, delicious probably. It was like my tastebuds shut down. Like my mouth knew I couldn’t deal with anymore sensory input. Mackenzie had only made it a quarter of the way through her pork chop. I looked up at the ceiling. They had scent dampeners, for sure. I took a deep breath, hoping to pull in their scents. It was faint and touched with black pepper.
“So,” she said around a sigh and put her elbow on the table. “We’re dying to know.”
“What?” I asked.
“You want more angry flirting?” Ren said with that wicked smile.
“Yes, please.” Theo added.
“This,” she waggled her finger left and right, between me and Ren.
He leaned into her like a teenager with hot gossip. “Do you want the long story or short?”
“Short.” I said. “We used to know each other, now we don’t.”
“And yet, Ren somehow put his freedom on the line to steal you a Camaro.” Mackenzie raised an eyebrow at me.
“Long.” Ren countered and turned his full attention to Mackenzie and gushed. He fucking gushed like he was some grandma at the hairdresser. “I can’t remember a day that I didn’t know Justice Twill. We met on the first day of school. And I think I fell in love with him that very second. Of course, I was six, and I didn’t know what that meant.”
My breath caught in my chest. I hadn’t known that.
“His parents weren’t great,” he noted to Theo, to pull him into the conversation, “Neither were mine. But mine were never home. They owned a restaurant, so there was every kind of food you could possibly want in the house. So, what else does a teenage boy need but snacks and video games and his best friend he’s madly in love with?”
It had started with snacks. He had said his mom kept putting sour cream and onion chips in his lunch bag and that he hated them. Then giant sandwiches, so big he’d have to give me half or throw it away. I would have eaten that fucking glass just to sit next to him at lunch.
He leaned into Theo. “Do you want to know a dirty secret?”
“Of course.”
“Mackenzie, cover your ears. This is not something a lady should hear.” She snorted, but complied. She’d still be able to hear everything. Even if that wasn’t the case, Theo would tell her later.
“You know how boys are enthusiastic when they first discover masturbation?”
“Oh, fuck yes.” Theo laughed. “And then rediscovering that when you perfume.”
“The locker room was in a tizzy about it. I made Justice spend the night so we could ‘figure it out’ together . So we could go back to school on Monday and be all wise and shit.” He wrinkled his nose on the word ‘together’. “That’s when I discovered my favorite thing in the entire universe.” He directed that to Mackenzie.
“What’s that?” She leaned into him.
“Making someone come, again and again and again. Poor little Justice. We had to skip school that Monday.”
“Ren!” Mackenzie swatted his arm.
Poor little Justice. It had started an addiction. Following him everywhere just for the chance to pull him into dark hallways and bathroom stalls. I braved closets, the clawing dark, for his hands on me. I swirled my wine glass like that would get my lungs to function. He was everything, and then he took it all away.
“But why are you angry flirting now?”
“We are not angry flirting.” I wadded up my napkin and tossed it on the table.
“Because I’m an asshole and a coward.” He said that almost cheerfully.
“I don’t think…”
Ren cut her off.
“We were at the mall when my aura presented. I ditched him and disappeared for months.”
Pathetic little Justice and all the weeping, begging phone messages.
“I don’t think I can fully articulate what it was like. You’re normal one second and the next, unbelievable power is flooding your entire being. I stumbled out of the jewelry store and Justice was talking with this pretty little goth girl mall rat. Rage filled every cell. I scared myself, because I knew I could, and would, tear her physically apart.”
I had been almost 21 when it happened to me. Far beyond the age auras typically presented. I had been awake for three days coding. I didn’t remember what happened next, but when I woke up, my dorm room was trashed. Everything hurt. Daisy had been sitting in a corner. “Welcome to the fucking club.”
“That sounds awful.” Theo said softly.
“When I could walk again, my parents were delighted. They were mid-level mobsters, of the ‘nice little shop you have there, would be a shame if anything happened to it’ variety. But they were betas in an alpha dominated world. And they just got handed their own little alpha weapon.”
Fuck. Fuck me. I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. I hadn’t even considered that. Not once in 15 years. His parents weren’t mean like mine. At least not to me. But they talked casually about violence. I knew what they did. We never talked about it. But I knew.
“So they forced me into the family business and I broke kneecaps for a couple of months.”
“Ren,” Mackenzie’s voice dripped with concern. She reached a hand out toward him, which he did not take. “How old were you?”
“17 almost 18.”
“A baby.”
“Hardly. The worst part was, I couldn’t face Justice. He would have hated it. Hated me and all the shit I was forced into.”
I wouldn’t have. I would never have hated you. I loved you. I would have done something. Anything. Everything. Changed it. Fixed it. Burned the world down for you.
“And then they encountered a problem that my newly found skills with a billy club couldn’t fix.”
“What?” Theo spoke. The two omegas were engrossed in the story. Their auras oozing with compassion and filling space around us. I licked my lips like I could taste them.
“A computer.” Ren hadn’t looked at me once this whole time. “There was information they needed out of a computer. I don’t even know what it was now. They knew Justice liked computers and wanted me to get him to help. And that could never happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because Justice is a boy scout. The second he knew I was in trouble, he would do anything to fix it. And with the Delanos, it would have cost him his future and he would have been as dirty as I was.”
I swallowed my wine and put the glass back on the table before I was tempted to hurl it across the room.
“And then I did the dumbest and worst thing in my life. I couldn’t protect him. And I couldn’t outright break up with Justice. I didn’t have enough courage for that. And I’m not sure he would have let me. So, with a prefrontal cortex not fully developed and raging with a sparkly new alpha aura, I hatched a brilliant plan to make Justice hate me. I had to go back to school for a couple of months to graduate. I got a small group of newly minted douchy alphas to bully Justice mercilessly. And it worked. Justice hates me and you two get to enjoy our angry flirting.”
Months and months of torture summed up like a punch line. A foot touched mine under the table. Coconut and orange filled my senses, extinguishing the bitter taste of whatever the fuck that info dump was.
“Happy ending though. Well, happy-ish,” Ren said with a shrug, “The Delanos got blown up in their own restaurant a few years later. Leaving me with only their name, but effectively ending my kneecap breaking career.”
Ren finally looked at me and winked. The mother fucker winked. I sat back in my chair again, trying to get control of my breathing. You calculating asshole. You manipulated all of this. The public setting. The divine omegas between us. All so you could make your confession without me losing my shit all over the place.
“Well, good story,” I let my voice show all my annoyance, as I stretched across the table for the wine bottle. “You were always good at happy endings.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Shouldn’t you have graduated from stealing cars to something more lucrative by now?”
“Yes, handbags, but you’ve left me with quite the stick shift fetish.”
Mackenzie leaned over the table to Theo in their now familiar whisper gag. “I don’t know anything about cars. I don’t get the stick shift joke.”
Theo tilted his head with an incredulous look. He made a hand gesture somewhere between shifting gears and jerking someone off.
“Oh.” Mackenzie sat up straighter. And then it connected. “OH! Ren, that’s not angry flirting. That’s just dirty.”
“Sugar, you wouldn’t know dirty if you were dipped in it.” Ren growled at her.
“I know dirty. Theo, tell him.”
Ren gasped, clutching his non-existent pearls. I looked between the two omegas.
I practically clutched my pearls. “Are you two…”
“…Fucking?” Ren finished my sentence.
“Omegas have needs.” Theo put a defensive hand out to explain.
“You think it’s easy having normal dinner conversation when you two,” she waved her hands to indicate the entire table, “are smelling like this? That is the real criminal activity here. Breaking news: Alphas, scents and ruined panties. News at 11.”
“Maybe we need to start a committee to make it an actual crime.”
“I’m going to have to buy panties at this point because I cannot keep up with the laundry.”
“You think they have them at the gift shop?”
Ren raised an eyebrow at me and I flipped him off. He just nodded. He’d gotten his truth out, but all was not forgiven.
“I could take you shopping tomorrow.” I rejoined their irresistible banter.
Mackenzie turned to me, clasped her hands and put them demurely on the table. “Justice Twill. I’m not sure it’s proper for a billionaire to buy me panties at this stage in our relationship.”
Heart. Fucking. Stopping. The R word?
“They’d be fantastic panties though, Mackenzie.” They were back to their loud whispering.
“Oh, good point. So maybe just this once, then?”
“Because you can’t go commando.”
“Ew. No. Slick puddles everywhere.”
“We’re not that type of omega.”
“I, however, do think we need to talk about the elephant in the room.” Mackenzie sat up and turned slightly sideways in her chair and crossed her legs. The slit in her dress rose up, exposing her naked thigh. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. Don’t be that alpha, uncontrollably growling over an omega who does not belong to you.
“Is the elephant wearing panties?” Ren smirked, taking a sip of his water.
“It is the blatant sexism on display here.”
Ren and I looked at each other across the table, equally horrified. Sexism? What the fuck had we said?
“Nobody likes the word ‘panties’. And you won’t give us another word. ‘Underwear’? ‘Undies’? Ew. That leaves ‘panties’ as our best option.” She circled her finger at all of us, including Theo. “You have ‘boxers’, ‘briefs’. Those are classy words for unmentionables. And we get ‘panties’ because we’re girls.”
“What about ‘thong’ or ‘g-string’?” Ren asked.
“Those are different types of panties.” I added helpfully.
Mackenzie bit her bottom lip and tapped her fingertips on the table. Theo whistled softly, not making eye contact with anyone. They were suddenly acting like they were sitting on government secrets.
“What?” Ren got there first.
“Omegas don’t wear g-strings.” Theo blurted after a tense few moments.
“Of course they do.” Ren and I said at the same time.
Theo kicked Mackenzie under the table.
“Ow! I’m not telling them.”
“I’m not telling them. I just read about it on the message boards. It’s your issue.”
“What message boards?” I asked.
“I can’t!”
“I’m the male omega here. I’m not going to get banned for breaking the code.”
“What code?” They were completely ignoring Ren, too.
“Okay. Fine!” she spat at Theo. “Omegas don’t wear g-strings.” She said again, like repeating the statement would lend it more authority.
Ren leaned into the table. “Not to sound like the slut I am, but I can say with a high degree of confidence that Justice and I have slept with more omegas than the two of you combined, and I have personally ripped more than one g-string off an omega.”
She cleared her throat and placed her folded hands on the table. “It’s omega propaganda that we all actively participate in?”
“Panties are propaganda?”
“Ren,” she said, like she was explaining this to a child. “If that in fact happened, the omega excused herself moments before, changed into the g-string and put her panties in her pocket.”
“But why? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Because alphas really like omegas in g-strings.”
“So why not just wear a g-string?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Mackenzie looked at me like I didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. That was refreshing. It has been years since anybody thought I was dumb.
“For fuck’s sake. Alphas are so dense.” Theo was exasperated. “Slick. It’s the slick.”
“Slick gets everywhere. Sure, there are anti-slick wipes and lotions, but if you know you’re going to have sex, you want slick.”
“So if an omega is wearing a g-string, she planned for sex.”
“Because alphas really like omegas in g-strings.” She repeated. “So we all uphold this charade that we are running around in g-strings. Just for you.”
“And if she does actually wear a g-string out and about…”
“She doesn’t get invited back.”
“We’re not that type of omega.”
“I feel lied to.” Ren said, hand to his chest.
“Slick is actually kind of a problem.” Theo said, rolling his eyes.
“You’re always wet.”
“It gets everywhere.”
“There’s chafing.”
“Ugh. The worst.”
“And we put up with all of that…”
“Just for the moment when slick…”
They both shut their mouths and blushed. A growl got caught in my throat just at the thought of what it might take to make these two blush.
I called a server over with a quick wave. “Let’s order dessert to distract Ren and me from being distraught over the state of your panties.”