Chapter 8 A Night in Heaven’s
Chapter eight
A Night in Heavan’s
“Keep it civil,” she settled and opened the door for me.
“Yes, Alpha,” I said as I passed her and headed out to the electric blue sedan that waited. The cabin was lit up, and Darren was smiling and bobbing his head to a dance beat that permeated the night air.
He looked over as I approached and quickly jumped out of the car, running around to open my door, guiding me with a dramatic swipe of his arm.
“I’m in the back?” I asked as Cole walked up behind me.
“My date sits up front,” he said.
“Haha,” I said.
“I’m not joking, get in, girl,” he said, with a bright smile. Darren was charming.
“If my Alpha doesn’t mind,” I said, turning to watch how Cole reacted.
“Cole doesn’t mind,” he said, waving his hand for me to get in.
“It’s your car,” she said a bit gruffly and pulled open the back door behind the front passenger seat.
Darren laughed.
“You heard her; I’m in charge,” he said.
I heard Cole growl.
Darren laughed again.
“I’m only playing, Auntie,” he said as I sat down and he shut my door.
I saw Cole frown in the rear-view mirror.
***
The car park for Heaven’s Bar was surprisingly busy, with very few spaces available.
“Full moon parties at Heaven’s are always fun. You want to dance, play pool, or poker in the back? With drinks that keep on coming,” Darren said excitedly.
“I’d prefer if I never saw another poker game again,” I said as we walked to the entrance.
Light was spilling out into the darkness of the car park. People with plastic glasses and bottles were drinking and smoking outside, and a couple of large alphas were standing in matching white polo shirts outside the entrance, watching.
The bouncers nodded in recognition to Darren and Cole as we entered.
Darren led the way to the bar.
“What are you having?” he asked, turning to me.
“Cider, any kind,” I said.
The bar was loud but not so loud that I had to shout or couldn’t have a conversation. Most of the noise came from a space around the opposite side of the bar from where I had seen when I was last at Heaven’s Bar with Cole.
“Stout, any,” Cole said and smiled, turning her attention to Frankie, the bar manager or owner, I wasn’t sure. Frankie sent another bartender away so she could serve us.
“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon,” Frankie said to me after Darren gave our drinks order and she began pouring a pint.
“You’ve been here before?” Darren asked.
“We had lunch,” Cole answered for me.
I scoffed. “I didn’t get a chance to eat,” I said.
“Feels like I’m missing something,” Darren replied.
“Nothing that concerns you,” Cole said in a way that Darren seemed to recognise.
“Business,” he said. Cole nodded and accepted her drink from Frankie.
“The kind of business I don’t want to see repeated here,” Frankie added.
“I would apologise, but you billed me for the cleanup,” Cole said good-naturedly.
“Just business,” Frankie replied.
“Just business,” Cole agreed and took a sip of her drink.
Frankie handed another pint to Darren and opened a bottle before handing it to me.
“Is there karaoke later?” Darren asked Frankie.
“You know there is, baby,” she told him.
He turned to me.
“Duet with me?” he asked.
Frankie laughed from behind the bar.
Darren didn’t laugh.
“You’re serious?” I asked.
“I thought she was yours,” Frankie said to Cole.
“Not tonight, it seems,” Cole answered.
Frankie put her hands up in a not-my-business type of gesture.
“Of course I’m serious. You’ve never performed a ballad to a room full of your intoxicated packmates?” he asked.
“No,” I laughed.
“You’re missing out,” he said and took a large swallow from his beer.
“You can relax tonight, seriously,” he continued and leaned a little closer.
We didn’t have to shout to be heard, but we still had to speak louder than usual.
“We’ve seen each other around for what feels like years now and never really gotten to talk.
I feel like I know you and don’t at the same time.
I just want to hang out, have fun, and get to know you on a wolf-to-wolf level, you know? ”
“No, I don’t know. Why are you so interested in me?” I asked and took a drink from the cold bottle.
Darren shrugged.
“I don’t know, really. I guess I just always had this idea that we were similar,” he told me.
I laughed, a snort and all.
“What’s funny about that?” he asked, smiling like my laugh was contagious.
“That you and I are similar. You’re a high-born beta wolf, son of the Pack Alpha.
What could you possibly think you have in common with me, an omega?
You know what it’s like to be such a disgrace that your parents leave the Pack in shame?
Or what it’s like to be so vulnerable that you have to give up your freedom to whatever chauvinistic pig wants to claim you? ” I asked.
He was so out of touch with normal life; I doubted he had ever had to want or work for anything. He was friendly enough, but he had the kind of easygoing personality that only developed when someone had never known any kind of hardship.
“I know, I’m the whining rich boy. And you’re right.
All things considered, I have it good. But I’m also a high-born beta, son of the Pack Alpha, like you said.
I might not know the type of rejection you have, and I’m sorry about your parents; leaving you was a shitty thing to do, but I do know what it’s like to feel shame over presentation.
Cole is next in line for Alpha succession for a reason.
My mum is an alpha; everyone assumed I would be too.
I assumed I would be. It was pretty devastating for everyone when, on my first shift, we learned I was a beta,” he told me. “It’s not the same. I know,” he said.
His smile dipped slightly; his dimples were no longer prominent.
“That must have been hard,” I said.
I knew what the shock of an unexpected presentation felt like. The aftermath of my first shift may have been more violent and world-shaking, but I knew what it was like to have everything you thought about yourself, about your future, gone in an instant.
“It was. Not as hard as for you, of course, but… yeah, I guess I’ve never met anyone that could relate, in some way,” he said.
I took a drink; the bottle was already near empty.
“So what happened after?” I asked curiously.
“A lot of silence. It had an impact across the whole Pack. Cole was pissed. She didn’t want to be Pack Alpha, but I’m not sure you’ve noticed we’re kind of similar ages,” he said.
“I had noticed,” I said. It was obvious that Cole was the much younger sister.
“Yeah, Cole was a surprise baby that shouldn’t have been possible.
Granny apparently didn’t think she could still get pregnant.
Anyway, there’s twenty years between Mum and Cole.
Cole will be Pack Alpha one day, and she also needs to provide an heir.
I fucked up her future too,” he explained and finished by pointing to his empty glass and to my cider. “Another?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I answered, and he turned back to the bar to get a bartender's attention.
Cole was gone. I had been paying Darren so much attention that I hadn’t noticed her leave the bar.
I scanned the bar in front of me, hating how much I panicked at the absence of her presence. Was it that instinctively I knew I was safer with her around? It was an odd tightness in my abdomen. I even subtly scented the air searching for her.
“Over there, to your right,” Darren said, and I flinched as if I had been caught doing something I shouldn’t have. He took my empty bottle from me and replaced it.
“She’s just there, see,” he said, gesturing to the right.
I found Cole. She was sitting at a table, talking with a man and a woman.
It was like she felt me watching her, and she looked up, our eyes locking for a moment until she returned to her conversation.
“I wasn’t looking—”
“Don’t worry about it. She won’t let you out of her sight tonight. You don’t have to worry about that. Cole’s a Sandstorm; she takes her responsibilities seriously,” he told me.
“I didn’t ask to be a responsibility,” I said, taking a drink from the new bottle.
“No, you were a surprise for us all. No one saw her claiming you as a possibility. Least of all Mum—she was pissed,” he said.
“I know,” I replied, remembering that first extremely awkward encounter.
I turned my attention back to Darren, curious.
“You said you being a beta fucked up Cole’s future? How is being Pack Alpha one day so terrible?” I asked. Cole not wanting to be Pack Alpha was not something I had ever thought of.
“It’s a bit personal, I mean, it’s not private—it should have been, but was kind of a public thing, so—” He sighed heavily. “Fuck it, you’ll learn eventually—”
“Are you going to tell me?” I interrupted.
“Cole was kind of seeing someone. It was serious, but then she became next in line, and it wasn’t the sort of match the council as a whole would approve of for the title of Alpha’s Mate,” he said.
“How serious?” I asked.
“They were engaged, planning the wedding and everything,” he said.
“And she broke it off with him?” I asked.
“With her, yeah,” he corrected. “Cue a long line of rebounds and psychos. My aunt really knows how to choose them.”
“Her?” I asked.
“You’re being serious?” he asked jokingly, repeating my earlier line. “You thought that was a straight woman?” he asked.
“Well, no, just, I don’t know, surprised, I guess,” I said, stumbling over my answer.
“Got you kind of hopeful, did it?” he joked, nudging me with his elbow. “You wouldn’t be the first one she’s turned.”
“Turned?” I asked.
“Straight girls have a thing for her, or maybe it’s the other way around, actually.” He laughed.
“I’m not straight. At all,” I told him.
“Really?” he asked.
“Really.” I nodded, finishing my second drink.
“My gaydar is broken,” he said, laughing with me. “So my chances are zero?” he asked.