Chapter 39 #2
“You knew I wasn’t supposed to be on half the cases that I was. Not as an intern,” I tell him, and his face flushes.
“With you, we were able to take on more cases. More clients. More opportunities to make things right,” he argues.
“That wasn’t your intention at all.” I sigh. “And I don’t want to be a part of it anymore. So, I’m done.”
His face turns bright red. “How dare you call the integrity of this firm into question?”
“Let’s move on, Mr. McMillan,” I say, repeating his words from earlier. “This was never a good place for me.”
“You walk out of that door, you will never be allowed back in, do you understand me?”
I just huff out a laugh. “Lucky me.”
His anger explodes as he stands up from his desk and yells, his finger pointing in my direction accusingly. It all jumbles together in his heated emotion, sounding like a tantrum as I turn to leave his office.
“—you snot-rotten little brat, always turning your nose up at our cases, annoyed by our principles. Who the hell do you think you are—”
“Good luck, Mr. McMillan,” I say and I walk out of the room, his screaming echoing behind me. Everyone in the next room looks between me and the door, startled by the boss’s reaction, but he isn’t my boss anymore, and that fact has me smiling all the way to the parking lot.
When I walk out of the building, I feel light.
So much stress has been released from my body that my alpha stirs up a purr in my chest. It’s a weird feeling, and my hand hovers over it, feeling it to self-soothe.
I’ve only ever heard of alphas purring for themselves in fiction, but the proof is hard to deny when I feel the steady vibrations with my palm.
As I make my way across town, things become clearer to me.
My friends have noticed how much of a bind I’ve been in for weeks, so I know where to go next.
Just one more stop before I fix things with the whimsical omega that has become a staple in my life.
My skin’s clammy from the anticipation, but I’m also extremely relieved.
I hope to have all of my cards out in the open tonight.
Without any secrets holding us back, I hope we can finally move forward.
For each other, and for the pack I’m meant to lead.
When I get to my destination, my cell phone rings once again. Instincts have me answering it before I can even look at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Hey, dude.” Thatcher’s voice sounds light, happy. Nothing like my grouchy friend from freshman year.
“Oh, shit, hi.” I feel a smile take over.
“Did I catch you off guard?” he jokes. “You must be having a day then.”
“I am. I quit my internship.”
Thatcher makes a choking sound. “You did what?”
“I got an offer from another firm and I took it. Less hours, a more appropriate workload.”
It’s quiet for a few moments before he says, “Shit. That’s incredible. So, you’ll be home more often?”
“That’s the plan,” I confirm. “I haven’t been myself, so I need to slow down. Even though it’s hard.”
“I’m proud of you, Sam.” The honest tone in his voice makes me smile. “Things are changing for the better, it seems.”
“For the better,” I reaffirm. “Maybe we can all eat dinner together tonight.”
“Kit and I are going on a date tonight, actually,” he tells me. “It’s a late showing at the drive-in, so we’ll be gone for a while.”
A tiny, hollow spot in my heart seems to close at the sentence. “First off, that’s amazing. I’m, uh, sorry I wasn’t there for you these past few months, Thatcher. I thought bringing up the situation with you and Kit would add more pressure, but I should have been a better prime.”
Thatcher makes a dismissive noise. “Even if you had asked, I would have lied to you. I seemed to do a lot of that, even to myself, before Opal came around.”
Her name echoes, my focus so stuck on the redheaded omega living in our house, the place where she belongs.
“I should have been paying attention to her, too,” I told him.
“But I was avoiding it. Like I’ve been avoiding everything else.
I wanted us to be perfect, and I thought acknowledging our faults made that impossible.
I realize now that it can be… freeing. So, I’m sorry. ”
“Sam, you put too much pressure on yourself.” He sighs. “We were all avoiding the truth, which is that something was missing.”
“Or someone,” I say, echoing his insinuation.
Despite being miles away, I can tell Thatcher is cracking a smile by the tiny sound that emits. “Or someone,” he agrees. “And as I said, Kit and I will be gone for most of the night.”
“Don’t be crass,” I joke, but my mind already goes to tonight and how much I need to tell Opal. “I have someone I need to talk to first, then I’ll get home to see our girl.”
“Be good to her, Alpha,” he says, but the tone bleeds nothing but softness.
“Be good to him,” I repeat, and the hum he gives me in return is equivalent to a ‘touché,’ and it makes me laugh.
“Love you, Thatch.”
“I love you, too, Sam.”
Stacia opens the door as I walk up the pathway, her smile wide when she sees me.
“Sam! What a surprise.” She turns around and lets me in. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get out of your car.”
“Sorry, quick phone call with Thatch.”
“No worries. No one is here, though, just me and Atlas.”
“He’s actually who I came to see,” I tell her.
“Understood. Well, he’s in here.” Stacia leads me to their kitchen, which I’ve been in many times before, but now it feels daunting.
I’m their friend, yes, but I’ve always been the unmovable alpha that runs our fraternity.
The one who knows all the answers and can navigate any issue.
But now he’s going to see who I really am beneath all of that.
When Atlas sees me, he grins. “Sam, it’s good to see you.”
The scent of chamomile fills the space—grounding and calm—and soothes my anxiousness.
“You, too. I came to speak with you.”
He hears my serious tone and blinks, curiosity taking over his face. “Sure.” He looks over at Stacia and smiles. “I’ll meet you in your room, angel.”
She grins despite the dismissal. “No problem. I’ll see you soon, Sam.”
When we’re alone, and Stacia’s scent has dissipated from the space, Atlas gives me a worried look. “Is everything okay, Sam?”
My chuckle sounds tired. “You seem to be asking me that a lot, lately.”
“Well, yeah,” he confirms. “You’ve been off your game. Missing things you’d normally dread to miss. And you seem…”
“You can say it, it’s okay,” I assure him.
He sighs. “You seem exhausted, man. And that display with Nova the other day… I’m just wondering what’s going on.”
I take a seat at their kitchen table. “You’re right.
I’ve been exhausted. My job was bleeding me dry, and I wasn’t doing anything about it.
And Opal—” I rub my neck awkwardly. “She’s become such an integral part of our pack since she moved in.
But I think it’s more than friendship, I think she’s… meant to be with us.”
If Atlas seems surprised by that, he doesn’t show it. He just bustles over and takes a seat beside me. “We all had our suspicions about that. You and Thatcher looked like you were going to tear Nova’s arms off.”
I grit my teeth, thinking about the good-looking guitar player and how his arm draped over Opal’s smaller frame. She looked comfortable in his arms, and that made me jealous.
Changing the subject, I tell him, “My father was in Alpha Xi.”
The other prime turns to me, likely thinking back to any other information I’ve given him about my parents and coming up empty. They’re a topic I love to avoid, just as I’m sure they feel the same way about me.
“Derek’s dad knew him. Told Derek stories about my father, about what kind of alpha male he was. He used to taunt me with it. About how I’d never live up to the alpha that he was when he led his brothers. How I was running the fraternity into the ground by doing the things I was doing.”
Atlas’s body tenses at the mention of his omega’s ex-boyfriend and everything he did last year, but I just laugh.
“It didn’t bother me, because that was the point.”
“What was?” Atlas asks.
“My dad is the reason why I came to Bensen and joined Alpha Xi. I wanted to show that things were better with compassion. That this alpha-male thing that he was a part of could be changed for the better. I wanted to take that away from him. From both him and my mother.” I let out a sad smile. “And I did.”
Atlas is surprised by my candor. “Holy shit, you became the president of Alpha Xi to kick it to your old man?” He starts to laugh with me, intrigued.
“Well, in the beginning, yeah,” I said, thinking back to my freshman year.
Pledging was the scariest part. I knew I was walking into the lion’s den that used to belong to my father.
But things weren’t exactly what I expected.
There wasn’t a lot of toxic alpha behavior, but there was negligence.
I despised the seniors and their obvious disdain for the fraternity’s philanthropy.
All they wanted to do was party and ignore the real things in life, and that’s something I had spent most of my adolescence trying to escape.
But then I met Atlas and his pack mates, and then Everett and Dax, and I realized I wasn’t the only person who wished the fraternity would take itself more seriously.
I could turn it around for more than just petty revenge against my father.
I could make a real difference, for me and the guys I had met, who were so unlike the alphas I had known in my childhood.
And after I became friends with Thatcher, everything became so much clearer.
“I realized that it was destined for me. And I enjoyed it. Being a part of something bigger than myself. And having the tool of a fraternity has helped with a lot of charity. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half the things I have so far. I’m proud of it.”
“As you should be. We were a mess before you took over. It’s admirable, what you’ve done.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been distant. Not just recently, but our whole friendship. There are things in my past that I don’t like to shine a light on, but I think if you knew them, you’d understand me a bit more.”
“Sam, there’s nothing you can tell me that will make me see you any differently. I’m here for you, always.”
I nod, thinking my next words clearly. “I think I’m ready to talk about it, about what happened with my parents. To you and the others. But there’s someone else I need to tell first.”