Chapter Seven – Rourke
Time is a funny thing. You think you have your routine nailed down, and then one thing happens and changes everything.
I was in a routine for so long, throwing myself into work, rising through the ranks of Alabaster Security, eventually standing side by side with the best of them—the Alabaster sons themselves.
And that was fine. For years, it was just fine. I thought I had everything I needed.
Then mom got sick and started pushing me to find someone. A pack, but she’d settle for a mate for me. So she can see me happy and know that I’ll be fine once she’s gone.
I’m thirty years old. I’m no child. I can take care of myself just fine; I don’t need a mate or a pack to be fulfilled in this life, but if I try telling her that, she only gives me a look, and that look says more than her words ever could.
Dad died years ago, back around the time I presented as an alpha. It left my mom, a beta, to freak out about how she would raise an alpha by herself.
Not only an alpha, as it turns out, but an über. Yeah, let’s just say I gave my mom hell those teenage years. Not something I’m proud of.
Long story short, when she got sick, I really had to stop and think about what’s important to me.
I’m no teenage alpha anymore, and mom’s really the only family I have left.
The last thing I want is to make her unhappy.
If settling down is what she desperately wishes to see before she goes, then… then that’s what I’ll do.
Of course, once I decided that, it still was like pulling teeth, getting me to go to that ceremony at the Omega Garden. I’m not the kind of man who enjoys dressing up in tight suits and shiny shoes.
The last week, I’ve tried everything to get my mind off what happened, but try as I might, I simply can’t. That’s where time comes in, and how it doesn’t always act the same.
When you try not to think about something, you typically fail spectacularly, and when you’re purposefully trying to keep busy, time crawls on slower than it ever has. More than seven days have passed now, but it feels as though it’s been half a year or more.
Seriously, I’m not exaggerating or trying to be funny. It’s been torture.
I go into work like a zombie, which, if you know me, isn’t me at all. I never phone it in at work; I always give it my all. I have my own teams now to oversee, to train. There’s a lot on my plate.
Home base for me is a warehouse on the edge of the city, where Alabaster Security sometimes conducts its less-than-legal encounters. We work with the local police department often, which is why said department typically looks away when we’re on a job and trying to gather information.
Sometimes the only way to get said information is to resort to some unsavory tactics. Torture. Kidnapping. Starvation. Once the fools give us the information we need, we hand them over to the police. As long as our clients are safe and their goals are secured, it’s all aces.
One of the rooms in the warehouse is a large open space where newer recruits get trained in the art of hand-to-hand combat, along with other close-quarter weaponry and defense. It’s as I walk into that room one morning that I’m greeted by a grinning alpha.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says with a wide grin, clearly in a good mood. Though, I’d argue, he’s been in a good mood ever since he and his pack found Mercedes. Warren Alabaster, the adoptive son of Daniel Alabaster, AKA our company’s founder. “You look particularly thrilled to be here today.”
On any other day, his comment would be true. Lately… it hasn’t been.
Warren is sitting in a chair off to the side, pulling on some black gloves as he waits for me to respond.
He’s fitted in all black, straps everywhere, weapons all over his body.
Like me, he’s got a thick head of black hair and piercing blue eyes, which means on more than one occasion, strangers have assumed we’re related.
We’re not brothers, though. Not even cousins. More like friends. The only one I’m closer to would probably be his older brother, Pax.
Standing before him, I shake my head. “That obvious?”
“Dude, it’s been obvious the last week. Your head’s been up in the clouds or something, Rourke.
It ain’t like you. Did that omega at the ceremony really have such a strong effect on you?
” As my friend, he knows better than everyone what goes on in my personal life, and as such, he already knows the play-by-play.
That omega. The Dryers girl. I didn’t even know her first name. It’s something I could easily have found out, but I’m trying to respect her wishes.
Hell, this whole thing is me trying to respect her wishes. Still, when Warren mentions her, I can’t help but think back to that night. The memories flood me faster than ever, something they usually did only when I’m awake in bed at night.
Warren was on the other line, saying, “Dude, just keep an open mind. I know finding an omega isn’t something you want, but…
as an alpha who was in your same shoes not too long ago, take it from me: sometimes you don’t get a choice.
Fight it all you want, but if you come across the right omega, you’ll know, and there won’t be anything you can do to stop fate from kicking down your door. ”
It was still odd to hear him talk like that. For so long, he’d been closed off and kind of angry in a psychotic way. When he and the others found Mercedes, things changed rapidly. It’s how it always went: when an alpha found his omega, his entire world changed. Same thing happened with Pax.
“Yeah, yeah,” I huffed. “I know.” I glanced around me. I stood in a long line of alphas, their scents thick in the air. We were in a line before the grandiose Omega Garden building downtown, a large thing made of mostly glass on its exterior, that took up nearly the entire block.
Never thought I’d be here. Never wanted to be. This whole matching ceremony… it wasn’t my scene.
“You can do it, buddy,” Warren said, and I could imagine him smiling like a fool when he said it. He’d seriously been in such a good mood since Mercedes; it did make me wonder if I’d be happier somehow with a mate.
My mom would never let me live it down, though. The I told you so she’d tell me would go down in history as legendary.
“I’ll see you Monday,” I said, mostly so he couldn’t say anything else, and then I ended the call and slipped my phone into my pocket. Again, I glanced around. All around me were other alphas I didn’t know, wearing their finest.
Me? I suddenly felt underdressed in my all-black ensemble, but whatever. The thought of a tie wrapped around my neck was stifling.
Eventually, the line began to move, and pack by pack, the alphas in front of me were checked and escorted into the building. When it was my turn, I already had my identification out, and since it was only me, it was a quick process.
A beta was ready to bring me inside the building once I was given the all-clear by the one checking IDs. The kid bowed his head to me and said, “Please follow me.” He spun on his heel and went inside, and I was right behind him.
I was like a horse with blinders on. I didn’t stop to marvel at the fancy interior of the entryway of the building.
My escort led me down a path marked by red carpet.
We eventually turned down a hall, where a set of double doors were.
The double doors were propped open, and soon enough we stepped into a ballroom, where tables were set up all around.
This whole thing was like a speed dating service, only for those with money.
I wasn’t loaded like some of these alphas clearly were, but my job was well-paying, and I had no life outside of it, so there wasn’t much to do with my excess money other than invest. I had the Alabaster finance guy help with that, and things kind of spiraled from there—but in a good way.
I could afford to take care of myself and my mom easily.
I surveyed the ballroom, thinking something along the lines of: Well, here goes nothing.
I did not expect anything to come out of the night, even when I started meeting with the omegas stationed at every table.
I was here to meet them, to get to know them, and if something happened to click, then I was supposed to pen an offer, which the woman who ran the whole thing would deliver to the omega and their sponsor.
Writing an offer wasn’t something I planned on doing, but I promised my mom I’d try. It was the most she could hope for.
Really, I wasn’t expecting anything. Not much at all.
I was sitting at a table with a pretty blond omega and her sponsor—one of her fathers—listening to her father talk about their old bloodline, when something hit me. Not literally, but damn near close enough. If I wasn’t already sitting down, I might’ve felt a bit lightheaded.
The air in the ballroom was full of scents. Now it wasn’t only alpha scents I had to reckon with, but also a cacophony of omega scents. They all smelled nice, of course, but none really tugged at that primal part of me they say an omega’s scent should.
Until that moment.
Whoever it belonged to, it made my gaze unfocus on the two across from me as I surveyed the ballroom again. I spotted an omega with blue and black hair sitting a few tables away, currently being approached by a pair of alphas, though she looked beyond bored.
“Excuse me,” I said, cutting into whatever the sponsor across from me was saying as I stood up and wandered away. A rude thing to do, but I owed him and that omega absolutely nothing.