Chapter Eight – Bradford
I don’t know what made me tell her all that. I shouldn’t care. It’s none of my business. My father will ultimately do whatever the hell he wants to. It’s what he’s always done and what he’ll continue to do until the day he dies.
But as I stood there, far too close to the girl, as I looked down at her… something made me say it. A deep-seated concern that should never have existed in the first place.
I don’t know this Kayla well at all, but I don’t want her to become my father’s next victim. I couldn’t outright tell her all the things he’s done, what he’s capable of, but I could warn her, and hopefully that would be enough.
If only the water of the shower could wash it all away.
If only I could emerge anew. A thing of fairytales that would be, and I’m not naive enough to believe in such silly things.
In my life I’ve learned many lessons, and the biggest one is there are some things I cannot change. Things that simply are.
My father is one of them.
I am not proud of the man I am today. Who would be if they survived what I did? Sometimes I do wonder what I would be like if I was born to a different family, to anyone else, really. What kind of man I’d be instead of the pathetic shadow I am now.
It’s a useless thought that leads nowhere. I don’t even know why I’m entertaining that thought here and now.
I don’t rush in the shower. It’s easy for me to space out in there, to close my eyes, let the water course down my body, and forget about the world outside of this house. Course, it is a bit more difficult now with the ankle monitor, but I’ve learned to make do.
There will be no coming back to society after this for me, not that I had a huge social life to begin with.
I didn’t care enough to, knowing anything I did would be scrutinized and judged by my father.
I knew from a very young age if I ever joined a pack and claimed a mate, he’d use them against me.
They would become another weakness, and I wasn’t selfish enough to ignore that possibility.
Eventually, I get out of the shower, although I don’t know how much time has passed. I don’t care enough to look at the watch when I put it on. I shave and fix my hair. Once I’m dressed in fresh clothes, I head back downstairs to my office.
A good fifteen feet away from the door in the hall, I stop when I smell something. Is that… food?
Whether it’s curiosity or the fact that I’m simply returning to my office, it doesn’t matter. I round the open doorway and the moment I do, I see a plate of pancakes sitting on my desk.
Well, I know the groundskeeper didn’t make them.
I cautiously move to my desk and sit down, staring at the plate and the food on it with a suspicious mind. A clean fork rests next to the plate, along with a knife. A small plate sits nearby with a syrup bottle on it, along with a small square of butter.
This is… odd. This is the last thing I expected to find. I didn’t tell her to make me breakfast, did I? I try to replay what I said to her before I lumbered upstairs, but if I’m honest, it’s all a blur. I remember warning her about my father, but that’s it.
And commenting on her lack of smell, something I definitely should not have done. It was an inappropriate thing to bring up. It could very well be that she does not smell to me because she’s a beta and, as an alpha, I’m more hardwired to crave an omega’s scent.
Yet, even as I think that, I did try to smell her. Not on purpose, not to make a point of anything. It happened before I realized it was even taking place, and frankly I’m not sure what that says about me.
Or her.
I stare hard at the pancakes, and I don’t make a move to dig in. A minute passes, and the girl herself comes in, carrying a steaming cup of coffee. She freezes near the door when she spots me sitting there, and her green eyes widen almost comically so.
“I—” She stutters. “—I brought you coffee how you like it.” After two days, she was finally starting to get the hang of the coffee maker. I only had to show her how to use it half a dozen times; I think the sheer number of buttons on the thing overwhelmed her.
She walks over to me, leans over my desk, and sets the cup down near my plate, avoiding my gaze the entire time. Her cheeks have a bit of color to them, which I find strange.
“Why?” I ask.
Kayla is clearly caught off-guard by the question, much like I was with the food on my desk. I never asked her to make me food before, so what made this morning so different? Coffee is one thing, but food is another thing entirely.
“You always make me get you coffee,” she says.
I sigh. “Not the coffee. Why the food?”
“Oh, um.” She reaches up and tucks some of her reddish-brown hair behind her ear, and she bites her bottom lip as she must think over what to say. I don’t know why, but both actions draw my attention in ways they shouldn’t.
Maybe it’s because I worked late last night, trying to get a report done and sent over to my father. Maybe I’m running on fumes now, so I’m not quite in my right mind. Has to be one of those two explanations.
“I don’t know. I just thought, maybe, you should eat something if you were up late” is what she finally says to me after stumbling over her words a bit more.
If anyone needs to eat something, it’s her. She’s practically skin and bones. She can’t be a healthy weight. She’s a literal rod, rail-thin.
I’m not used to kindness for the sake of it, and it’s why my first instinct is to believe she’s lying—though what on earth she could be lying about, I can’t say. The more I think about it, the less likely I feel she’s trying to pull one over on me.
Look at her. She’s unassuming in every way. I don’t think she could pull one over on a child.
She takes my silence the only way she can, as a negative. “If you don’t want pancakes, I can make scrambled eggs.” Quieter, she says, “Those two things are the only things I can really make, besides stuff you throw in the microwave or the oven. I don’t really cook.”
“No,” I say. “It’s fine.” And then I say something I haven’t said in… I don’t know how long. “Thank you.” Thanking anyone for anything is something that does not come naturally to me, like most things.
The corners of her lips tug into a shy smile, and she bows her head once as she receives my gratitude.
“I hope you made yourself some,” I say. “You look like you haven’t eaten in years.”
My comment must stun her into silence, because she doesn’t say anything back, not right away. It takes her a solid thirty seconds to nervously laugh it off and tell me, “Oh, no. I ate breakfast this morning before I left.”
For some reason, I can’t put my finger on why, I don’t believe her.
“Oh, did you? What’d you eat?” I sound strange. I don’t make small talk. This… I don’t know what this is, but it’s new to me. I’m only bolstered by the way she acts and how she replies. She does not seem genuine when she tries to shrug it off.
She sucks in a breath, like she’s about to tell me what she ate this morning, but there’s a pause. A long one. Any normal person would be able to tell me what they ate without a second’s hesitation.
Her reaction? It makes me question whether she ate anything.
And then, once I have that thought, I can’t help but appraise her appearance differently. The bony shoulders sticking out beneath a maroon blouse that is a little frayed at the bottom. The way her thighs don’t touch as she stands there, feet together. She’s worse than just skinny.
“I ate leftovers from dinner last night,” she finally says with an awkward chuckle, but I’m too busy studying her to really pay attention to what she said.
Beyond her thinness, I think back to the way I tried to smell her earlier, how her lack of scent was almost… vexing to me. Personal in a bizarre way. Like my inner animal thought, somehow, he’d be able to smell her. Like he wanted to smell her more than anything.
Would a beta ever pull that kind of reaction from me? Hell, I’ve smelled some enticing omegas before, but I never once gave any of them a second thought. I never cared enough to lean in and inhale their scents.
Her thinness, her exasperating lack of scent…
I’d be surprised if she’s five feet tall. Betas have a wide range of heights, but generally anything close to five feet or under is reserved for a different group of people: omegas. I’ve never once seen or heard of a beta carrying a stature like hers.
“If that’s all, I’ll leave you alone,” she says, and as she says it she takes a step backward. It’s almost like she’s sensing my thoughts and trying to get away from me before the thoughts have the time to puzzle together.
I don’t say anything. I let her go, but as for getting out of my office before everything comes together, she’s too late.
Is she really a beta, or is she an omega in disguise?