Chapter 34 #2
Steeling his emotions, he gave Dash as best of a smile as he could, sure it was lacking but hoping it wasn’t. “Choice is up to the person carrying the child. I’ll support whichever decision you make.”
“And you wouldn’t resent that choice if I made it?”
Emerson shook his head. “No.”
“Why does that feel like a lie?”
Emerson dragged his gaze away, staring at the floor for a few seconds.
He swallowed past the lump in his throat and collected his thoughts for a moment.
“I would love to have children someday, but I’d already resigned myself to the fact that could never be—considering who I was.
” He glanced at Dash. “Would I be sad? I think we both would. But I won’t resent you for making the right decision for you.
It’s your body. And in this case, I realize how much more difficult it might be for you to bear a child. ”
“How so?”
“A pregnant alpha?” Emerson said, lifting a brow. “We both know what’s going to happen.”
“People will stare,” Dash said, sighing. “They might even get confrontational.”
“Exactly,” Emerson said. “I wouldn’t put you through that unless you were a hundred percent ready for what might come. And you might never want to go through that. I’m okay with that, too.”
Dash stared at him, pain in his eyes. “I’m upset you didn’t tell me.”
“I get that, but as I said, I wasn’t sure your heart could take the shock.”
“I’m not sure it can take it now,” Dash admitted, rubbing his palm over his chest.
Emerson grasped Dash’s wrist and checked his pulse. Dash’s hand trembled slightly under his touch. Was it worry or something else? “A little fast but steady. I think you’ll survive.”
“How soon could I… have the procedure?” Dash asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I think it best to wait until you’ve recovered a bit more,” Emerson said, his heart sinking. “A few weeks. A month would be better.”
Never would be even better, but he bit his tongue before that tumbled out.
“One of your barks and you’d be able to force me to have this baby,” Dash said.
Emerson frowned, shaking his head. “Do you really think I’d do that?”
His heart broke imagining Dash thought he would. Emerson would never use whatever the fuck that dominance thing was to force his will onto Dash. Not unless it was the only way Dash would protect himself.
“I don’t think you would,” Dash said.
“Then why say it?”
“Because I needed to see your reaction,” Dash replied.
Emerson held Dash’s gaze, realizing he’d deserved the concern. He’d already broken Dash’s trust twice now, even if both times were for his mate’s best interests.
“I think I might need that nap now,” Dash whispered.
Dash had fought every nap Emerson had forced on him. If he was asking for one, he was clearly out of sorts. Emerson helped his mate up and led him to the bedroom they’d shared all week. Emerson felt spoiled by that big, huge bed, so he’d taken as many opportunities to nap with Dash as he could.
Once he got Dash tucked in, he pressed a kiss to his mate’s forehead and walked towards the door.
“You’re not sleeping with me?”
Emerson froze and slowly turned around. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome.”
Dash didn’t reply. He simply held his hand out. A lump formed in Emerson’s throat, as if that hand was an olive branch.
Emerson smiled softly. He returned, kicking off his shoes before slipping beside Dash and grasping that hand in his.
He made his mate the little spoon and took a deep breath, thankful he wasn’t kicked out for another break in trust. Dash’s breathing soon slowed, but Emerson couldn’t slow his mind enough to follow him.
Sometime later, a knock came to the door.
Dash stirred as Emerson rose on one elbow. He paused to kiss the side of Dash’s head. “Sleep. I’ll handle it.”
When Emerson reached the door, he found his father, Creed, standing on the other side. Silence lingered between them, neither offering a greeting.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” his father said.
Emerson nodded. “I sent you a text that I needed to take some sick time.”
“To take care of your mate.”
Emerson clenched his jaw, unsure what was coming next from his father’s neutral tone.
“Are you going to make me stand out here all day?” Dad barked.
“This isn’t my house,” Emerson said, not ready for the conversation his father likely wanted to have. “If you’re here to fire me or excommunicate me from the family, just say it now and go.”
“Emerson,” his father murmured.
He sighed and backed up. “Come in, but no yelling. Dash is sleeping.”
His father walked in. “I have no plans to yell, Em.”
Emerson slowly closed the door and turned to face his father. Dad leaned on the column to the opening into the living room.
Silence stretched between them until his father finally blurted, “My brother was alpha-attracted.”
“I’m aware,” Emerson said.
“Oh?”
“I found some things of his on the boat that made that clear. I didn’t know you knew.”
His father nodded, solemn. “It was right after that day he grabbed you by the throat. You were, what, twelve or thirteen?”
“Yeah,” Emerson said.
“After dropping you boys at home, I went back to confront him. I planned to give him an ultimatum. Stop the drinking or I was cutting him out of our lives.” His father paused, his gaze distant.
“He broke down. Told me there was nothing left to live for if he couldn’t be a firefighter anymore.
” Tears glistened in his father’s eyes. “He begged me to help him end things because he couldn’t do it himself.
” Creed pursed his lips for a moment. “Nearly broke me to think he’d tried. ”
Emerson stiffened. He wasn’t sure which thing shocked him more. Lenny’s request or his father’s unshed tears. He’d never seen his father cry. Not once.
“When I refused, Lenny told me he was alpha-attracted. I think he told me that in hopes I’d be so disgusted that I’d do it. Instead, I told him that he was still my little brother and I loved him, no matter what.”
Emerson fought his own tears threatening.
“That night, he told me he’d started drinking to ease the pain after the alpha he’d loved deeply had broken things off to mate an omega.
He couldn’t get over the loss. So, he’d drowned his sorrows.
I begged him to get help for his drinking and eventually, he agreed.
Your papa and I packed him up and sent him to rehab.
We got a call two weeks later. He and another alpha in the program had been caught together.
The guy running things gave Lenny two choices.
A specialty therapy program that supposedly cured men like him—or he’d call the Guard to arrest him.
Lenny didn’t want either. I convinced him therapy was better than prison. ”
“Conversion therapy,” Emerson said flatly, resting his bottom on the narrow table near Dash’s front door.
Tears shone brightly in his father’s eyes. “I never would’ve convinced him to go had I known what they’d do to him there. They’d tortured my baby brother and then had the balls to call him cured. He wasn’t cured. He was even more broken than before—and it was all my fault.”
“You were trying to help him,” Emerson said.
His father stared, eyes glistening. “I failed him.”
Emerson stared at the pain in his father’s eyes.
“Lenny somehow limped along after that. I was scared to send him to rehab for the drinking again because he might end up in prison the next time. I kept him as close as I could, but he just got worse and worse. He rarely left his boat. Slept all day. Drank all night. He’d barely eat if I didn’t stop by with a plate of leftovers every morning on my way to work.
” Creed sighed. “Every time I let myself in to drop it off, I feared I’d find him gone.
Then one day, I did. He’d finally reached the point he didn’t need me to do it for him. ”
Emerson shook his head. “I always assumed he’d drank himself to death.”
“In a way, but no. He took matters into his own hands,” Creed said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Emerson frowned at his father, shocked. “On the boat?”
“Under it,” Dad replied.
Emerson winced.
“After I heard the attorney say Lenny had given you his boat, that’s why I suggested you sell it. I sensed why he’d chosen to give it to you—and I didn’t want you cursed by what happened there.”
“I assumed he gave it to me as an apology for choking me.”
“Maybe,” Dad said. “But I assumed it was because he thought you were like him.”
Emerson’s gaze flew to his father’s. “You knew?”
“When your kids are born, you notice hints that suggest which class they’ll grow up to be.
Big boys tend to become alpha, and you and Harry were big babies, even for twins.
And you never stopped growing. But something happened when you and Harry were about nine or ten that had us second-guessing you.
We had a barbeque in the park—and this group of older teenaged omegas walked past and set up a birthday party in the shelter next to ours.
Harry and Fitz immediately turned around and took notice.
Heck, I think Luke and Rand even reacted and neither one was older than five at the time.
But those omegas might as well not have existed for you. You didn’t react at all.”
Emerson’s cheeks burned.
“When their alpha boyfriends showed up a couple of hours later—that’s when you started looking—and so did Harley and Bayley.
” His father sighed. “Later that night, I mentioned it to your papa. He’d noticed your reaction, too, and we thought, ‘well, maybe he’s not an alpha after all.
Maybe puberty would prove us wrong.’ Puberty came and you were, in fact, an alpha.
Yet you still never reacted to omegas. Your gaze was only drawn to alphas. ”
Emerson blinked a few times. “I can’t believe you’ve known all this time.”
“When you were maybe fourteen or fifteen, I tried talking to you about it. We went fishing, just you and me. Remember?”