Page 26 of Alpha Chase

There’s a lot I don’t know about this girl. Case in point, this shitty hunk of junk that she’s driving around. I think back to that conversation she had with Gray the other day at the packhouse, the one I shamelessly eavesdropped on from the hallway.

“Why do you want to join the squad anyways?” I blurt, looking over at her.

Her brows lift in surprise, and I’m not sure if it’s at my question or because I just spoke for the first time since we left the lodge. “What?”

“Your meeting with Gray. That’s what it was about, right?” I study her response- the way she adjusts her grip on the steering wheel, the tight set of her jaw.

Vienna wets her lips with her tongue, responding with a tentative “yeah…”

“So why do you want to join?” I press, eyes sweeping down her petite form. She’s not exactly the picture of a warrior. “I’ll bet you suck at fighting.”

Her head snaps sideways, angry eyes meeting mine. “What? Why would you say that?”

I shrug, smirking. “Just a feeling.”

Vienna narrows her eyes, fingers flexing around the steering wheel as turns into the driveway of the packhouse. She jerks the gear into park before turning to level me with a glare. “For your information, I have trained with the squad before. I was on the reserve squad, and I was on the battlefield with everyone else that day. I did just fine. I know how to fight, but there are other reasons why people join the squad, too.” She lifts a hand, ticking them off on her fingers. “The salary. Room and board. But none of that would occur to someone who has had everything handed to him from birth.”

Her words and the sharp edge of her tone rub at a deep, open wound somewhere inside of me, one that has continued to fester since the morning after my dad’s death. “Stop assuming you know things about me,” I snap, throwing the door open and wrenching my legs out. “You don’t know shit.” I push up to stand and slam the door so hard that the whole car rattles, not looking back as I tear up the front walk to the packhouse.

Two Months Ago

“He knew,” Rob nods, and I feel all the color drain from my face. “Your dad always kept tabs on Katrina after she left.”

The day she left will always be burned into my memory. I was just a kid at the time, but for some reason I still remember it so vividly. The shouts from the kitchen that woke me from sleep. The coldness of the hardwood floor under my feet as I tiptoed to the top of the stairs to try to hear what was going on. The look in her eyes as she glared up at me on her way out the door, and the words she spoke. “You can have him”, she’d said. “I never wanted this.”

For the longest time after she left, I thought if I could just be better, maybe she’d come back. I wasn’t the best kid, after all. I didn’t keep my room clean. I got in trouble at school. I cried too much. So I tried to change- I did all my chores, I stayed out of trouble. I kept my grades up. I broke my arm falling out of a tree and didn’t even shed a single, annoying tear. I tried to be tough, brave,good. She still never came back.

“I never knew why…” I rasp, my throat tightening around my words. It feels like my throat’s full of gravel. “Why she left.”

Rob sighs, a pained expression on his face as he brings a hand to his temple. “It’s complicated. I wish I didn’t have to be the one to explain it to you, but… well, the long and short of it is that what your dad and Katrina had, it was brief. It wasn’t built to last. She was visiting our pack for a summer and wound up pregnant.” He pauses, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “He convinced her to stay, for you, but they weren’t fated mates and she refused to seal a chosen mate bond with Vaughn. Said she wasn’t in love with him. Nothing he did or said could make her happy, and one day she just couldn’t handle it anymore, so she walked out and left him to pick up the pieces. He wanted to shield you from the fallout, so we agreed we wouldn’t talk about her in front of you after that. That it’d be like she never existed.”

Rob’s words land like a gut punch and all the air whooshes from my lungs on an exhale. After my mom left, I had so many questions that my dad refused to answer. Every time I tried, he just shut it down, so after a while, I stopped trying. He erased her from our lives, but I never forgot. I never stopped hoping she’d come back someday.

“Like I said, after she left, Vaughn kept tabs on Katrina,” Rob continues, voice ragged from exhaustion. “When Xavier first started his takeover with the shadow pack, your dad heard that Katrina’s pack was one of the first attacked. He traveled out there to see if she’d survived, aiming to bring her back and keep her safe. But when he found her, he learned that not only had she survived, but she’d… joined them.Willingly.”

I slump back farther in my chair, staring down at my hands, the pain of Rob’s words slicing my heart into ribbons. “Why?” I croak, lifting my head to look into his eyes again. “Why would she do that?”

He releases another sharp exhale. “It’s… complicated.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Vienna

FromthewaythatChase storms off, it’s clear that something I said must’ve struck a nerve. Not that he’d admit it. The more I get to know him, the more curious I am about what he’s really hiding beneath all that false bravado- though it’s hard for me to have sympathy for someone who devotes so much energy into being a complete and total prick.

I get that he has trauma, but these days, who doesn’t? I’ve got my own share of problems, but at least I’m trying to do something about it. Chase just wants to sit around and wallow in his own self-pity at the expense of everyone else. As someone actively trying to better their situation, I don’t have the patience for his brand of bullshit. I’m not going to walk on eggshells or tiptoe around him like everyone else.

I climb out of my car, giving it a wistful glance as I look to Chase’s monstrosity of a truck parked beside it. Of course someone like Chase would talk shit about my car, given how shiny and new his own vehicle is. I saved up for a year to buy that ‘piece of crap’, as he so eloquently put it, and as old and dinged up as it may be, at least it’smine. It’s my most prized possession, other than my phone, which thanks to Chase is now as cracked up as my car. Guess it’s only fitting that they should match.

I start up the front walk of the packhouse and let myself in the front door, looking around for Fallon. We have plans to take Serena shopping for outfits to wear to her birthday party this weekend. Not spotting her anywhere in the main portion of the packhouse, I figure she must be in Vaughn’s office with Gray again and head that way. I turn down the hall to see that the door’s standing open, but before I can reach it, I hear Rob’s angry voice coming from inside and stop short.

“If he doesn’t turn it around soon, I’m going to have to challenge him for Alpha,” Rob barks out. “I don’t want to, but the pack is still in shambles after losing their Alpha. He needs to step up and prove he can lead this pack.”

I hold my breath, fingertips brushing the wall as I linger just outside the office door. This is definitely a conversation I shouldn’t be hearing, but for some reason, I can’t get my feet to move.

“I’ve been working with him, he just needs more time to come around,” Gray replies, his tone sincere. “He lost his dad…”

“Wealllost Vaughn,” Rob snaps. “He was my best friend, and I want to do right by him and his son. But with the way Chase is behaving, he isn’t leaving me with any choice.”

---