Page 32 of Cruel Alpha: Season Two

I don’t need to think about my answer but hesitate all the same. “Yes.”

More writing. More silence. I can’t stand it, so I force out a question I’m not sure I want the answer to.

“What comes next? After the tremors, I mean. My father hid so much of his condition from Dimitri and I.”

“Well, with my limited experience with this illness, I can only go by how your father’s condition unfolded,” she says. “As you know, it started with the tremors, which gradually became more frequent, and then more violent. Eventually, he required assistance to walk, and his mental sharpness was the last thingto go. There were other, less obvious symptoms, but this mostly summarizes what I observed.”

Her words sink in, and I’m plagued with a memory. One in which my father sequestered himself away during the final phase of his illness. I shudder to think what symptoms he was hiding by that point. He was a proud man, astrongman. It pained him for Dimitri and me to see him as anything less than that, so he chose to die in isolation instead.

Locked in a room.

Alone.

I blink to push aside the grim thought of someday sharing his fate, and when I open my eyes, Jezebel’s staring at me over the frame of her glasses.

“I do wish you would allow me to try a few less conventional?—”

“I’m fine with you casting spells on me and pouring strange concoctions down my throat every week,” I cut in, “but I think we both know how this will end.”

A morose grin curves my mouth, but the blank look on Jezebel’s face means I’m not doing a great job hiding the sadness I hoped to mask.

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you knew that before interrupting.” The faint smile I mustered up begins to fade with her words. “We can reach out to?—”

“No,” I cut her off. “I do not discuss clan business with outsiders, and my health is by all means clan business. Besides, there’s no cure for what’s happening to me, Jezebel. You know it. I know it.”

“Yes, but?—”

“End of discussion.”

There’s a standoff between us. My firm response is clearly not being received well, but that’s the last I’ll hear of it. We know very little about my ailment, and an outsider would know evenless. Hell, we didn’t even know the condition could be passed through the bloodline until I started showing signs myself. There’s no way someone outside Clan Centauri could possibly be of any help.

“Fine,” Jezebel scoffs. “If you’d rather lay down and die before your time, then who am I to stop you. We could always talk about theotherthing that’s troubling you.”

“Which is?”

My question has her rolling her eyes. “Ms. Dawson’s girls? Your rapidly expanding family?”

I don’t miss the snideness in her tone, and her question has a lump forming in my throat at the thought of all the upcoming changes.

“It doesn’t matter what I feel. I’m doing my duty.”

She doesn’t hide her frown. “I’ve never seen such a thing. A man so consumed bydutyandhonorthat he’d sacrifice his own happiness.”

A sound of disapproval leaves her mouth, and it only adds to the pile of shit that’s already been dumped on top of me. No one’s more disgusted with the state of things than I am—disgusted with the choices I’ve made, with how those choices have hurt the only woman I truly care for.

I don’t speak any of these things out loud, but again, it’s as though Jezebel is reading me without my permission.

“If you’re unhappy with the way things are, then fix it,” she says, and the simplicity in her tone jars me. As if it’s all just so easy.

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid not everything is quite that black and white.”

“Isn’t it if you’re the alpha?”

Her snarky remark has me flashing back to last night, hearing similar words being spoken by Annalise. My wolf ismore alert than a moment ago—the result of being challenged, having my authority called into question.

“I believe we’re done here.”

I feel her stare fixed on me as I stand from my seat, slipping both arms into the sleeves of my suit jacket. My eyes are set on the door, and I plan to make a swift escape, using my impending meeting with Creed and Dimitri as an excuse.

---