Page 7 of Citius

My parents tried their best. Dad and Pops were too alpha about it all—pelting my doctors with endless questions, threatening to move me to a different hospital or rehab facility more than once when I wasn’t making enough progress for their liking.

Papa was the opposite, prone to coddling, always encouraging me to take a nap or eat another bowl of homemade soup. Determined to smother me with extra pillows and blankets in case I damaged anything else.

Mom’s beta nature made her the most logical, but witnessing my accident in person impacted her more than she let on, anxiety spiking at odd moments—holding my hand a little too long before being wheeled off for tests, refusing to speak above a whisper on the phone when I was in the room for nearly two years, throwing her arm across my chest if a driver so much as took a speed bump too fast.

Kelsey’s laid-back approach to caregiving was much easier to tolerate. Almost too easy. I gave her access to my bank account and took my pills on time. She managed everything else.

While she no longer had to drive me everywhere, she still insisted in her quiet way on managing domestic issues, like food, so that I could focus on work. Medical school and my residency would have been impossible without her.

We didn’t have a formal agreement, but an implicit one, where she gives, and I take—and make sure it’s worth her while to keep giving. Then I take some more.

While working on her master’s in business, Kelsey launched a successful online boutique. Beaufeather’s featured high-end home goods like cashmere body pillows and imported herbal bath soaks. She tried to appeal to every designation, but most of her clients were omegas, and her themed nesting kits regularly sold out.

Why rack your brains when Kelsey can do it for you? It’s practically my life’s motto.

Kelsey sometimes asked friends and relatives to evaluate new products, and Jacobi was her favorite guinea pig due to his immediate proximity and genuine good taste. His move was a significant loss for her, too—and sometimes, I think she missed him even more than I did.

“When do you get your next shipment of bath bomb samples? I can fill the Jacobi void.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Kelsey teased. “Already have a crate with your name on it.”

Asking for my feedback was pointless. She couldn’t even trust me with microwave popcorn. Guaranteed smoke bomb every time.

Three

Morgan

The Belcrest Football Operations Center was a brand new, multi-million-dollar complex packed with every bell and whistle imaginable—fancy locker rooms, state-of-the-art training facilities, meeting rooms, administrative offices, a recruiting center, indoor and outdoor practice fields, and, most importantly, a comprehensive sports medicine center.

A physical therapist held the front door for me, offering a polite nod. Their name escaped me—not for lack of trying. We exchanged routine, impersonal pleasantries as we crossed the lobby toward the security checkpoint.

“Dr. Van Daal?” a husky voice called after me.

I turned, expecting to find a football player. The tall man lounging on a sofa in the reception area was anything but a student. He had the lean, toned build of a swimmer, with tattoos snaking down his tanned arms and onto the backs of his hands and a few fingers. Both ears glinted with multiple piercings.

Everything about him seemed to be one or two clicks off the ideal setting, from the hook in his aquiline nose to the overbearing weight of his brows. His dark brown hair was a bit too long, his facial hair a little too careless, and his tapered jaw shouldn’t be strong enough to support the rest of his facial features. But it worked for him.

Alpha, I decided. While I couldn’t scent him, the devil-may-care attitude he projected was not something your typical beta could manage.

As I took a few steps toward him, an oddly familiar logo on his blackt-shirt caught my eye, though I couldn’t quite place it.

“Can I help you?”

Umber brown eyes regarded me with an intensity that felt unsettlingly deliberate. As if he was looking at me to confirm something. Not through me. At me. Only me.

“Sorry if this is a weird question, but… Any chance you’re related to Piper Van Daal?”

No wonder the logo looked familiar. My family owned several dozen pieces of Belcrest Ballet merchandise. I even had a Belcrest hoodie tucked away in my sham of a heat supply bag. Piper was one of their principal dancers.

“She’s my sister.” I tried to meet his gazebutwas distracted by the thin silver nose ring on his right nostril. “Why?”

“You said you’d wait in the car!” Alijah Peck slipped through the exit turnstile at security and hurried over, wearing his customary work uniform—a Northport Narwhals polo shirt and khakis. He was a digital media specialist, handling most of the football team’s photography and video production needs—and a beta.

A rather striking, slim-built beta with rich brown skin and sky-high cheekbones. He had a preppy vibe, always neat and clean-shaven, with his textured black hair clipped into a tight fade. And he was young, too. Maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, about the same age as Piper.

Alijah skidded to a stop between the alpha and me, grappling with his work bag as he tried to catch his breath. “Sorry, Morgan. He’s with me.”

The alpha raised a wry brow. “You were the one who said—”

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