Page 37 of Citius

Why didn’t she react?

Even my mentor, who had the best poker face of anyone I’d ever met,sneezed when faced with particularly incompatible pheromones.

My phone buzzed. It wasn’t the long-awaited response from Morgan but rather a summons from my father, Chaz—delivered via group text to Anya, Papa Jorge, and my six other nominal parents—the Carling equivalent of certified mail.

Dinner Friday. Business to discuss.

Since Chaz would never bring up Grandfather’s failing health at the dinner table, the summons could only mean one of two things: they wanted to set me up on a string of blind dates with this year’s crop of eligible omegas—fresh from finishing school, impeccably bred and trained to meet all the needs my parental pack deemed essential but had never experienced for themselves—or my cousin, Roddy, had fucked up again.

For once, I hoped Roddy had committed another round of light embezzlement. Turning down dates with women handpicked by the parental committee was exhausting.

It’s not like they cared about my happiness—just my genetics.

I respected my grandfather, but he was a product of his time, clinging to the tradition of alpha-only inheritance. Chaz would inherit the bulk of the estate when Grandfather passed away, including a majority stake in the family’s shipping and logistics business, Verray. That meant he would become the chairman of the board and, more importantly, the new head alpha of Pack Carling.

Grandfather’s will was a legally binding crown, anointing a new king—as was his right.

Besides, Chaz had earned it. Managing the day-to-day operations of a sprawling international business was no small feat, especially without real power. Even at ninety-seven and confined to a hospital bed, Grandfather refused to relinquish decision-making authority.

The problem lay with Chaz and his embrace of similarly antiquated views. After finally accepting that I would never abandon my career in designation medicine to play businessman, he began pushing me to find a mate and have children, to ensure an alpha successor for the so-called direct line.

But he already had my nephew, Spencer, the alpha son of my half-sister Heather. He was a great kid. Ambitious without being greedy, whip-smart without ego, but maybe a little too mature for his age. Anya and Heather had taken great pains to mold him into future chief executive material.

However, Heather was a female beta—a happenstance of birth that, in Grandfather and Chaz’s eyes, somehow made her children less worthy than my nonexistent offspring.

To make matters worse, she had been Chaz’s cherished only child until Grandfather started making threats. If Chaz didn’t produce an alpha son within a set timeframe, everything would go to my uncle and, eventually, Roddy, the rat.

Even then, at only three years old, everyone knew Roddy would tank the company.

Thus, I was born—Charles the Third, the only alpha son of Charles the Second, heir of Charles the First. The physical manifestation of generational greed.

They stuffed me into tiny suits, slicked my hair into submission with pomade, and paraded me about at parties and galas, ensuring everyone knew I was the golden child. The Carling heir.

I offered polite smiles while quietly dying to escape—to read an anatomy book, hunt crabs on the beach, throw a football with a friend, or snuggle with my mom.

Then Mom died, and what I wanted couldn’t be bought with all the riches in the universe.

Heather never understood. Her resentment ran too deep. I was the enemy to her, even though I avoided being at the family compound as much as possible, spending weekends and summers with my maternal grandparents instead.

The fuss I made when I moved out at eighteen, declaring I’d never attend another society event with any of them, should have made my stance crystal clear. My future lay in football and designation science—and neither they nor their vast fleet of container ships could stop me.

I remained single and without a pack precisely because it improved Spencer’s chances of becoming the next heir.

Yet every three to six months, Heather needed reassurance that I wasn’t seeing someone on the sly. She refused to believe that I wanted to be a good uncle to Spencer—a trusted companion, not his competition—even after proving myself for twenty-one years.

It was getting old. Really old. But I still had to go to dinner.

Understood. See you Friday.

I opened my calendar and sighed. My last appointment on Friday afternoon was with Morgan. Her clinic hours were non-negotiable, leaving me no choice but to shorten our meeting by half an hour.

Keeping the peace with my family required concessions. Grandfather insisted on dinner at six sharp, no exceptions, even in the event of his death, and it was a haul from campus to the family compound over in Rosellen Cove.

Home to old money—real old money—Rosellen Cove was a sprawling peninsula on the far northeast side of the bay, known for its multi-acre waterfront estates with hundred-year-old mansions and priceless views. None of which appealed to me. I only visited for family meals and the occasional afternoon talk with Grandfather.

Thankfully, they didn’t request my presence next week. If they had, I would’ve been forced to decline. Nothing would keep me from reviewing every single component of Morgan’s rough PheroPass enhancement pitch—side by side with her, for as long as necessary, even if it took five hours.

Maybe we could even grab dinner afterward.

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