Page 74 of Lonely Alpha

That wasn’t going to happen. Neither was Kiara and I joining some random pack of alphas who were likely criminals. Right now I was helpless to speak, rage simmering beneath the surface. I was holding myself together outwardly. She’d taught me that.

“Then I suppose I’ll speak with you soon,” I said plainly.

Mother scoffed and turned on her heel. Her composure had been carefully gathered again. She pulled open the door and strode out without another word to me.

I wanted to break down, to scream into the void and throw a chair against the wall. Instead, a smug-looking Jennika reentered the room, followed by Mercury’s lawyer. I kept my mouth shut and let the lawyer and Jennika settle back into the irritating back and forth they’d been doing before. I thought only of Kiara.

There was nothing in this world that she was more scared of than going back to her family.

I’d felt it when they’d taken her away from me—she’d been scared to go alone. If I hadn’t been indisposed, she would have asked for me, but it was good to know her second choice was Dash. I bet he’d gotten an ego boost from that.

She was less scared now.I hope they took her home to get some sleep. My body was weighed down with tiredness, and I hadn’t been the one drinking before all this happened.

Plus, she would be safer at home than she was here, and all I wanted was for her to be safe.

If I had to dig into the dredges of my mother’s life and tear it to shreds to meet that goal, so be it.

Bitch had it coming, anyway.

TWENTY-FIVE

MERCURY

“Took you long enough,” I snapped as our lawyer let Leighton out of the interrogation room. It had taken hours after he’d arrived—and the intermission while Edith Winston said her piece to her daughter hadn’t helped.

The wait was long enough we’d sent a dishevelled Kiara home to sleep because her yawns had become contagious. Luckily, that was before the arrival and subsequent quick departure of the manicured bitch from Hell. She’d shot me a disdainful look when she’d passed me in the lobby.

Both Ambrose and Dash were home with Kiara because Dash had proven he couldn’t be trusted alone with her. I didn’t think either could be trusted at the end of the day, but she wasn’t comfortable with me. Besides, I was the bullheaded one who wouldn’t let these assholes get away with locking Leighton up for no reason.

Ambrose’s dominant streak began and ended in the bedroom—he wasn’t a fan of conflict in real life. Dash was more likely to get himself locked up than get Leighton out.

“There are some hoops we had to jump through,” he said. “They wanted to do more interrogations, but they had no grounds to hold her. These Institute people aren’t as familiar with the nuances of the law as they should be, so I had to do a few lessons.”

I couldn’t fault him for that, but I kind of did.

“I’m out now, and that’s more than my lawyer probably could have done for me this fast,” Leighton said with a shrug. “On that note, you better be paying him because I can’t afford him.”

I scowled. “He’s on retainer for all of the Loranger pack’s legal needs.”

“Are you counting this as one of the Loranger pack’s legal needs?” she asked.

Her eyebrow lifted. It highlighted the dark bags under her eyes. It was late in the evening and the last few days had held more than a small amount of stress. She needed sleep.

And I should not be worrying about what she needed.

Leighton was only my problem because Ambrose and his goddamn sex drive had made her my problem.

“It became one of our needs the second you were arrested while we were all present at your condo,” I said.

I bet Ambrose would have called our lawyer regardless. So would Dash. The only one with any reasonable thought in their brain was me.

“Point taken,” she said.

My lawyer bid us goodnight, promising the paperwork for the civil suit we were about to file would be complete within a few days. It left us standing in the middle of a nearly abandoned office. Only a couple of people were still on duty, and they were more interested in their paperwork than us.

The law never slept.

Pulling out my phone I sent a text to the private car company I used on occasion. I’d cabbed over, but there was no way I was getting in a cab at this hour. Not with Leighton.

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