Page 76 of Lonely Alpha

And it wasn’t only that, but I was going to continue to pretend that was all.

“I don’t need any help,” Leighton said.

“The tension in your shoulders says you do.”

She glared at me but worried her bottom lip between her teeth. I found myself hoping she accepted the offer. We could make everything better. There were very few things Dash’s family money couldn’t fix. I also came from a prestigious family name, but with four siblings my trust fund was a little sparser. Dash was the sole heir.

“My mother is blackmailing me,” she said quietly. “I’ve come to accept it, but this situation with Kiara has messed everything up. What my mother wants is conflicting with what she needs, and that’s before mentioning that there’s someone else also blackmailing me.”

I tried not to let my aura flare, but it did. The intensity shattered the serene quiet of the car and the deserted streets. Our driver glanced back in alarm, and I offered him a tight smile and a nod.

It didn’t take long to get my anger back under control, and he stopped paying attention to us back here again.

“What are they blackmailing you with?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not my secret to tell. But they both know the same thing, and it can’t become public knowledge.”

There was only one person in the world that Leighton would allow herself to be blackmailed over.

Her brother.

Maybe two people, now that she had a bonded omega.

“Can we eliminate the evidence?”

Cringing, Leighton shook her head again. “No. The evidence is all over the place, kind of. Mother figured out how to connect the dots.”

I was running through possibilities of what this secret could be.

We pulled up out front of her apartment building and I tipped the driver. Leighton was already unlocking the building’s front door when I caught up to her. No reporters had been ambitious enough to camp out here overnight, especially since the story had already broken, so we didn’t get hassled.

“We’re going to figure out how to fix this,” I said.

She waved me off, holding the door open to let me in after her. The ‘up’ button lit up red when she punched it to call the elevator. “I shouldn’t have told you about that,” she said. “You could be the ones to blackmail me next if you find out, and then I’d have even more problems.”

“I’m not the blackmailing type.”

Her heels clicked as she stepped into the elevator and turned to face me. “Dash is.”

“He’s not the one who knows about this.”

Both eyebrows lifted in surprised, her lips parting. “I assumed you planned to tell him. Don’t packs tell each other everything? I’m surprised you didn’t already know about the blackmail, considering I gave Ambrose some details.”

With my panic and subsequent anger over him being stabbed, he hadn’t had a chance to get into it. And he wouldn’t have. Ambrose respected her privacy too much.

“Not my secret to tell,” I repeated what she’d said before.

Her arms crossed over her chest. “I don’t believe you.”

“Do or don’t. You already told me and you can’t take that back, so let me help you.”

This was pathetic. I was practically begging her to let me help, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. Leighton was going to ruin our pack the same way her brother had years ago. However, it was the kind of destruction I couldn’t look away from.

“I doubt you can, but if you’re going to insist on trying, I guess I can’t stop you,” she muttered.

The elevator dinged and we got out. Her front door had a boot print on it where the police officer had kicked it in and shoved past Ambrose. All her neighbours would be able to see what happened—as if they hadn’t already witnessed the whole thing on the news. My statement outside the building had only been able to do so much.

My speaking on her behalf had fanned the flames of certain theories that had lain dormant for years.

---