Page 56 of Knot Excused
TEDDY – MORON!!! was all Mario’s sign had on it.
The command to haul the Betas out hovered on my lips, but my eyes met Piper’s again. She was flashing angry fire at me, and I knew what she wanted was for me to get angry too, kick the Betas out, so she could say she wanted nothing to do with me. That we weren’t compatible.
I swallowed my anger at them.
Piper was right to be mad at me.
I had been a jackass to her. Why would she be happy with me or give me one single inch?
“You are a fucking robot,” she called out. “What the fuck does synergy mean? Why don’t you tell us what you really think?”
Suddenly, my tie felt entirely too tight and my hands itchy. I had a ridiculous urge to laugh at the absurdity of this.
What the fuck was I even doing here? I loathed everything about being a politician.
There was quite a juxtaposition between the soft and melty feeling in my guts when I looked at my Omega and the furious wayshewas looking atme.
“You want to know what I really think?” I asked her.
“Yes, I do,” she said.
Mario, Cesare, and Raffi were now waving their signs up and down and chanting “FAKE, FAKE, FAKE, FAKE.”
She’s paid them off,I thought to myself, almost smiling at her cleverness. That was the only way on earth they would dare to do this in front of a bunch of Alphas.
Goddamn, she was ruthless.
“I think you’re right. I am a fake. I don’t like being a politician. In fact, I hate every fucking second of it.”
There was a stunned silence, and Beatrice made a choked noise deep in her throat.
Piper crossed her arms over her chest and I saw the rise and fall of her beautifully-formed breasts. I held her eyes, feeling raw and exposed with the truth laid out bare in front of her. The tension between us crackled to a fever pitch and suddenly, without any warning at all, I shifted, fully and totally, into my wolf form.
Well-bred and elite Alphasnevershifted in public like this, definitely never during professional events, and there were gasps of horror all around the audience.
“Dude, you better shift back,” Teddy growled in my ear, but loud enough that it was heard all over the audience.
In my wolf form I could scent my Omega even stronger than ever, and I threw back my head and howled at the sky.
“Madam, control your candidate,” Piper called out to Beatrice, and in my state I still admired her fucking brutal commitment to revenge.
“Rook, what are you doing?” Beatrice hissed at me, her cheeks red as a beet, and I knew she hadn’t given two shits about me, either.
I had just been good for her career. Well, I didn’t know where her career was going after this, but I assumed nowhere good.
And it wasn’t like I wasn’ttryingto shift back. Iwastrying. I just couldn’t control myself.
I threw back my head and howled again, and all the Betas in the audience began to sprint from the area. Then I stepped forward and knocked over the podium I was speaking at and the whole place descended into chaos, other Alphas leaping in to try and subdue me.
By the time I had managed to shift back, almost everyone had left in disgust or sheer terror, but Piper was still standing in the audience watching me.
And all I could think about was how desperately I loved her.
“That wasn’t very good for your political career,” Piper said.
I felt something deep in my gut as she looked at me. Just a littletwang, just a tiny jolt of connection between us, but I felt an absurd spasm of hope.
“I’venever been very good at my political career,” I countered.
