Page 16 of The Alpha: Part One
"Ouch, Desie. You hurt my ego."
"I said you were pretty. Where did he come from?"
He sighs into the phone. "The East Coast, apparently."
No. No they didn't walk some random stranger over to my table to give me false hope. They wouldn't have roped a member of the East Coast Council into our situation. "Are you telling me you don't know anything about him and now he's involved in our problems? Please tell me that's not what you did."
Nothing. No response from the other end of the call.
"Ben. Tell me you know more about him than that."
"I know he likes you," he says quietly.
And that's what he's concerned about. Not the fact that I had to deal with that Lopez jerk for half the night before he and Michael pulled someone out of thin air to do anything about it. "So what if he likes me, Benjamin? It's not like that matters. You dragged a complete stranger into our business."
"He gave us a little more time, Desie. Can't you be happy about that?"
"She's happy about something, alright," Michael says.
No, he doesn't get to behave like a sullen little boy because I didn't hate the stranger they brought into the middle of all this. "Why are you being ugly, Michael?"
He doesn't immediately answer, and he remains quiet. Fine. We can both be children. I'm not going to beg him to answer me, and I'm not participating in the rest of this conversation until he does.
After a minute of silence, he sighs and says, "I'm jealous."
He cannot be serious. "Of what?"
"You purred for him."
He's serious. It's an involuntary reaction half the time. I couldn't help it. "I purr for you and Benny when you need me to."
"But there's a reason for you to purr for us. You just met him."
Now it's my turn to sigh. "Pain is pain, Michael. He is in a lot of it. I couldn't help my reaction to it. You didn't feel it at all? You're usually more intuitive and empathetic than this."
"I'm only empathetic when I need to be."
He's being purposefully obtuse. He and Benny brought Seth over. I'm not going to feel bad about my reaction to him. "You didn't feel the drop when he was talking about losing his pack? Nothing?"
"I felt it."
"Then you understand."
Benny says something too quiet and muffled for me to understand, and Michael makes a frustrated grunt. "Yeah, I know," he says, not to me. "But it's too fast for all that. She's just extra sensitive to people's emotions. We should have talked to him a little longer before we brought him over."
"He was going to go to the table with or without us," Benny argues. "You saw it as plainly as I did. He didn't like it any more than we did. Maybe there's something there."
"Or maybe he's extra sensitive, too," Michael counters.
I've had enough. I'm tired and emotionally drained. I don't feel up to the juggling act tonight. "You two can argue about Seth until the sun comes up tomorrow. But I’m not, I'm tired. I'm going to bed."
"Don't go yet, Desie," Benny says. "We're upset, too. I'm glad Seth was there tonight. It was lucky. And he's giving us more time to figure something out."
I don't mention that it felt very much like it would be all squared away by morning if Seth wasn't East Coast. I do try to make all three of us feel better before we end the night, though. "That makes me feel better. It felt good to be at a table with you and Michael, I mean, after that Lopez jerk left. It was nice to feel legitimate."
"We are legitimate, Des," Michael says, a small bite in his voice. "You know we are."
I sigh again. "Feeling legitimate and being legitimate are two different things, mi amor. We need three alphas to be legitimate enough to register. I'm not nagging you, I never have. But you see how serious it is, though, right? You see what I'll have to do if you don't find a third by the time Seth goes back, right? Please, Michael, Benny, please. Please don't put me back into an impossible situation."
