Page 2 of The Alpha: Part One
I purse my lips together to stop them from forming the trembling frown I feel in my soul, then I stomp over to the window and yank open the curtains. "Why did you come?" I hiss. "You shouldn't be here. It just makes everything worse."
"You're so beautiful."
I glare through the glass into both sets of brown eyes staring in at me. "Shut up. It doesn't matter. You shouldn't have come." By the last word my voice is quivering and cracking and I have no hope of stopping the tears pooling in my eyes from dripping down my cheeks. "Why didn't you stay away?"
"We couldn't. We had to see you one last time before…" Benny closes his eyes and his jaw ticks. "We just needed to see you. We'll be there tonight, with you. Just to make sure nothing bad happens to you."
"My brothers will be there. All of them. Please, Benny, Michael. Please, don't come. I can't stand it if you come."
Michael clicks his tongue. "I don't care if your brothers will be there. We will be there. If we can't have you, then we can at least make sure nobody hurts you or gets out of hand with you." And that is the worst possible thing he could have said.
My tears turn into burning rage. "All you had to do was find a third," I hiss. "Anybody would have been better than nobody. Now I have to go give myself to the best possible option, before I'm offered up to the highest bidder. I couldn't force you to take a third, but you've certainly forced me into a life of misery. I should have listened to Mateo all those years ago when he begged me to stay away from you. If I had listened to him then my heart wouldn't be ripped to pieces now. Why couldn't you have just picked up a third? We could have been together."
"It doesn't work like that, baby."
"Don't youdarecall me baby."
"We couldn't pick just anybody, Desie. We couldn't connect with just anybody." Benny's voice is shaking as much as mine.
"I'm about to have to connect with a whole pack of just anybodies, Benjamin. I have to start letting packs that I don't belong with court me because if I don't, I'll be put on the block. I can't do that to myself. I can't do that to my family. And I have to pick one of them. I have to submit to one of them. I have togive myselfto one of them for the rest of my life. Don't you understand? You shouldn't have come here, and you shouldn't be there tonight. Please just," my shoulders sink and I let out a heavy breath, "go. Just go."
"We need to be there to protect you."
"No, you don't. Climb down from that tree and leave. You're going to make me late."
"What else are we supposed to do?" Michael clips.
"Find a third. Or a fourth. Find a whole other pack and join it, then come get me. Find them in the next two hours and bring them to this night from hell and fight the rest of them away from me. Save me from a miserable life without love or happiness."
Chapter two
Benny
We should have done exactly what Desie said. We should have just brought in another alpha, anybody who wasn't a total piece of shit, to be our third so we could have claimed her. It's not too late. We could pick somebody right now and march into that meet and greet and dare another pack to look at her. Of course, that would mean letting a stranger touch her, but one stranger is way better than a whole pack of them.
"Stop thinking about it. We can't connect with just anybody. You know that. We've tried. It never works." Michael kicks a rock across the sidewalk, sending it skidding into the street.
"We could try again," I push. "Come on. You saw how torn up she was. You know how goddamned miserable we are. Maybe we could make something work. We can't just let her go, Michael. We can't. Rafe wouldn't."
Michael turns and shoves me. "You think I don't know that? Rafe would throw her in a trunk and drive to another territory before he let another pack have her."
I shove him back. "So, let's throw her in the trunk and drive. We can go East. All the way to the coast. It can't be as shitty as everyone says. Let's go back and drag her out the window. We have time." Michael just looks at me and shakes his head. "Well, what about Ethan? He's old enough now."
Michael's brows raise and he jerks his head back. "Fuck Ethan. You really want our idiot cousin touching Desie?"
"I don't want anybody touching Desie. But at least we know Ethan isn't an asshole. We know he won't be mean to her, and he'll be easy for us to manage since he's family."
"No, Benny. He might be our cousin, and not a prick, but he's not good enough for Desie." Michael grips my shoulders and gives me a shake. "It can't be Ethan. We can't be tied to him like that for the rest of our lives. Besides, he's already got that little smart ass, Jason, attached to his hip. We're absolutely not bringing that little shit into a pack with us."
Michael drops down to sit on the curb and drags his hands down the sides of his face and continues the motion down his neck. I sit next to him and stretch out one of my legs. There are a bunch of kids playing in the little park across the street. Normally their excited noise would make me smile and remember when we were kids, but not today. Today the memories spinning in my head are the bad ones. The ones where we lost Rafe. It's usually Michael's job to be the serious one and I'm the one trying to lighten the mood. Nothing can lighten the load today. "Rafe would hate us for this. He'd beat our asses for just letting her go. She's supposed to be ours, Mikey."
My brother doesn't say anything for a few minutes, then he jumps back up to his feet. "Come on."
"What are we doing?"
"We're going to put her in the trunk. Take our chances on the East Coast."
Thirty minutes later we pull into a driveway a few houses up from Mateo's house to get Desie. We were going to climb up that damn tree like we did earlier and sneak her out of the window, but Michael didn't think we'd have enough time to help her down before one or all of her brothers came running out of the house to stop us. So, we're going to do the gentlemanly thing and blow up her phone to get her to come outside and when she does, we'll snatch her and run. We're not throwing her into the trunk, though. That would be too dangerous. "Has she texted you back? She hasn't responded to me."
