Page 34 of The Alpha: Part One
“Alright,” Desir’ee chirps, and cups both sides of my face so she can look into my eye for a long moment. She nods at whatever she sees. “Let’s go. I’m going to put on jeans and a hoodie, then we can go.”
It’s so easy being with Desir’ee and the twins that it scares the shit out of me. We went to breakfast and sat together like we’ve done it a hundred times. I didn’t feel separate, or like an outsider. Talia and usually Nathan do what they can to make me feel included, but I’m not stupid. Jasper would climb up the outside of the garage like a damn spider and kill me in my sleep if he thought he could get away with it and the rest of them, including Corso most days, would make sure he didn’t get caught. I deserve that. I’d feel the same way if I was him. My friendship with Corso has changed over the past couple years, grown into something genuine, but I know what I did to his omega is a constant thorn digging into the back of his mind.
The twins and Desir’ee come back to my temporary house after breakfast. We’re on our fourth movie. I can’t admit it back home, but I love Jasper’s horrible horror marathons. Mother fucking love them. Apparently the twins like campy, awful low-budget horror films, too, and Desir’ee enjoys naps so it’s working out pretty great right now.
This feels the way Talia’s pack looks. I wish it was mine. I wish I could keep it. I wish I wasn’t here on a job. I wish I didn’t have to go back.
Chapter eighteen
Michael
I knew how important Desie’s job was to her before I had a bond with her, but I didn’t realize how much she loves it. I like my job, I like most of the guys I work with, and I like knowing that my job helps our community, but I don’tloveit. She loves her job at the hospital. She even loves it when she has to deal with the bad things that sometimes happen. I can feel it when she talks to us about it after her shifts, and I love how much she loves it, how passionate she is about it.
Mateo took it as well as we expected him to when he found out about us claiming Desie. He wasn’t angry, not exactly, but he was extremely anxious about it. Anxious? That isn’t right. No, he was scared to death because we don’t have a third. Not officially, anyway. Seth is it, though. Me and Benny feel it, Desie feels it. She wouldn’t have made her nest the way she did if it wasn’t right. It’s just a matter of time before everything slides into place.
I don’t know what happened in his past that has him so fucked up, but it’s more than losing that shitty pack. The world is a better place without those assholes in it and Seth knows it. Whatever happened might have something to do with them, it definitely has something to do with them, but they aren’t the sole cause of his current state. And Desie is really worried about him, which means Ben and I are worried about him. We’d obviously be concerned on our own, but between feeling her worry through the bond and hearing it in her voice when she talks to or about him, concern has rolled straight into worry. She wants to fix it, whatever it is, immediately. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be an easy fix, and I’m pretty sure the only thing that’s going to help Seth is being there for him and with him while time does what time does.
“Is that the last of what you’re bringing?” Ben asks her, his voice muffled by the stack of boxes he’s carrying out to the car. She tried to go back to her brother’s house, but she came back to us in the middle of the night. The bond made the separation too uncomfortable. We weren’t thrilled with her driving over by herself, but by the time we knew she was on her way she was more than half way here. We’ve been trying to make her understand how dangerous it is for her to do things like that because the Flores pack is definitely watching her, but Desie kind of doesn’t give a fuck about that kind of stuff. If she gets it in her head to do something, she does it; with or without us knowing about it. Having a bond with her isn’t going to change that, it might give us a bigger heads-up, though.
“Yeah,” she calls from the porch. “I can get the rest later. They won’t need to turn my room into a nursery for a couple months. I’ll have time to get everything else by then.”
Amber is finally pregnant. It’s an uncanny case of perfect timing that everyone is grateful for, despite Mateo’s concern over it. Desie is over the moon. She and Amber already have the whole pregnancy planned out, down to most of the delivery details that can be planned for. Every ounce of worry Mateo has over Amber is canceled out by Desie’s relief and support. It feels like so many things are falling into place at one time.
We take Desie’s things to the house, but we leave it all stacked and piled in the living room because we have to go get her an actual bed for her bedroom. It’s going to have to be a big one, too. She’s already declared that we’re going to be sleeping with her, so mine and Ben’s beds are going to end up being mostly useless.
The sales person at the furniture store takes us straight up to the floor with the bedroom suits and gets to work pointing out the biggest, most expensive ones. Desie smiles and sits on each one he suggests but isn’t really happy with any of them. Ben and I don’t care, whichever one she picks is fine with us. He ends up taking us through every bed on the floor, even revisiting a few of them, but none of them are right.
“Can I ask, Miss Romero, what is it that you don’t like about them? I’m more than happy to call our other locations to see what else might be available.”
Desie looks around at the dozens of beds, her mouth pulled to the side. “It sounds silly, but they’re all too loud.”
“Too loud?” the sales person clarifies.
Ben and I exchange a look. We know exactly what she means.
Ben goes to the nearest bed and sits down on it. “Too loud,” he says, grinning, and proceeds to bounce on the mattress, making the few other people on the floor stare in our direction. It sounds exactly like an in-store railing.
I watch the sales guy fight back a laugh, for the sake of professionalism, I’m sure, then he suggests looking at their futon selection.
“I don’t know,” Desie says. “The slats are awful. I slept on one once at a friend's house. It was pretty uncomfortable, and I think the frame was still pretty loud.”
“We have higher-end futons that are just as comfortable as a regular bed. Would you like to see them?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Ben is still aggressively bouncing his ass on the bed. It’s funny, but distracting. “It can’t hurt to look, D. Let’s get him out of here before he wears out the springs on that one and we have to buy it.”
The futon Desie picks out is every bit as expensive as the regular bed and doesn’t make a sound when both Ben and I bounce on it. It’s going to be a whole lot easier to set up once we get it home, too.
We’re about a week into our new arrangement when I get the call from the station. The fires have already started. I thought we might have a little longer before they sent us out, but this year is starting out strong. It’s always bad when Ben and I have to go, but this time it’s going to be so much worse. Leaving Desie with her family while we’re in the mountains or in another part of the territory is hard enough under our previous circumstances, but now…with a bond in place…it’s going to be rough. And Ben and I both have to go.
“She can go to Mateo’s,” Ben insists. “She’ll be alright there. All her brothers will be there and they’ll keep her safe.”
That would be an easy solution if her safety was the only thing we were worried about. “The bond, Ben. We’re going to be separated for at least two weeks. You and me will be okay, for the most part, because we’ll be together. We can call her and even do video calls, but she’s still going to be alone. Being at Mateo’s won’t stop her from feeling the separation. It might even make it worse. I don’t know.”
“But Amber’s there. They can talk about baby stuff. That’ll help, right? Maybe it’ll be alright.”
I nod, the unfortunate thing is that we won’t know how alright it will or won’t be until we’re too far away to do anything about it.
Desie is understandably and expectedly unhappy when we tell her, and she’s even more unhappy when we ask her to stay with her brother.
