Page 6 of The Alpha: Part One
Lucas knocks on the table and nods over at Sebastian. "I'm happy for you. You already know what living with a Taylor is like," he blows a kiss at Amber, "so it won't be a huge adjustment. They're practically family, anyway."
"Yeah, yeah. Family ties and all that. You ready to go back out, D?" Amber looks hopefully at the dancefloor.
"You and Lucas go ahead. I'll be out in a minute."
She nods and pulls my brother from his seat and out into the fray. I watch them for a minute, then I turn to Mateo. "I don't want anything to do with the Flores pack, Mateo. Whatever else happens, I don't want them."
Chapter four
Michael
It would be easier to throw her in the trunk and drive off. It wouldn't be fair or pretty, but it would be a whole fucking lot easier than weighing every alpha I know against some internal,impossiblestandard that even I don't understand. It's not about Rafe. People think it is, but we were kids when we lost him. It was wrenching. Benny and me were completely devastated. We carried that devastation on our sleeves for so long, and parts of us will always mourn the loss of him, but the problems we're having right now don't have anything to do with him.
Nobody I know is good enough. Nobody from our station or any of the surrounding stations are good enough. We haven't been to any of the socials scheduled, but I'm not optimistic about that, either. Out of all these potential people, nobody's going to feel right, and I don't even know why. Being on a deadline just makes it worse. I always thought our third would just fall into place one day. Like, we'd see him on a job or at a bar and he'd just click with us, and everything would be perfect. Then we'd go get Desie and register our pack and our omega and she'd work at the hospital. Then we'd start our family. And name our first son Rafe.
That shit never happened, though. Now we have to find somebody to bejust good enoughso that we don't lose Desie. Sometimes I think about what might have happened if one of us had marked her during one of her heats, even though there's only two of us and we're not a complete pack. Would the council rip her away from us? Or would they let us keep our bond until we found our third? Maybe under probation, or something. I don't know. I don't know how it works; I just know that it's bullshit. Desie is our omega and has been since we were kids, it shouldn't be like this.
"Get up, Mikey. You stay in bed much longer and you won't be worth a shit the rest of the day," Benny shouts, beating out a rhythm on my door. "We've got a lot to do today, people to meet. Got to dress to impress."
Groaning, I roll over and grab my phone off the nightstand. "It's barely seven, you prick," I grumble, but I roll out of bed anyway. I have been hiding in my blankets for long enough, and we do have people to meet. I'm not trying to impress anybody, though. They can impress me. We're basically holding pack interviews today, whether anybody else knows it or not. We even dropped a couple shifts to give us more time.
"Hey," Benny yells from somewhere in the house. "I was thinking, let's ride over to Long Shop today. We haven't been over there in almost a year. There's probably a new crowd. It's worth a shot."
Fucking Long Shop. It's not a bad little town, but it's an out of the way, hole in the wall town. It's easy to do sideways shit in out of the way little places, we would know. That's where we first got involved with the fights. We were seventeen. Our mom had just died, and we were waiting for our dad to follow her. We were scared and angry. And hungry. We could have gone to Mateo's; we could have even gone to his and Desie's parent's place. They would have been happy to feed us. But we were also stubborn assholes with chips on our shoulders. We wanted to prove that we could take care of ourselves. Men like Flores and his associates can recognize kids like we were from miles away. It didn't take long for him to see his potential earnings in us. He came waltzing into our angry independence like a savior, but he's been nothing but a plague. We barely get any of the money he makes from us, and after we got hired at the station and stopped doing protection for shake down runs for him, he started getting shitty. Benny's right, though. We could find someone there, someone who might understand where we came from and where we are now.
"Yeah, alright. We'll head over around lunch. I've been thinking about Lito’s, anyway."
We pull into the parking lot at exactly one minute past noon. Benny jumps out of the car before I cut the engine and is halfway to the door before I pull the keys from the ignition. By the time I get inside, he's already claimed a place at the bar for us and is in the process of ordering chile verde. "Make that two," I say. "And two orders to go. Thanks." Then I turn my attention to the mirror behind the bar where I can see the rest of the restaurant. It's busy for mid-week, mostly older guys, only one female in the place. Lana, the waitress, is a beta and part of the pack that owns and runs Lito’s. I think she was friends with our mom when they were young, but we don't talk about Mom here. We don't talk about Mom, Dad, Desie, or anything else that we love when we're here. We learned that the hard way.
Lito comes out of the kitchen and grabs three beers from the cooler. He opens all three and puts one in front of me and Benny before starting on his own. Then he gets to business. "Haven't seen you boys in a while. Keeping your noses clean?" Benny nods, and I take a sip of my beer. "Good. I love to see the two of you, but I hope it's just for lunch. Have you heard about what's going on with the WCC?"
I shake my head. "We don't keep up with the trivial shit. But you're mentioning it, so it must be big."
Lito sends his gaze around the room, then continues quietly. "Minos is losing ground. That shithead Flores is gaining it. I heard about some shipments coming in and I swear to fuck it sounded too much like there was going to be people in those containers. Girls. Girls like the ones who have been disappearing right off the streets here. I've even heard a few stories about drivers catching glimpses of whole trucks loaded with girls at the weigh stations. And you know what happened to the Rivera boy. Awful shit."
The Rivera boy's name was Aaron. He was one of the only male omegas I've ever seen in person. Such a cute kid. He was walking home from school and never showed up for dinner. He turned up months later on the other side of the territory. He didn't survive what happened to him and based on what I heard from a few colleagues, whatever happened to him was really bad shit. "Yeah, I remember. Why are you telling us about all this?"
"Because my nephew told me he saw your girl last night. Flores was all over her. I know you boys have had it rough, but if I were you, I'd get my shit together and complete my pack. I don't know if that prick wants her for his pack or for his trucks, but he wants her. And there's the other thing." He gives each of us a hard look as he takes a heavy drink from his bottle. "The territories don't usually get involved in each other's bullshit, but omegas are coming up missing everywhere. Something big happened over on the East Coast. The council over there is sending some representatives,envoys,” he actually gives air quotes when he says it, “to meet with the WCC to see if what happened there is what's happening here. I heard Minos was pissed at first, but now that Flores is pushing his own agenda, Minos is glad to work with the East."
"What does the WCC’s East Coast drama have to do with us?" Benny asks.
Lito sighs like we're stupid. We might be. I can't see a connection between us and the drama, either. "You boys have done work for Flores in the past. I know you still take the occasional fight, too. I thought you'd want a heads up in case he decides he wants to handle the East Coast boys one way or the other. If I was him, I'd send the two of you on a house call. I've watched you boys grow up and I've watched you work hard to pull yourselves out of the sideways shit. I don't want to watch you get dragged back into it."
Damn. He's right. I'd send us, too. We look clean on paper, and we look good from a social standpoint. Nobody important would guess that we'd be who Flores sent to deal with anybody he wanted a message sent to. But we've already told him no more house calls. The only reason we still take fights anymore is the money. I know the fights aren't just about the action. Everyone does. It's a lot of ‘If my boy beats your boy, I'll look the other way when you do whatever bad shit it is’. Money is money, though. And me and my brother don't come from a financially blessed family, so we take the occasional fight and pretend like we don't know what's really happening. "Thanks for the heads up. Do you know when theenvoysfrom the East will be here?"
"Next week. Minos is going to pull out all the stops. He wants to show them that the WCC and the Western packs are solid. It would be like Flores to try to ruin it."
"Thanks again, Lito. We're not trying to get mixed up in a bunch of territory bullshit," I tell him, and I mean it. We are not fucking with anything involving anybody from the East Coast.
A bell dings from the kitchen and Lito turns to grab our food from under the warming shelf. "I'll box up your to-go orders. I'm glad you came in. And I hope I don't see you again until next year. Tell Mateo I said hello."
"Will do," Benny says around the food in his mouth.
I take a bite of my own food and chew it slowly while I think. I really don't want to be involved in anything council related. I don't care what it is. We came here to try to find a third and we're handed a heavy bucket of information we can't do anything with. "We should bail on the fight next week."
"Can't," Benny says, taking another bite. "With everything going on, he'll get suspicious. It's already set up, so it won't have anything to do with the territories."
"It might have something to do with the girls, though, the omegas. You've heard as many rumors as I have. It's shitty that we've closed our eyes to it."
