Page 13 of The Alpha: Part Two
“Would you want him to come back?” she asks, her bright blue eyes staring straight into mine.
Of course I want Seth to come back. Part of me thinks that if he would come back he could fix all of this. “It doesn’t matter. He had to go home.”
“It matters, Desir’ee.”
I take a step away from her, my eyes wide, shaking my head. “Why did you call me that?” Only Seth says my name that way, and IknowI introduced myself as Desie.
She smiles at me, exuding patience and empathy. “I don’t know if my chart has my first name listed. I’m Talia. I’m here for Seth. I wanted to meet you.” She sighs and gestures toward her belly, “I was also worried after the flight.”
“Is Seth here?” I whisper, cutting my eyes anxiously to the door like he might walk in any second.
She, Talia, smiles again. “Not in the building, no. He sent me here to get you.”
I feel myself deflating. No, I can’t leave with her. Not even for Seth. I have a plan to stick to. I won’t save myself and leave Michael and Benny at the mercy of Flores. “No.”
Her face drops, her brows knitting together. “No?”
I shake my head slowly. “I can’t. I won’t leave my boys. If I don’t go back to the penthouse, Flores will kill them. I know he will. I have a plan.”
“A plan?” she repeats.
I nod. I don’t know how much to tell her, but she and I are the only ones here and she was sent by Seth. “I’m going to kill him. Soon. Then I’ll find the boys and we’ll get out of there. We can find Seth after.”
An elated grin slowly spreads across her face. “He was right. I do like you. What’s your plan?”
I take a deep breath and tell her, giving her the quick version. “I’m going to inject him with a cocktail that will stop his heart and leave him to die while I go get Ben and Michael. He’s keeping them locked up somewhere awful, but I’ll find them.” I hand her a towel from the cabinet over the counter.
Talia nods and begins wiping the gel off of her stomach. “What about Lopez and the rest of his pack? They won’t let you just walk out of there.”
“I’ll wait till it’s just Flores and me. The rest of them are always running around to other places. I’ll be gone by the time they get back.” I can tell from her expression that she doesn’t like my plan. “It’s going to work. It has to. I’m going to go into heat in a couple weeks and I can’t be there when it hits. I won’t let them touch me. I’d rather die.”
She finishes cleaning herself up and sits up on the table when I offer her my forearm to assist. “You dying isn’t an option. I like the plan, though. We can work with that. Tell me how you feel about Seth.”
My mouth pulls to the side as I consider which version of the truth to give her. Ultimately, I give her all of them. “Seth belongs with us, but he’s hung up on something that happened on the East Coast, and now my brothers and the WCC are hung up on it, too. He’s mine. I know he’s mine. But there are so many problems. And he ran from us. He didn’t even try to explain. He just left. I have to get to Michael and Benny first, then we’re going to find Seth and figure out what to do. He’s their third. We all know it. I don’t care what he did in the past, he needs someone to look after him now.”
Talia’s face transforms into pure happiness. “Yes,” her smile grows just a little bit deeper, “he does. Would you like for me to tell you what happened on the East Coast? It might help you understand him a little better. It’s my story as much as it is his, and I think you should know.”
Part of me prickles with the knowledge that she, another female, knows more about Seth than I do. “We don’t have time. We’ve already taken longer than a scan should take. People will get suspicious.”
She smirks at me. “I am Corso Zaphir’s and Devon Johnson’s omega and my last name is Nattier. I can close down the whole fucking hospital if I want to. No one will mind if I take a little longer than what was scheduled.”
She isn’t wrong. Still, I go to the door and lock it before I wedge a chair under the handle. I text Annie to ask her to push my other appointments back for me and mark the board. “Okay. First, do you need anything? I know I just locked the door, but I can grab you a juice or something and lock it back.”
“I’m good. You might need that chair, though,” she says before she starts her account. “Actually, can I do something that is more than a little strange? For Seth?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to cut a piece of your hair for him. I want to braid it into his hair. He’s having a really hard time and he’s utterly convinced that you hate him. That way he’ll know you don’t hate him and he can keep part of you with him.”
After a moment’s thought, I decide I like that idea and reach into my pocket for my small scissors and release my hair from the clip. She snips a small section from an area where it won’t be obvious and starts telling her story while I’m twisting my hair back up.
“On the East Coast, when a beta completes their courses at the omega institute they have the option to go out into the world to find their own way, or they can choose to be assigned to established packs to try to find their fit. I didn’t want to find my own way as a beta–”
“Wait,” I interrupt. “What do you mean beta?”
She smiles patiently. “I began this life as a beta. I didn’t come into being an omega until after I found my Jasper.”
I nod, even though that’s bizarre, and she continues. “I didn’t want to find my own way. I have always been small, and there weren’t too many packs that would actually want me as their beta. I didn’t look like much and I knew I wouldn’t survive on my own, so I asked to be assigned. I was eventually assigned to Seth’s pack. We now know that his father was a son of a bitch and pulled strings to get me placed with them, but that isn’t the point right now. The point is that I was placed with Seth’s pack and the two other alphas in the pack were horrible, disgusting, evil bastards. They were also part of the organized rogues who have been kidnapping omegas for years.”
