Page 18 of The Alpha: Part Two
It’s a mistake. I shouldn’t do it. I know I shouldn’t even as my hand is whipping out to make contact. The slap I give him stings my palm. It doesn’t matter that I know the truth about Ben and Michael, hearing it said aloud, hearinghimsay it, is too much.
I have a moment to register the sound of the remote control being crushed before Flores’s hands are wrapped around my upper arms in a bruising grip. “They are dead, Desir’ee,” he growls, “dead. You will never see them again because they are dead.” Every time he says the word dead, he gives me a vicious shake; so hard that my head snaps back and forth on my shoulders.
“Don’t call me that!” I scream. There is no saving this situation. I can feel and smell the belligerent anger billowing off of him. At this point he’s so angry that he wants to hurt me more than he wants me to be his omega.
He wraps one hand around my neck and he pulls the other back. He’s going to hit me. He’s going to punch me right in the face. I close my eyes for the impact, but it doesn’t come. I crack my eyes back open to find that Lopez is standing behind Flores, gripping his wrist tightly.
“Release her, Ernesto,” Lopez snarls.
Flores laughs and squeezes his hand tighter around my neck as my vision starts to sparkle around the edges.
“Now!” Lopez growls again, even more violently.
Flores releases me all at once, causing me to fall to the ground, and laughs again. He turns to face Lopez, transforming himself from the irate alpha he was a moment ago into his usual condescending, arrogant self. “Really, Elijah? You were never bothered when it got physical with any of the others.”
“They weren’t ours,” Lopez clips. “Miss Romero is.”
Any other time, I’d correct him. I am not theirs. I will never be theirs. I will die before I ever give them a reason to believe that I’m theirs. But challenging that now might actually get me killed, and I’m not ready to die. I have to get the drugs from the hospital. I have to save Ben and Michael. We have to get to Seth and save him, too.
“I told you already, Elijah,” Flores sneers, “she was never going to be ours willingly. She might live here and she might pop out your babies, but she’s never going to truly be ours.” He jerks his wrist out of Lopez’s hold and stalks out the door.
Lopez reaches down to offer me a hand, this time I let him help me up. “Are you hurt?” He presses his lips together and his nostrils flare with the breath he blows out. “Obviously, you’re hurt. Let me see.”
I’ve never been hurt by an alpha, or a beta for that matter. I have never been handled like this, and my neck, throat, and arms do ache, but it’s nothing compared to the emotional marks being left. I wouldn’t survive in a situation where this was my norm. “I’m alright,” I say, but it comes out coarse and strained.
"I never meant for you to be harmed, Miss Romero. Not physical or lasting, anyway. I knew you'd be upset, distraught, but I didn't think it would be like this. Flores said," Lopez takes another breath. "He assured me that you'd be emotional for a while, time would lessen your pain and things would get easier for you; but this…" His voice trails off as his eyes move down to my feet then back up to my own, "this is unacceptable."
I'm about to tell him that there isn't a universe in which what he and his pack are doing to me and mine would be acceptable, but he surprises me.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something in a blister pack. He holds it out toward me, palm up, and I take it, gasping when I turn the packet over.
"Heat suppressants?" I ask, at once incredulous and suspicious.
He nods twice, then shakes his head rapidly, giving a long blink of his eyes. "You can't go into heat."
I don't know what I'm supposed to say, or think about that declaration. I agree, going into heat while I'm here would be devastating for me, but why ishesaying it? The whole point of kidnapping me and keeping me here is so I can be their perfect, good omega. "Why not? Isn't that the whole point? Isn't that what you want? For me to go into heat so you and your pack can try to override the bonds I have with Ben and Michael? So you can force me to take you," bile rises up and I have to swallow harshly to force it back down, "so you can do all the disgusting things Flores said?"
His mouth tightens and he drags a hand down his face as he moves to sit on the foot of my bed. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. Iwantedhim to be right. I had the selfish audacity to want something that has been denied to me time and time again as I provided it to others. He said you would be perfect for us, and I'm stupid and selfish enough to have believed him. I believed it because I wanted it so much."
I must look as confused as I feel, because the corner of his mouth lifts in a sad smile. "Do you know how many packs on the West Coast have their omega because I brought her to them? I have introduced omega after omega to pack after pack. Council packs, low-born packs, rich packs, poor packs, so many packs have the thing I've always wanted."
He closes his eyes for a moment, and I keep my mouth shut, waiting for him to keep feeding me information.
"We weren't always like this, you know. He wasn't. I was young and prideful enough to follow along with whatever scheme he concocted to get us more money, more leverage, more power. I didn't question him when he began making deals with alphas with no affiliations. Everything he'd done before then was for the good of our pack, why would I question him?" His laugh is raspy and full of self-loathing.
I've never heard him sound like this. He always sounds so condescending, so full of his own self importance, but the man sitting on my bed right now is neither of those things.
"He promised we'd get our omega after we finished this, after we did that, on and on. Then we started doing the fight nights and there never seemed to be time to find an omega for our own pack. Then Rafe was lost. After that, I started to understand that Flores didn't truly want our pack to have an omega," he continues, sounding more and more lost inside himself.
But he's said two things that I need clarification on, and I refuse to let them go. "What do you mean Rafe was lost?Ilost Rafe. Mypacklost him. And if Flores doesn't want an omega why am I here? Why keep me here if you don't want me?"
Lopez sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Rafe was my nephew, Miss Romero. He was never supposed to be at that house. I don't know why his mother sent him. I told her to keep him home that day. He probably wouldn't have listened, anyway."
No, he probably wouldn't have, but that doesn't excuse what happened. Before I can say that, though, Lopez begins talking again.
"Flores sent the team into the house to deal with the pack who lived there as they were potential competition. He didn't take into consideration that my nephew was a runner for them and might be there for whatever reason. His reaction to Rafe's death was the first thing that made me truly question him. And as for your being here, it was a stipulation of an ultimatum. I've had enough, you see. I got word that Flores's name is mostly clean, but mine has been sullied over the years. Then he informed me that an omega would do nothing but distract us from our goals and would be an unnecessary annoyance to him, and that he had no use for children in his pack, and I wanted out. I told him I was leaving our pack and he agreed to an omega to convince me to stay with him. He said he found the perfect one for us. And here you are."
"So," I take a breath to steady myself, "he doesn't want an omega? At all?"
