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Well, it looks like sooner is here.
The pack wants Sawyer. And Brinlee. They’ve made up their minds—and why wouldn’t they? Both Sawyer and Brinlee are fucking great. Sweet, beautiful, and in need of protection and help.
Not me. I’m the hillbilly alpha who isn’t needed and doesn’t need any help, either. Besides, we already have an alpha. I’m the superfluous one.
See? I know a couple of long words, too.
Whole fat load of good it does me.
Point is, they didn’t ask me. Didn’t sit down to discuss with me what they want, what they’d prefer. That’s a clue, right there.
It’s messing me up.
“Hi,” Roman tells a guy who’s wiping down the tables by the dance floor. “We’re looking for Brinlee. I mean, Baby Doll.”
I take in the stage with the pole in the middle. There are two connected raised platforms, in fact, both with poles, tables set around them. We don’t have pole dancing at the Alpha Bet, though we have cages for dancers for special evenings.
“In the dressing room.” The man gestures somewhere behind him, at the back of the club. “She isn’t to be disturbed, though. Club rules. You only see her during her work hours, unless you arrange something else with the boss.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” It’s Sawyer, bristling as he takes a step to get into the man’s face. “The boss can arrange for her to see clients outside work hours? What for?”
“Sawyer, man…” Roman grabs his arm, hauls him back. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
Right. It’s not the cleaner’s fault, what the boss does with his employees. A sour taste coats my tongue. I want to punch something.
I swear, I’m bristling, too, and it confuses the fuck out of me, because I haven’t agreed I want Brinlee in the pack, right? I’ve just established as much. Or Sawyer.
Then again, I also forgot that it’s not up to me, so… I shut my mouth and start toward the back of the club. “Let’s get this over with.”
“What do you mean?” Archer matches my strides.
“You tell me,” I grunt, furious at the inner workings of my mind, the fear I feel. Not sure what that means, either. Confront her? Demand answers? Will she decide to give them to us? And then what? “What is the fucking plan?”
“I guess we won’t know until we face her,” he says.
“Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. No wonder you’re the top alpha.”
But he chuckles and throws a heavy arm over my shoulders, muttering something about me being an asshole, and my breath leaves me.
How can I live without them? For the first time in my life, I have a family, or I thought I did, and it was so easy to smash my walls and let them inside.
Now I have no fortress left. Now I have no hidey-hole, no tower, no weapons. Now… What the hell will I do now?
We reach the door and I raise my fist to knock, but Sawyer beats me to it, getting in front of us and hitting his open palm on the door.
“Brinlee? Are you in there? It’s me, Sawyer.”
Roman joins us, propping his shoulder against the wall, frowning. I wonder what’s going on inside his pretty head. Roman is a wild card. I know he cares for us—or for Archer, anyway—and he pulls us along to try new positions in sex, new bars he discovers, new dishes, new activities. He’s so full of energy and light.
But he also has a darker side I glimpse sometimes, as if he can see through a dark lens; see things I don’t.
“Brinlee!” Sawyer thumps his palm against the door, then presses his forehead to it. “Please.”
He’s careful. Cautious. I’d have turned the handle and entered already. Then again, as we all know, I’m a brutal alpha who doesn’t know how to be around people.
He’s showing her respect, when I would have blundered inside to demand answers.
As if she’s mine.
