“Kit,” he said, as he shut the front door. “My office, now.”
Chapter 22
“The fate of this family cannot lie in the hands of one omega,” Dad said, striding back and forth across the carpet behind his desk. Theo, Cressida, and I all stood on the other side.
“Of course, Father—” Theo started to say.
“What do you want us to do, realistically?” Cressida interjected through my brother’s speech, glaring at the two of them.
“Cressida, you’ve done your duty by securing Kent.”
“I haven’t ‘secured’ anyone,” she snapped back. “Listen to yourselves! Did I fall down some time vortex and land in a Regency novel? You are not a Victorian papa, Dad, and this sure as hell is not Pride and Prejudice! I’m sure James could make a fine Darcy if he’d had a mind to, but he seems to be far too sensible for that kind of bullshit.”
I remembered those precisely described words of James’ right before we left his place and wondered.
“You can’t control this, Dad, and you know it,” Cress continued. “Be polite, be welcoming, be supportive, but beyond that, I fail to see what can be done to ‘secure’ James Chadwick. Kit has already cleared her social calendar for him. If anything, she should be playing a little harder to get. Don’t you alphas love a hunt?”
“Is that what you’ve been doing with Kent?” Dad shot back in a voice full of polite venom. Oh fucking shit. “Perhaps you should try to be a little less hard to get, in case the man decides to break things off with you and find an omega who’d be eminently better suited to him.”
Cress’ gasp felt like a slap across my face. Her pain, her surprise, it hit me right in the gut, making my already fluttery stomach sour.
“You bastard…”
The words were barely breathed out, but Dad’s reaction was instantaneous. His pacing stopped when he slammed his hands down on the desk.
“Part of Kent’s family’s reluctance to allow him to make the connection permanent between you and him is the Greyson’s fortunes. If you think that his father and grandfather haven’t discussed the connection extensively, then you are hopelessly naïve and not the daughter I thought I’d raised. You are a beta, Cress
ida—”
Fuck, not this. Please, not this, I begged silently.
“You are practical, reliable, and sensible, something we desperately need in this family, and thankfully, you are beautiful enough to turn even an alpha’s head. You have a role here, but arguing with me on a matter of such importance is not it. You are excused to go and spend time with your fiancé.”
“He’s at work,” she ground out. “As I was supposed to be when you called this ‘emergency meeting.’ I left in the middle of a very important conference call because I thought Mum had taken a turn for the worse or something.”
“I apologise. It was an oversight on my part. Return to work with my blessing.”
Cress turned on her heel, her expression mutinous as she faced the door, but Dad didn’t dismiss her yet.
“But make sure to call Kent on your way back to work. You should set up a lunch date, or better yet, surprise him with something nice at his office. Alphas do love to be pampered by their mates.”
“Sure,” she said, her jaw having to be forced open to let the word out, but before she stormed off, she shot me an apologetic look. Her hands were tied—she was just as helpless against Dad’s bullshit as I was. He waited until she was out the door, which clicked shut behind her before he began speaking again.
“So, the situation with Kit,” Dad said. “Theo, I want your ideas.”
It was hard to see the hollow-eyed man from Apothecary in my brother as he stood ramrod straight, facing my dad down, but he was there if you looked.
Dad looked rejuvenated by this. He was always happiest when he felt like he was master of his destiny and that the application of effort and influence would be sufficient to guarantee a positive outcome. That was what he was looking for now, where that effort and influence needed to be directed, because it couldn’t be at the Chadwicks.
They were unassailable in this town, exempt from the usual jostling between the elite families by their standing. That was probably why one of their favourite sons had been allowed to pursue a career in the visual arts. He wasn’t needed to shore up the Chadwicks’ empire. It ticked along very nicely without any input from him.
But Theo, he stared at the desk way too long, blinking slowly as he was forced to do something impossible, an experience I felt he was all too accustomed to.
“How did James seem on your date, Kit?” my brother asked, his voice quieter than the average alpha’s. He always asked when he could’ve barked.
“It went well, I thought,” I replied. “Well enough that he asked me out again tonight.”
“Well, we have to take that as a good sign, Father,” Theo said, daring to look at Dad.