As I sat down, I took in the massive man, his bulk and aura dwarfing even Logan’s as he fixed me with his gaze.
Dick had blue eyes like Ben’s and a shock of blond hair. The similarity between the two of them was eerie and unsettling. I found myself looking between Ben and him, unable to stop comparing the two of them. Dick just smirked at that, like the smug bastard he was.
“So we’re here to discuss a family matter,” the mediator, a woman who was independent of the whole process, said to the lot of us.
“Sorry…” We all turned around to see Grace had appeared. “I was running late. Still finding my way around the city,” she said.
“Of course,” the mediator said. “Take a seat.”
And as she did, much to Dick’s chagrin, she sat down beside Damon who put his arm around his mother’s shoulders.
“Gracie…” Dick started to growl.
“Don’t.”,
The thing we tend to forget is that omegas rule a town with their pack, and I think Dick had forgotten that too. He stiffened as she put up a hand and then dismissed the conversation.
“To get started,” the mediator said, “I would like each side to state what they want from this session. When someone is talking, everyone else listens. If you can’t abide by the rules, you can be removed from the room. You’ll get a chance to have your say, but you do need to wait for your turn. Is everyone able to agree to those rules?”
Up and down the table people nodded and assented, but I just stared at this alterna-Ben, this man who was trying to take everything we were working so hard to build. I nodded belatedly and then deliberately shifted my focus to the mediator.
“Now, Richard, perhaps you’d like to start things off. Please ensure that your response details what you’re after today,” she said.
He settled his massive forearms on the desk, surveying the lot of us in the way I assumed a drill sergeant would a new group of recruits.
“I want my family back home, where Morrisons have lived for the past two hundred years. My sons need to come back to the farm and shoulder the responsibilities they seem to think they can just skip out on. My mate needs to return to the home we built together. The only thing that seems to be in the way of all of that is this child. Everly, is it?”
He didn’t even know Evie, hadn’t bothered to find out anything about her, unlike his mate.
“Everly comes home with us and grows up as a Morrison should.” His eyes finally came to rest on me, but any resemblance to Ben was well and truly extinguished then. They were a cold blue, like lasers slicing straight into me. Sophie’s hand shot out under the table and grabbed mine, our fingers linking together in a death grip. “And if they’re sure this… beta is their mate, then the boys can bring her too. She’s small enough that we can pass her off as an omega. Once she’s had a proper set of cubs, you lot can take over the running of Campbelltown.”
That’s when I saw a moment of weakness in the man. He pushed himself back in his chair, slumping against the back, a sigh escaping him.
“Once you’re the ruling pack, it's up to you how you run it. I’ll be done, and Gracie and me…” Dick looked across the table at his mate with real fondness, but she just stared, pale and wide eyed. “We can finally step down, go off and do some of the fun things she’s been wanting to do for so long.”
“OK,” the mediator said, though did I note a slight widening of her eyes? “Now Lily will say her piece.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” I said, my voice wavering, but the tight grip of Sophie’s hand, the sidelong look we shared, they helped me take a breath and start again. “Evie’s home, her family is here. Her school—”
“A school she—” Dick started to bluster.
“Dick, we just went through the rules,” the mediator said, and the big alpha’s jaw clenched hard at her tone. “This is Lily’s turn to speak.”
“Her friends, the therapies she needs,” I charged on, my words coming out faster and faster, as if I had to insert them quickly before they were overruled. “Everything my child needs to be happy and healthy is here. What the hell is there for her in some town she doesn’t even know?” I stared at him then, exultant I could ask a rhetorical question and Dick couldn’t respond. “And as for me pretending to be an omega? I’ll rot in hell before I do that. I have a lot of respect for actual omegas.” I looked down the table to where Grace sat. “I’m starting to get an insight into what they have to put up with. But good, bad or otherwise, I’m a beta.”
I took in a little breath then. Like most betas, I didn’t think too much about my designation. There were so many of us that what we were didn’t matter so much as what we could do and, right now, I was damn proud of everything I’d managed to achieve.
“I’m a beta and I’ll never be anything other than that, something I refuse to apologise for.” I looked around the room then, my statement somehow becoming a speech for everyone here, even the strangers. “I’m a beta, my daughter is an alpha and I’m mated to an alpha pack.”
The guys’ eyes were trained entirely on me and, in that moment, nothing could’ve knocked me down. I walked in here feeling terrified, barely having slept the night before, but right now, for some reason I felt it was going to be OK. Dick’s sunburnt and windblown face grew even redder the longer I stared, his eyes bright molten silver.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Dick, and neither is my daughter.”
“Right, well, now—” the mediator began to say.
“Sorry, would it be OK for me to speak for a second,” Ben said.
“Of course,” the mediator said, gesturing for him to take his turn.