“Soph…” I reached across to take her hand and she squeezed it back.
“Let’s just say that we’ve had some very serious conversations about what kinds of information I would keep from him if he and I were in the same situation.” She grabbed the bottle of wine and went to the kitchen, knowing where the opener and the glasses were. “It’s not the same, and he knows that deep down, but…” She poured the wine, took a sip of hers before bringing it over. “He’ll come around. He has to.” She sat down then and fixed me with her cool blue gaze, the one she used with new clients.
“What do you want out of this, Lily? You know it’s not going to be just Ben, right? Those boys, they were raised as a pack, ready to bring up any children they produced between them. To their minds, they’re all daddies.”
My fingers tightened as I remembered Logan’s explosive anger and Jasper’s questing gaze.
“I don’t have to worry about them, not yet,” I said. “I have to get through introducing her to Ben first.” I took a long mouthful of the wine, letting the sharp sweetness wash around on my palate before drinking. “Evie needs her father. Not in the way all kids need some kind of male influence in their life. She needsalphas. I thought I was finally onto something with that referral your mum gave us to Crowe Corp, and I was right. They are amazing. One of the alphas there told me about this smash room.”
“One of those places where people go nuts and trash things?” Sophie asked.
“Apparently one has been set up especially for alpha boys to go and unleash in. When I took Evie there today, the guy there seemed completely unfazed by her and she was about as deep in a meltdown as I’ve ever seen her.”
I blinked, looking up at Sophie and hating the way her expression softened, her thumb rubbing across my knuckles.
“Idid that to her.”
“Not on purpose. Not knowing this would happen,” she countered.
“I’ve been struggling for so long and people have asked about her father over and over. I always said no. But what if…?” My eyes went to my glass. “What if he was the answer all along?”
“There’s only one way to find that out, Lils. Let's talk about a parenting agreement and I’ll get my friend to draw up the paperwork. Taylor is staying with Ben for the interim. He can be the messenger boy.”
Chapter 12
We drank the rest of the wine and while I offered Sophie the spare bed, she shook her head and ordered an Uber. I was lightheaded and spacey, from the alcohol, from the trauma, from the feeling of just being overwhelmed, so I went to bed not long afterwards. But when I pulled my phone out, skimming through my socials for something to distract me, I saw thathe’dsent me a message.
Not Ben. If he had, I wouldn’t have slept at all. It was the other him. Reed, the green eyed alpha from Howlr. I tapped on the notification with a slight frown, feeling a rush of guilt, for even looking at it, competing with a real and visceral need to do just that.
I’d never had a serious relationship after Ben. I’d met beta men I’d connected with, and I’d feel a special spark right up until the point we fell into bed. Then it’d always be the same. No matter how ardent or skilled the guy was, my body wouldn’t play ball. It was like Ben had sexually imprinted upon me and I refused to respond to anything else.
So I’d turned to these alpha dating apps. It was tacitly agreed that people visited them to find hook-ups. Alphas and omegas, they seemed to find each other with ease once they were ready to settle down, but until that time… I’d hooked up with single alphas and packs, and while dinner and conversation were little more than a hurdle we both felt like we had to get out of the way, once the lights were off in the bedroom? That shadowy dark form, so big and muscular, one who would rasp my designation over and over as he plundered my body…
I’d even had a city-based pack offer to take me as their mate, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that each one of us would just be settling if I went through with it. The same guys found their omega a year or so later, confirming my suspicions.
Which just left me.
Hey, read the message, making me roll my eyes. What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
Hey, I typed back. Some alphas seemed to think their designation was all that was needed, and that we should just swoon at their feet, ready to be ravaged.
You’re beautiful, little beta.
His message popped up right as I was about to exit the app. Hmm… most girls wanted to be fed tacos and told they were pretty and he was halfway there, so I stayed where I was. He could either follow that up or—
I’d love to see you spread out naked on my bed, taking my cock like the good girl I know you are.
Abort, delete, GTFO, my mind shrieked. Praise kink had become this thing and alphas all too often like to throw around things like ‘good girl,’ thinking it was beta kryptonite.
Trouble is, it was.
My thumb trembled as it hovered over the screen, the sensible part of me wanting to delete and block this dude, pronto. He would’ve no doubt thought I was some kind of freak if I did so, but I’d long since moved past feeling like I needed to keep strangers on the internet happy. But right as I entertained those practical thoughts, something else slid in.
What had happened with Ben had remade me, recast me as exactly that. Not that I was a very good girl, not with getting pregnant at eighteen, but in some ways that made me hungrier for praise. Not in my real life. If some dude had wandered into my bookshop and commended me on my application of the Dewey decimal system, I would’ve junk punched him. No, instead it was that intimacy. Him and me, locked together in a way no other experience could replicate, him describing exactly what we were doing, lavishing me with raspily delivered, frantic little pulses of praise. He’d never sound more in command than when he was just about ready to lose it.
And don’t get me started when there was a whole pack involved.
My eyes sharpened, my breath coming faster, even though I was in my bedroom, all by myself. I searched the simple text for some sort of indication. Would he bring his pack? Would they all stand around, naked, stroking their cocks as they told me how good a girl I was, pleasing their brother…