"It's not him." Bruce turned toward me so I could watch the emotions play across his expressive face. "It's me, or alphas like me. Gabe's dad thinks I'm the prime example of what an alpha should be, and nothing I say dissuades him."
Bruce was taller than me and outweighed me by at least seventy-five pounds, if not a hundred or more. He was soft-spoken and gentle, but he also knew how to end a bar fight.
"He's human, and Gabe's alpha father was human from what I can tell, but his dad's beliefs about alphas rival the strictest wolf packs." Bruce rested his head in his hands. "I wanted you to know what you're getting into. Remember what happened to Steve?"
Poor Steve, alpha hamster shifter, had been rejected by his fated mate because he was half-a-foot shorter than she was. Gabe wasn't that shallow, was he? Would he reject me for not being alpha enough?
"Congratulations on finding him, at least. Knowing is half the battle." Bruce raised his mug, and I clinked my glass against it. Then, he drained the rest of his beer. "Enough about Gabe and his family. Buy me another drink. I'm getting married in less than a week!"
I obliged and listened to him vent his fears about married life. Thankfully, he strayed far from Gabe, or even Becca, to the same universal fears I had. "What if I'm not ready to start a family?" He asked.
"You know what Mom would say."
He chuckled. "Yeah. Start one anyway."
I clinked my glass against his mug again and we both drank. "Your dads would say the same thing," I reminded him. "You don't have to do it alone. You have a pack."
He sighed. "I know that, and Becca knows that, but her dad, and Gabe's dad …" he trailed off. "I'm not marrying her family."
We drank to that.
9
GABE
After Mika rearrangedmy apartment and helped me build the new storage units, I didn't see him for a week. I still smelled him everywhere in my apartment, especially on my couch, where he'd watched a few more episodes of the meerkat show while I sorted my books.
Every time I caught another whiff of him, it took me back to Saturday. Once my books sat in neat piles in front of the bookcases, I put my alpha to work, arranging stacks on the highest shelves, where I couldn't reach. While I was supposed to be loading the rest of the shelves with books and assorted knickknacks, I couldn't stop staring at Mika's sleek muscles and effortless strength. He hefted my books into place, arranged them by category, and decorated the open shelf-fronts with the knickknacks strewn across the floor.
Stolen glances of his tight abdomen, exposed each time he raised his arms over his head, kept me going through my workweek. Thoughts of our bodies pressed together in the storage unit, tongues fighting for dominance, filled my nights.
Unlike the shallow omega my dad wanted me to be, my thoughts didn't end there. I wanted to know everything about him. How did he take his coffee in the morning? Which of mybooks was he most likely to read? Had he always wanted to build energy plants, or did he have a dream career? I'd already told him about my dream of having a gallery and an online shop one day, but he'd changed the subject before I could ask about him.
It wasn't that we didn't communicate. Mika had called me Sunday night to recount family dinner, followed by his strange conversation with Bruce. My bestie's fiancé and I weren't close, but I was pleased to hear he didn't outright reject our mating.
On Monday morning, I texted Mika a punny meme the moment I woke up, and we messaged each other images and short videos throughout the day, intermingled with status updates.
"I'm stuck on a murder trial,"I texted him on my lunch break."I'm already tired of these lawyer's faces."
"Any hot witnesses?"
"No."I tacked a crying face emoji on it instead of a period. He sent back a laughing emoji, which led to an all-out emoji war. When I got bored, I sent him another meme, and he responded in kind. Occasionally, he would drop in a random action text, such as,"Going to the store after work,"or,"Making dinner,"so I didn't worry when he went quiet for an hour at a time.
Not that I was hovering over my phone, waiting for his next text every moment. I still had work, on top of soothing Becca's nerves every few minutes. I went along on her last-minute shopping trips and stayed up for her late-night cryfests without complaint.
Still, she noticed I wasn't as attentive as usual. "It's him, isn't it?"
"Hmm?" I asked, looking up from my phone. I was supposed to be filling glass vases with the milky white, pink, and clear glass pebbles to make centerpieces for the reception's banquet tables, but Mika's string of random gifs had me holding in laughter instead.
"Mika. You care more about Bruce's friends than me now." Though her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying on and off over the last few hours, no fresh tears aided her pout.
"We're fated." It was the first time I said the words aloud.
"I know. Bruce told me."
She spit his name, and guilt flared in my gut. She should have heard it from me first.
"I didn't want to add to your stress!" I focused on counting the flat glass discs again. Twenty clear. Fifteen white. Fifteen pink.
