Before I could interrogate him, or whine until he took pity on me and shared the secret, Talia shoved between us, her arm still hooked around my dad's. With disheveled hair, jacket hanging to one side, and a lipstick stain on his cheek, he looked like he had survived a tornado.
"Mika, I want you to meet Jerry Edwards, Gabe's father."
"Mr. Edwards." Mika's voice was as smooth as velvet. "Wonderful to meet you. Gabe has told me so much about you." His smile didn't quite meet his eyes, but I couldn't blame him. Nothing I'd said about my dad had been encouraging.
"Mika," my dad said with a stiff nod. "You're a bit small to be an alpha, but I'll allow it."
Talia slipped her arm from my dad's and slid it through Mika's, grabbing his hand so he couldn't make the same gesture I was, with his arms raised to his sides.
"You'll allow what, exactly?" I asked.
"Mrs. Mears said you two are mates. It's news to me."
"We're … it's complicated," I said.
Talia tugged on Mika's arm, her frown deepening.
"We were going to talk more about it after the wedding," Mika said. "We're fated mates, but that doesn't have to mean … all this." He gestured to the ballroom, where the caterers had already begun to set up the buffet table.
"What are your intentions toward my son?" Dad asked.
I wanted to disappear into the concrete floor beneath the hallway's all-purpose carpeting. It was bad enough when my dad treated me like I was a child who needed to learn a lesson. When he acted like he fucking cared about me to strangers, the hypocrisy turned my stomach.
"I told you." Talia dragged Mika over to me and hooked his arm in my tattooed one before stepping back to admire her handiwork. "They're fated mates."
"What does that even mean?" he asked. "Sounds like a ridiculous fairy tale."
Talia shook her head. "My mate and I are fated." She pointed to a slim beta talking to Becca's dad, thank the gods. Keeping Becca's dad occupied and away from the free liquor was my reception duty. "It's even better than a fairy tale. It's real."
My dad looked like he was about to turn into Maleficent herself if someone didn't start talking sense. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be me. Mr. Mears had left Becca's dad wide open, and he was two steps closer to grabbing his first toast to his dead wife. "Gotta go!" I said, unhooking my arm from Mika's.
12
MIKA
"Where is that boy off to?"Gabe's dad, Jerry, asked no one in particular.
Gabe dashed between tables and then sprinted the last twenty feet to grab the man I recognized as Becca's dad only because the photographer kept calling him "B-Dad" throughout the photo shoot, while Bruce's parents were "Alpha Dad" and "Omega Dad." I'd wanted so badly to rename him Big Daddy, but this wasn't the time or the place.
"Today must be hard on Becca's dad," I said. "How long has it been since her mom passed away?"
"Seventeen years," Jerry said with more vehemence than I'd ever seen directed toward a dead woman. "Same amount of time I've been divorced."
That explained the fury, at least.
"Gabe mentioned your divorce," Mom said. "Where does his alpha dad live?"
Jerry squinted at Mom and sniffed, his nose wrinkling. It was rude as hell to sniff a shifter in public, especially a female, but this human didn't know our ways. "It's not polite to assume one's designation," he said.
"You impolitely assumed my son was a beta, then. Besides, I can smell the omega on you."
He opened his mouth to argue, but Mom latched onto his arm and pulled him a few feet farther away from the rattle of dinnerware in the reception hall.
"You're an alpha," he muttered.
She wasn't, not by designation, but she was the matriarch of our family. "I'd be your alpha in the old country," she said. "Unmarried omegas related to my son-in-law would fall under my family responsibilities. I'd give you a room in our shared family housing and be done with it."
That got his attention. He stared up at her with eyes as big as saucers.
