“Should we talk about this morning?” Her words threw a bucket of ice-water over the warm fuzzies I was just beginning to get. I knew, of course, we’d have to address the events of this morning at some point. But I figured that I could at least wait until we’d eaten. I was very quickly realizing that Eloise was someone who liked to cut to the chase of things as quickly as possible. It reminded me a bit of Leon—though I’m sure both of them would hate to be compared to one another.
“Yeah, we should.” I finally responded with a sigh and took a sip of my beer for courage. “Look, I’m sorry that we pried into your personal life. We had agreed that we wouldn’t do that before you came but Owen is overly curious at all times.”
“Does he do that with everyone he meets?” Eloise looked more curious than angry at this point and I counted that as a win.
“Unfortunately. Within two weeks of knowing him he somehow unearthed a video of Leon and I doing some embarrassing ass keg stands in college. Played it on the big screen in the office much to our displeasure. We got the nickname “Keg Bosses” in the office and it still comes up from time to time.” I could laugh now about it but Leon had nearly blown a gasket at Owen who’d just been an IT specialist at the time. It was only because the beta had a cute smile and an infectious laugh that he hadn’t been promptly fired. He was lucky that he was damn cute.
Eloise gave a quiet little giggle and it took everything in me not to physically fist pump the air in victory at making the walled-off omega laugh.
“But on a more serious note,” I continued, “If I ever run into that alpha who cornered you I’ll kick the shit out of him.” Eloise’s small smile disappeared.
“I can fend for myself Eric.” Shit. I don’t know where I’d fucked up in the last ten seconds but I needed to back-pedal. I’d never been so off-balanced around someone before, usually I could charm the pants off of anyone I met. It was sort of my superpower but it looked like Eloise might be my kryptonite. Stupid pun intended.
“Uhhh… well… Why don’t we shit-kick himtogether? I hear it’s a great bonding experience.” I held my hands up hoping to appear as non-confrontational as I could and was rewarded when her lips twisted into a smile again.
“Sounds like a plan. Not that I think we would ever see him again while I’m living in your pack’s house.” The omega gave a little shrug of her shoulder. The conversation lulled as the waitress brought our food back for us and we dug in. Eloise seemed to enjoy every bite of her food and I kept getting stuck watching her, my fork halfway to my mouth as she enjoyed her spicy curry.
In fact, I was so entranced in watching her that I didn’t realize that she had noticed it.
Eloise cleared her throat and I blinked, my cheeks warming a bit at being caught, “Soo… Ric. How’d you come to be in Pack Russo anyways? Everyone but you and Owen seem to be super intense. It doesn’t really seem like your speed.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that, “Leon, Dom and Gage are practically puppies compared to how I grew up. But that’s a whole other story that I’m sure you don’t want to listen to.” I sure as hell didn’t want to get into the disaster that was the Zhao family.
Eloise just fixed her brown eyes on me and said: “Tell me.”
Shit. I guess I should just be happy that she was asking me anything about myself. I was quickly realizing that I would bare my soul to the little omega sitting in front of me if she requested it. That was a scary thought that I’d unpack later. Instead I just sucked in a deep breath and dived into my story.
“Okay, well. I am the second youngest in my family. I have four older brothers and a little sister.”
“Big family.”
“Yeah but you wouldn’t know it looking at us. We’re hardly ever together in one room. My father runs Zhao Industries and my brothers work with him.” My earliest memories had been of the sterile waiting room as I sat quietly next to my mother who was waiting to visit my father at work to discuss some charity or another.
“The first thing you should probably know when I talk about my family is this: The Zhao family is very old and very stuck up. For generations we’ve been the most consistent in producing what my father calls ‘superior’ alpha and omega families.” I couldn’t help but let the disgust filter into my voice at this.
“I grew up being told that I was going to be an alpha—that it was a given—and that I would join my father’s company and continue on the Zhao name. You see the Zhao’s don’t really do ‘packs’. My father has business partners who he would consider his pack mates but it’s not the same—he’d never share my mother with them. It’s not how we do things even though most modern alpha-omega pairs are pack based.”
Eloise nodded as if understanding, “My parents were both betas who were more interested in drinking than paying attention to what I was doing. Sometimes I wished that I had been raised in a pack instead.” She gave a little shrug as if it were no big deal that she was sharing with me but I was nearly giddy. It made me so happy in fact that I continued on telling her about my disaster of a family.
“My little sister is twelve years younger than me, Madeline, she was born the year I presented as an alpha. She was the tiniest little baby and actually spent the first six weeks of her life in the NICU. I spent the most time in the NICU with her—my mother was ashamed of giving birth to such a weak baby and my father couldn’t be bothered. So it was me and Madeline against the world from that point on and I stopped drinking the kool-aid that my family had been feeding me since I was born. I began to notice just how empty our lives were outside of us. I was twenty-five and just beginning to work at Russo Enterprises, against my father’s wishes of course, when Madeline presented as a beta and my father kicked her out of the house.”
Eloise gave a little gasp but my attention was off of her now and I was fully in my memories of that day.
I’d gotten a panicked phone call from a payphone at work. The only person who had my extension and could call me directly without needing to call my secretary was Madeline and as soon as I answered the phone I knew something was wrong.
“She was only thirteen years old at the time so Leon, Gage and I took her in. We were just getting started as a pack at this point but they didn’t hesitate to step in and help out with Madeline.” We raised my sister until she was eighteen and moved away to college—I knew Leon still considered Madeline a child and still doted on her even though she was twenty-two and working a professional job already. She was the one soft spot in our pack and I was grateful that my packmates had stepped up to help us in such a huge way.
“That isawful,who does that to their own child?” Eloise shook her head in disbelief and I almost added that she probably could relate to Madeline but I kept my mouth shut. That could come later.
“My parents. They call to bug me every now and again but I am pretty low contact with them. Madeline is all grown up now and doesn’t mention them at all—she’s great and you’ll probably like her a lot.”
“I really hate all of these alpha and omega politics.” Eloise said stubbornly, her freckled nose scrunching adorably as she stared down at her empty plate, “I almost never had to deal with it where I grew up—we had a handful of adult alphas in the town and only one omega who I only interacted with once after perfuming.”
“It’s definitely messy, I’ll give you that. But it’s also nice to have a group of people to rely on to catch you when you need it.” I shrugged, I was aware that the alpha/beta/omega designation caused a lot of drama in society. Oftentimes betas were thrown to the wayside when it came to business dealings involving alphas and while that was slowly changing we still had a lot of work to do.
“But enough about my family. Quite frankly it’s enough to give a guy indigestion. Tell me some more about you.”
Over the next hour, through a delicious chocolate cake dessert and a cup of coffee, I learned as much as I could about Eloise Taylor. Most of it was pretty surface level. Her favorite color was green, she loved spicy food, she danced everyday when she could, she loved sad romance ballads which surprised me since she put up such a tough front.
