When he doesn’t say a word, when he doesn’t respond at all, I gather up my courage and venture deeper into his room, stopping only when I stand before him with my arms folded over my chest and my hip cocked. My intention is to be stern with ano-nonsense expression, but the moment I see how unfocused Mason’s eyes are, I wonder if he heard what I said at all.
Even after a minute passes, he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at anything. He just sits there and stares off into space while gazing at the floor. It’s a weird thing to witness, and I don’t know what to make of it.
“Uh, hello? Are you in there?” Again, the alpha doesn’t respond, so I uncross my arms and snap my fingers before his face.
Finally, that brings him to the present, and he lifts his head somewhat, his hazel stare lifting to meet mine. “What? What the fuck are you doing here?” His voice is low, the words whispered out, and yet he still doesn’t quite sound like himself. Not like the take-charge über he was hours ago, and definitely not like the mean alpha he’d been on the couch.
I’m actually caught off-guard by his reply, so it takes me a moment to say, “I came here to… to yell at you for how you acted earlier.”
For a second I believe he’s going to try to argue with me, to take on that dominant tone again and call me omega, but he doesn’t. All he does is sharply look away and mutter, “If it’ll get your ass out of here, fine. Yell all you fucking want.”
I want to. I want nothing more than to dig into him right now, but… crap. I can’t. Not when something’s clearly wrong with him.
“Well, now I can’t,” I huff. “You took all the fun out of it.”
That gets him to stare at me again. “And how did I do that?”
“You’re… being weird.” It’s all I can say. I don’t know him well enough to explain this mood or how vacant he looked mere moments ago, but I trust my gut on most occasions, and something is definitely bothering him.
Mason scoffs, though it’s half-hearted. “You don’t know me,” he echoes my previous thoughts. “Just say what you want andleave me alone.” All I do is stare back at him, which causes him to add, “Look, I didn’t come to this cabin to be worried about losing an omega in the fucking forest, and I didn’t come here to hang out with my brother, either. I came to be alone, and you and Asher are fucking ruining it.”
“How are we ruining it?”
“Do you want an honest answer to that question?”
“Sure, hit me with it.” I take on an attitude, unable to swallow it down. Whether or not that attitude will eventually turn around and bite me in the ass, I don’t know yet.
“Asher’s my brother. When he asks for help, I can’t say no. And you… you’re important to him, for whatever reason. You’re an unmatched omega coming up to her first heat. You’re trouble with a capital-T, and my brother’s too blind to see it. You’re not only ruining this for me, but you’re going to ruin things for him, too.”
Okay, I understand this jerk wanted to be alone, but not being alone for a little while isn’t that big of a deal, especially in a house this big. And as for his brother… “How am I going to ruin things for Asher?”
The look he gives me then is sharp enough to cut through bone. “Do you really think he’ll be able to stay away from you when you’re begging for a fucking knot?” His crass language would make me blush if I wasn’t so annoyed with him.
“I’m not asking him to sit outside the door and listen to me when I’m in heat.”
“Doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t beg for it, he’ll want to give it to you.”
I still don’t quite know how that would ruin things for Asher, but as I let Mason’s words sink in, I realize that, while this one is the definition of a moody kind of furious, he’s really only concerned about his brother’s future.
“Listen, if you think this is some ploy to nail your brother down, it’s not,” I tell him, meaning it wholeheartedly. “I don’t have friends. I don’t have people I can talk to or trust. Asher was… he was the only person I could think of to ask, even though we haven’t spoken in years. I didn’t do this to hurt anyone or ruin anyone’s future plans. I’m doing this for me and me alone.”
His hazel stare drops to the floor again, his jaw tensing even though he doesn’t say a word. He keeps his gaze averted as he mumbles, “Sure. Whatever you say.” A switch must’ve been flipped inside of him, because suddenly he doesn’t sound so pissed off.
No, actually, he kind of sounds sad.
I don’t know what makes me say it, but the words are out of me before I can think better of them: “Are you okay?” Truly, I shouldn’t care. He’s a jerk, an asshole through and through. He’s prickly around the edges, but underneath that hard outer shell, something else is there, something he probably doesn’t want anyone else to see.
My question causes him to snap his gaze back up to me as a disgusted expression tugs at his handsome features. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what it sounds like.” I shrug. “I’m asking if you’re okay. You seem—”
“You don’t fucking know me, so you don’t know how I seem.” With how aggravated he is when he says it, I can tell I’ll get nothing more out of him. He’s shutting down, he doesn’t want to talk to me any longer.
That’s fine. I can’t make him open up to me. Like he said, I don’t know him. He’s a stranger to me.
Still, stranger or not, he’s Asher’s older brother, and because of that, I feel as if I know him. I feel as if I’ve talked to him before. I haven’t, but that peculiar familiarity is there, and now that strange feeling is accompanied by concern.
Is he okay? I don’t know, and I can’t make him tell me.
