I feel instantly sick and have to rest my head against the headrest and stare up at the sky to get enough fresh air in. God, I feel so stupid and small hearing the incredulous disbelief in his voice, because nothing he has said is wrong—scent matching with your compatible partner should come before everything else, but it didn’t. I swipe away the tear that threatens to roll down my cheek. But then I nearly get thrown through the front windscreen as Kairo turns us down a side street and slams the brakes.
“Heidi?” he asks, almost barking his question. Although the difference between him barking and another Alpha is worlds apart in terms of how I feel.
Shaking my head to stop the well up of old emotions, I come so close to climbing out of his car and running the rest of the way home.
Kairo shifts in his seat and stares at me. I can feel his eyes on me while I keep staring at the sky wishing we didn’t have to do this. “Heidi, have you met someone else who was your scent match?” This time he is gentler in his insistence; I feel his sadness wrapping around me.
“Yeah.”
And it is on my tongue to tell him some of it or maybe all of it because I feel so comfortable with him, but another car slams to a stop in the alley behind us. And this time it feels easier to go home and hide instead of explaining the past to Kairo.
My phone rings and Douglas’s name lights up the screen. He gives me a good reason to take the easy road out. “Kairo, I need to take this. It’s my lawyer about the emergency Board Meeting.”
“Okay.” He nods. I see in his eyes he knows I’m running. But that’s all I’ve got right now. Too many obstacles are being thrown in our path, well that’s how it feels anyway. “Can I call you later?”
“Yeah,” I say, leaning over to kiss him again.
I’m not sure if it’s in thanks, or if I’m kissing him goodbye. And that makes me fucking angry all over again.
Climbing out of his Wrangler, I grab my dress and shoes and walk off to the waiting car.
“All okay?” Bradley asks.
I look at him. Glare at him actually, and if I wasn’t so keen to get home and end this night, I think I’d punch him in the face. “Absolutely peachy, Bradley.”
Slamming the door shut behind me, I take a seat in the middle of the leather bench seat, answering my ringing phone. “Douglas, I’ll call you back,” I offer before smiling ugly at Ayden. He doesn’t move and instead of pushing for answers, I flick my eyebrows up and look him up and down slowly, being purposely bitchy, but my mood doesn’t impact him. I lock down my shock at how smugly he stares back at me, looking and acting like he has all the rights in the world to sit in the back of my car, his smile is wide enough I see his teeth. And then he laughs, and it’s malicious.
“Have you seen yourself, Heidi? You are wearing a waiter’s clothes in public.” He scoffs, and it’s an ugly noise. He leans forward and tells me what he really thinks. “That is exactly why you have handlers. You continually make poor decisions; and then you push ungratefully against everyone helping. Who in their right mind would let someone who looks and acts the way you do, make even a single decision regarding Verdune?”
“Excuse me?” I sass back.
His eyes glare viciously while his condescending attitude makes his temper and scent bitter. He lets out another short, derisive laugh before he continues his attack. “What a fucking joke; I thought you were smarter than this. I thought you’d be more considerate of your legacy instead of chasing unknown Alphas too. Surely you’ve put together how you look and act is directly attributed to the way the Board treat you. Perhaps if you acted more …” He leans forward, and goes to say something cutting, you can see it in his eyes.
I’m completely dumb founded by his brutality. It’s unprovoked, though this BS between him and me has been brewing since he blindsided me. Ayden has always refused to speak a word about what happened between us, except it seems when other Alphas are around. I interrupt him. “For a long time, I wanted answers from you, Ayden. Why you’d do what you did…”
He talks over the top of me. “You’ve got no right to understand my motivations or pull apart my reasoning.” And then he talks slowly, enunciating each word like a slap in the face, purposely using his Alpha bark to belittle me further. “I owe you nothing.”
I shake past his dominance pressing down on me. It takes a moment, but I manage it. “You were my scent-matched Alpha, Ayden. You do owe me something because I gave you a piece of me I can never get back,” I say, taking a few steadying breaths to keep my emotions calm. There’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of rising to his baiting or puddling into submission.
His anger is multifaceted, but I’m not scared of him and it’s that reminder that has me dragging my eyes to his again. A show of my strength.
He smiles like a crocodile the second I look at him. “I owe you nothing,” he snarls again. “What fucking world do you live in, where you think scent-matches matter?”
“The same one you do,” I argue back.
“Bullshit. You’re a spoiled brat who believes in fairytales over family duty. Newsflash, not everyone has a trust fund to fall back on. Regardless, being scent matched does not mean anything if one side chooses to ignore it, does it now?”
Ayden is not making sense. His arguments are weak like water, fuelled by his surging Alpha emotions. I’ve got no doubt the Board shares a similar view on me, but it doesn’t change a thing, despite what Ayden thinks. Verdune is and always will be mine.
“Anything else?” I ask once he stops his tirade and sinks back into his seat, looking smug as fuck.
He flicks his eyebrows up. “You are a job, always have been, always will be.”
I shrug before pretty much schooling him. “The average person switches careers three to seven times, Ayden. Instead of being tied to a profession, ‘doing your job’ for people you clearly loathe, perhaps you should expand your horizons and chase some happiness.”
“Do you really think I would take on board anything you say?”
“Nope,” I answer. I wait for something else to pop out of his mouth but there’s nothing. “Anything else?”
