I stood along with the others, still feeling a bit wobbly. That wobbly feeling increased as we all headed out of the conference room.
“Quincy, I need you,” Amelia said, snagging me before I could return to my office.
I followed her down the hall to the elevator that would take us to the main part of the hotel, definitely feeling like something was off.
“I’m really sorry about my lapse in the meeting,” I said as we reached the elevator and waited. “This last week has been?—”
“It’s okay,” Amelia said. “Really. You just went through heat, right?” she asked quietly.
I nodded. In some circles, it was considered taboo for omegas to talk about their heats, especially to non-omegas. Amelia was in her fifties and had a super motherly energy, though. I’d always been open with her about what was going on with me.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving the problem away as the elevator doors swished open. A few people got out, and the two of us stepped in and headed down. “You’re one of my best team members,” she said as the swoop of the elevator made my insides feel particularly wiggly. “I pride myself on seeing and hiring talent when it presents itself to me. You’ve never let your disability get in the way of your job performance.”
I grimaced. I hated calling the sever my disability. There were people in this world who dealt with far more than I did, and their challenges had come to them naturally. Mine had been inflicted on me, with my dubious consent, because I’d been young and dumb and thought I was in love.
“Anyhow,” Amelia said once the elevator doors slid open into The Grand’s huge lobby, “the board of the Tech Expo just handed me an enormous, last-minute change, and I need my best people handling it. We’re on our way to meet with the senator and our new keynote speaker.”
The way she said that was a gentle reminder of what she’d been talking about when I was zoning out. It wasn’t news, butshe was telling me like it was to save me the embarrassment of admitting I’d been stuck in my head during the meeting.
“Do we know why this senator has changed out the keynote speaker at the last minute?” I asked as we crossed the hub-like lobby and started down one of the side corridors toward the hotel’s biggest conference room. “Does a senator have the right to change the keynote speaker or should the board of the expo do that?”
A bunch of things hit me square between the eyes as soon as I asked those questions. Things that I would have picked up on immediately, if I hadn’t been having an emotional lapse.
Senator. As in Senator John Salisbury.
“The official line is that this scientific prodigy of his has invented some sort of app or program or something that’s going to revolutionize the way people do business,” Amelia said, not sounding at all impressed. “But if you ask me, I think there’s probably some behind the scenes wheeling and dealing going on. This new tech guy has made, like, a billion dollars or something in the last two years with his innovations company.”
I nearly tripped before we reached the open door of the conference room.
No. It couldn’t be. It would be absolutely, cosmically unfair.
But I could feel it. Or rather, I could feel him. I could feel the blunt, severed end of my bond sparking and prickling, like someone had plugged it into an electrical outlet. That’s why I’d had a quiet meltdown during the meeting. That’s why the swoopy feeling of racing down in an elevator hadn’t left me when we’d stepped out into the lobby.
I saw them both as soon as we stepped into the conference room. My gaze snapped straight to Chester, of course. He looked the same as ever. He was sort of handsome and had a typical, alpha build, even though I knew he didn’t do anything to maintain his physique, but he was a total dork. He still dressedlike his papa set out his clothes for him in the morning, even though I knew he lived alone in some million-dollar penthouse apartment somewhere in the city. He still had the same unattractive buzz haircut, too.
He was a complete contrast to the man who stood next to him near the podium at the front of the room. Senator John Salisbury was dressed impeccably in a designer suit. His silver hair was combed back slickly, and he wore the same severe expression that he’d had while threatening me and Jack at Kincade Slopes.
I was just as terrified of Salisbury now as I’d been then, but the absolute mind-fuck of having the alpha I was once bonded with, who part of me still had a repulsive sense of, was too much.
“Gentlemen, good morning,” Amelia said, no idea that anything was wrong as she stepped ahead of me and approached the two with an outstretched hand. “Welcome to The Grand Hotel.”
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be in the same room with Chester. It made me physically sick. It made the stump of our bond feel like it was on fire. I needed Jack. I needed him desperately. But even the suggestion that I had any right to have even a shred of feelings for Jack made me feel like someone was running a cheese grater through my insides. It was wrong. It was the only right thing in my life, but it was so wrong.
On top of all that, the second Salisbury saw me, he froze. Chester froze, too, his eyes going wide, but it was Salisbury’s rigid stare that made it feel like I was slogging through an acid swamp to stay close to Amelia’s side as we walked over and stood with the two alphas.
The room was dead silent. For far longer than anyone was comfortable with, we all just stood there, staring at each other. Salisbury didn’t just glare at me, he looked deeply wary. Which made sense, I guess? I knew where he’d been two weekendsbefore. I knew what he’d been doing. Voters might not like it if word got out that the senator was a member of the Dark Fantasies Club and liked to role play purchasing omegas to fuck.
Chester’s silence was pure surprise. Because of that, he was the first to speak. “Wow. Quincy! Is it really you?”
I nodded and had to hum a bit before I could speak over the knot in my throat. “Chester,” I croaked.
Salisbury jerked to stare at Chester, eyes wide at first, then narrowing. “You know this omega?” he demanded.
“Yeah,” Chester said, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. “We were…um, we knew each other as kids.”
My inner omega was devastated. With everything that had happened between us, Chester wasn’t even acknowledging we’d been more than acquaintances.
“Oh,” Amelia said, looking uneasily between us. “I didn’t realize you were all acquainted already.”
