Page 45

REMI

My thoughts are all over the place as I clean up a couple’s coffee cups and trash. It’s been three days since that disaster of a dinner, and I still can’t get their words out of my head. They’re on constant repeat.

Charlene hasn’t been able to get me out of the funk I’m in today, either. No matter what she’s tried to do, I can’t seem to keep a smile on my face. Instead, I’m sulking. Badly. It feels like all of my fears are rising to the surface, and I’m never going to be good enough for anyone.

“Hey, Remi, I need your help with something,” Al, the owner of Sip-A-Brew, calls out from the back.

Sighing, I leave the trash where it is and make my way toward the back.

I step through the kitchen door and slip my way through toward the back office.

The moment I step inside Al’s office, I know I’m not going to like what he has to say.

He has that aura around him, like he’s a person that enjoys killing puppies and making shit pie.

“Yes?” I ask.

“Close the door, please.” A sense of foreboding hovers over my head as I do what he instructs.

As soon as the door closes, my hackle rises when he gets up from his chair and rounds his desk. For the past few months, Al has been acting weirder than usual. His eyes follow me wherever I go, especially as of late. I can’t even remember how many times I have caught him staring at me.

When I started at Sip-A-Brew, Al was the type of boss everyone loved and adored.

Yet, within the last year, he’s slowly regressed to what he is today.

He stares at anything and everything. He’s no longer the jovial man he used to be.

Now, he’s a creep with eyes that don’t stay in his head, and hands that clench by his sides as if he’s fighting to stop from reaching out and touching something he shouldn’t.

I try to stay out of his way so that his attention doesn’t come my way. More times than not, it doesn’t work that way. He always seems to be everywhere without being anywhere all at the same time.

Several times over the past few months, I’ve had to slip out of the building when my shift is over, especially if he’s here.

He always wants to pull me into his office for some reason or another, and I always make up the excuse that I need to be somewhere.

I don’t have that luxury today. He caught me when I still have three more hours left of my shift.

Al’s presence fills the cramped office with a kind of gruff authority, the kind that comes from years of owning the place and knowing every inch of it is his domain.

He’s built like an old bulldog—broad and round in the middle, shoulders rolling beneath the faded polo shirt stretched across his chest. His hairline has long since retreated, leaving just a wispy suggestion of once-dark strands circling the top of his head.

Thick glasses, their lenses perpetually smudged and frames slick with the grime of a thousand rushed shifts, slide down his nose as he looks up at me.

When he speaks, his words are punctuated by a flash of teeth the color of old parchment, stained by decades of coffee and cigarettes.

Even before he opens his mouth, you know Al is someone used to being listened to—and someone you really don’t want to cross. It’s hard to describe, but he has this way about him that makes me believe that what he wants, he gets, even if he has to do something dirty to get it.

“So,” he says, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I noticed you were speaking to Knox Hastings the other day when you were enjoying that little club thing you all do every week.”

“Yes, that was him and his pack,” I answer, wondering where this is going.

Al’s gaze lingers, slow and deliberate, raking over me from head to toe.

The corners of his mouth curl upward in a greasy, suggestive smile that makes my skin prickle.

It’s a look that holds too long, heavy and uninvited, the kind of smile that seems to coat the small office in an uncomfortable humidity.

His eyes, magnified behind his smeared glasses, glint with a sly, knowing intent that sets my nerves even further on edge.

“I know what they were doing here, but I want to hear it from your lips,” he says.

I swallow hard. “Well, sir, they’re my scent match mates. They were just wanting to talk to me.” Lies.

His grin widens, so much so I can’t stop the shiver of revulsion from dancing through me.

“Oh, really.”

I nod, the motion small and mechanical, my throat tight beneath his expectant gaze.

Unable to stop myself, I instinctively retreat, the backs of my shoulders pressing up against the rattling veneer of the office door just as Al takes a step forward, closing the distance with a slow, predatory intent.

The air between us feels thick—heavy with something unspoken—and my pulse thrums in my ears as I brace myself against the wood, wishing I could melt straight through it.

I swallow hard with nerves. “Y-Yes, sir.” Lies. Lies.

His eyes dart all over my neck and then back up. “I don’t see any marks. Must not be too special if they haven’t marked you yet.”

It’s not that I’m not special; it’s because I haven’t allowed them the pleasure.

Tripp got close that one night, but the other two haven’t had the opportunity.

Instead, I fight with them at every turn because I don’t want to be mated to someone who doesn’t get the real me and wants me just the way I am.

“We haven’t made it that far into our mating.” Lies. Lies. And more lies.

It’s only been nearly three weeks since I met the guys for the first time in Tesoro. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it hasn’t even been close to that.

The moment we met, I felt the connection snap into place.

I didn’t even have to look Knox in the eyes to know that.

The connection was a visceral part inside of me.

I wish it was the same for Knox. Maybe then we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now.

Perhaps then, he would realize that I am strong and capable of taking care of myself.

“Oh, I see,” he says, stepping up until his front nearly presses against mine.

I hold in the urge to vomit. His alpha pheromones do not agree with my omega nose. He smells stale, earthy, with a hint of sweaty musk added. It’s not attractive at all, and him trying to assert his dominance is making it even more unbearable.

“C-Can you please back up?” I retort, barely refraining from plugging my nostrils.

His nostrils flare as he drags in my scent. “You don’t even smell like your mates, Remi. Wonder why that is?”

My eyes flicker restlessly to the right, then the left, scanning for any possible escape—a window, even just a shadowed gap wide enough to slip through. Each glance is sharp and quick, betraying my growing desperation as my mind races for an exit before this moment swallows me whole.

“W-We weren’t together last night.”

“Don’t alpha mates want to be with their omega all the time? I know I did with mine.”

“D-Did?” I stammer in a whisper, my eyes falling back on his, seeing a cruel streak appearing.

He barks out a laugh, tilting his head back. “You can come out now!”

My gaze darts to the bathroom door just as it swings open, the harsh fluorescent light spilling into the office.

Two men step out, their movements heavy and deliberate, shoulders squared and eyes narrowed in challenge.

They look mean—dangerously so—the kind of backup summoned for intimidation, their expressions carved from rough stone.

The air thickens with their presence, unease prickling along my arms as I struggle to keep my breathing steady.

Recognition strikes me like a slap, sudden and electric in my veins.

The first man—broad-shouldered, with a bandage on his nose—is unmistakable.

I’ve seen him before, washed in neon and shadow at the nightclub, his cold gaze singing into my flesh when he was dancing with me.

My mind flashes to the press of bodies, the thump of music rattling my bones, and the memory of him leaning against my body with predatory patience.

The second man is subtler in his menace, but the tilt of his mouth and the crow’s feet bracketing his narrowed eyes are etched in my memory. I saw him the very next morning, sitting at the corner table in the coffee shop. He’s the one who Tripp got to leave me alone.

Unease prickles along my spine. They both stand before me now, the familiar strangers from two different fragments within the past few weeks, their presences snapping into focus with a clarity that chills my blood. Whatever game is being played, it’s far bigger—and closer—than I dare fear.

“Meet my pack, Remi. We look forward to getting to know you much, much better,” Al coos, lifting his hand and sweeping the hair off my cheek. I cringe at his closeness.

There’s a sour familiarity in the way Al’s presence presses against me—a wrongness that's always hovered, barely out of reach, just beneath the surface of his charming facade.

I could never quite name it. Never hold it up to the light, but it stalked my instincts all the same: the way his eyes lingered a fraction too long, how his smiles never reached the chill in his gaze, the slight curl of his fingers as if always restraining something sharper than affection.

Every word from his mouth was slick with intent, but laced with a bitterness I couldn't swallow.

I’d catch him watching me with a calculation that didn’t belong, as though testing the edges of my trust, prodding for weaknesses. There was always an extra beat in our silences, a sense of being weighed and measured, rather than simply seen.