Page 38 of Knot Your Basic B*tch
“Well, they have this theory.” I didn’t know if this theory was the real reason why they kept having kids.
Unbidden, my conversation with Zane popped back into my head. How my moms just had a breeding kink. I didnotwant to think about that.
Wait…
Were kinks genetic? Did that mean that at some point… I might…
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
I was not going to have my thoughts go there. I’d just tell the polished and sanitized story that my moms told me. “Like all the high-profile packs out there, they have the same combination. There’s always one alpha who is a multi-millionaire. One of them is a psycho. Throw in a couple of pretty boys. Mix them all together and they will inevitably end up with a gold-pack omega and swear off children.”
“That can’t be true. People would start to notice if that was happening.” Sabien shook his head.
“No, it is totally true. Take the Kingsmen pack. Three alphas: a pretty boy, an alpha a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and a millionaire.” They ended up with Shatter—who was undoubtedly gorgeous and undoubtedly a gold-pack omega. I’d read it all in ‘Spill the Tea,’ a New Oxford gossip magazine that tracked rich alphas.
“That’s just one pack. That doesn’t prove anything.” Sabien grabbed another fry. I was getting into the conversation now and stopped keeping track of how many he’d stolenfrom me. Whatever. Some things were more important than French fries.
“There’s the Crimson Fury pack.” They were super high-profile and had shocked all the tabloids when their sweetheart beta, Vex, ended up being another gold-pack omega.
“Aren’t they actors? So they’re all rich. Doesn’t feel like it should count.”
“Yeah, but you got that same formula. Millionaires with a gold-pack.”
“But it’s not like one of them is a psychopath or something. They are all in the public eye. Someone would have noticed that.” Sabien said, waving a French fry emphatically to help prove his point.
“Okay, so maybe that one doesn’t count. But then there’s the Saint pack. They are a bunch of rich pretty-boys who got with a gold-pack.” I reached into my tray for a fry. After making that excellent point, I felt like I deserved a salty little reward. My hand came up empty.
Damn.
“Nope. Not the Saint pack. There is definitely no psycho there.”
“Not true.” I lowered my voice, really getting into the conspiracies now. “I heard that the original lead in that pack was a psycho.”
“Oh, that’s why Havoc killed her alpha?”
“Exactly.”
CHAPTER 24
CHLOE
I was smilingand acting like everything was fine, but inside my mind was racing.
This was Stupid Lunch Interview for alpha number twenty-one, Nyle, and I was running into some serious problems. This was more problematic than realizing that the alpha I was interviewing was my scent match—and THAT had been a major hiccup to all of my carefully planned and diagramed life ambitions.
Nyle had dreamy green eyes and windswept brown hair, with that boy-next door charm. Though he was not my type, (right now I’d developed a taste for hot blonde and blue eyed twins) Nyle was drop dead gorgeous, and not doing anything obviously offensive. Since this was one of Titus’ pack candidates, there had to be something wrong with him. There had been something off or wrong witheverysingle alpha Titus had sent my way so far. My work was cut out for me to figure out just what was wrong withthisone.
It was time for me to dust off my Red Flag Alpha Asshole Checklist.
Nyle hadn’t done anything obviously rude.
He hadn’t come to the lunch interview late. Hadn’t saidanything misogynistic. He hadn’t even talked too much about himself or challenged me why I thought I had the necessary skill to even bother interviewing him at all—that had been the mistake of alpha number nine—which was great. I was able to cancel interview nine super early and use all that extra time for some much-needed studying.
Alright, he’d passed the first test. But that didn’t mean that Nyle wasn’t hiding the fact that he was a raging, emotionally disturbed monster.
It was time to move on to the second test on my Asshole Checklist—did he have anger issues? I typically found that the easiest way to trigger anger issues in alphas was simply to ignore them. Any alpha with a chip on his shoulder, or an over-inflated sense of his own importance, tended to lose his mind once the spotlight wasn’t shining directly on him. Some alphas needed to constantly be drowning in attention, or they’d snap just like a little yappy dog who’d gotten his bone stolen from him.
“So, would you say that you’re enjoying your classes at the Institute?” Nyle asked me politely, just continuing the conversation. He had no idea that the jig was about to be up.