Page 4 of Knot All that Glitters: Part 1

His icy blue eyes drop to my twisting fingers, the slight hitch in my chest as I try to convince myself that I have done nothing to go against my father’s wishes. That wolfish, charming smile of his falls away.

“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it.” He reaches out like he might touch me, brush his fingers over my skin to soothe me. I know it’s part of an alpha’s instincts if they’re around an omega in distress. It’s in their blood to want to help.

And it’s in my blood to want to let them. But standing here and letting an alpha touch me for comfort? That goes against the leash my father has put on me.

I swallow a whine as I step back from him, keeping him from making contact. His hand, covered in tattoos, I realize, hangs there in between us for a moment, before he tucks it into the pocket of his slacks and shifts back on his heels, leaning away from me. I don’t know if he can sense I need the additional space or if he’s just reassessing how to approach me, but either way… it gives me the distance I need to slip around him.

He’s dangerous to me, to the commands my father has put in place. If I spend any more time with him, one second longer in his company, I have a feeling that my omega, even as deeply buried as she is under suppressants, will claw her way to the surface and push against those commands to take what she wants.

It’ll hurt. Be painful. I’ll end up with a migraine the size of a planet and have to spend the next twenty-four hours in bed.

It happened before. And I have no urge to suffer through it again.

I dip my chin at him. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Calloway.” Polite, demure. Nothing untoward in that statement, even if it’s a lie.

“Little mouse, wait,” he says, but there isn’t a bark in the command, so I ignore it, hurrying away from him. I’ll make myway back through the rally and return to the car and my silent bodyguard. Better to do that than risk running into him again, or one of the other alphas in the crowd that drew my attention.

Chapter 2: Poised Little Princess

“Well, fuck,” I mutter, watching Haven Bell hurry away from me, the sway of her ass in her prim and proper skirt making my dick throb. I mean, it was throbbing long before now. As soon as I got close enough to actually see her in person, my cock stiffened and lengthened and practically begged me to bend her over and fuck her right there, in front of her father and all the other assholes at this self-congratulatory party.

Every part of my alpha wanted to mess up her perfectly coiled dark hair, yank off that cardigan with so much force the buttons popped and rip her panties right from her body before plunging into her. Fuck, how I want to dirty her up, turn her from poised princess to filthy little whore.

“Well, that went about as well as expected,” an amused voice says. I turn my attention from the sway of the omega’s ass to latch eyes with Creed, my pack mate. He blows out a ring of smoke, unconcerned, as I scowl at him. “Don’t give me that look.You know she’s about as wound up as it’s possible for a woman to be.”

I sigh and shake my head, wiggling my fingers in a request for a cigarette. “Is this where you tell me she isn’t like normal girls, and we need to treat her with tender loving care?”

Creed’s brows jump as he holds out the box for me. “I mean, yeah. Not only is she an omega, but she’s… so sheltered, Hale. You know her dad hardly lets her out of his sight.”

I snort. It’s true. Say what you want about Frederick Bell. He has made it clear that Haven is his protected princess. She’s either at his side or tucked away in their big house on the nice side of town. As far as we know, she’s never dated anyone. A few packs courted her when she was in the omega academy, but she didn’t accept any of their offers. Though from what we heard, it was her father that rejected them and not her.

Apparently, no one is good enough for his poised little princess.

That was two years ago.

Since then, she’s safely in their house or glued to his side, like she is now. Smoke wafts over my face as I watch her slip through the crowd, undetected by most, though a few eyes follow her hungrily. She’s pretty. I wasn’t blowing smoke up her ass when I told her that. In truth, ‘gorgeous’ is more the appropriate word, but her pretty is smothered under too much… control.

Hers or his, I have yet to figure it out.

It would make sense if it’s hers. She’s been raised to be his demure little princess, smiling and waving right alongside him. Makes me sick that an alpha and an omega can so blatantly support the suppression of the designations.

Not only publicly, but privately. Haven Bell is an omega who smells like a beta. There’s a faint tinge of chemicals that lingers around her, mixed in with a spicy sweetness I can’tplace. But the chemical scent? That’s a clear sign that she’s on suppressants.

It’s going to make what we came here to do all that much harder.

Creed’s brows crunch together and he shakes his head the longer I go without responding. “I still think we need to suss out the situation before we move forward.”

I glare at him, blowing smoke into his face. “We’ve sussed. We’ve done our goddamn homework. Everyone we’ve talked to has told us Frederick Bell dotes on his daughter. That he adores her, treats her like a princess.” I frown, my eyes flicking back to where she disappeared. “Granted, she doesn’t seem like a very effusive princess, but she’s dressed in designer clothes, gets carted around in a hundred thousand dollar car. She attended AOA, for fuck’s sake, and you know how much that school costs.”

Creed shrugs. “So he spends money on her. It doesn’t prove anything, other than that he has a lot of it.”

I point at him with my cigarette. “You and I both know he wouldn’t spend money on her if he didn’t care about her. It’s just not in his nature.”

Creed scowls, then runs a tattooed hand over his face as he sighs. “You’re probably right.”

“I am right.” I clap a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve worked on this plan for years, Creed. We all agreed she is the way forward. There’s no backing out now.”

His gaze flicks over to the crowd. Haven has disappeared, but her father is still there, smiling and laughing for all the world to see, like he isn’t a disgusting amoeba of a human being. Like he didn’t rip our world apart ten years ago for no other reason than that he could, that he wanted to.

---