Page 92 of Knot What She Seems
He finally glances at me and rolls his eyes. “You missed your calling. You should go work for a dictionary company. Webster is missing out.”
“I did. If I’d been born a beta, maybe…”
He sighs. “Yeah, sometimes I wonder…” He glances down at his hands with an expression I would almost describe as wistful.
“Why’d you become a soldier?” I ask abruptly. Something flickers in his eyes, a wisp of longing that makes me wonder if Luka ever wanted to be a fireman or a chef or whatnot.
“It’s an alpha’s fate, isn’t it?” His brows come together and he shrugs, but his tone falls flat and there’s a hint of smothered sadness in his eyes that makes him so relatable.
“Did you want to be something else?” I tilt my head, studying the sharp line of his jaw and trying to imagine what he might have been like when he was younger. Probably a huge nerd. Whenever he’s not teaching a class or beating the shit out of another alpha, I see his head buried in a book, his reading glasses sliding down his nose. I always wonder what he’s reading but have never gotten the courage to look.
“I honestly feel like war was drilled into my head for so long…” He shakes his head, as if physically trying to pull himself out of some unnamed fantasy. “I don’t even know what else I would have wanted to be. Is it ridiculous to be sad over something you don’t even know?”
“Not at all,” I say, right as he answers his own question, “Yeah, it is.”
“Guess we’re all sort of trapped by birth, huh?” I ask, with a regretful twist of my lips.
“I suppose so,” he murmurs before his hand reaches out and his pinkie grazes mine for a fraction of a second. I’m not sure if the touch was meant to comfort me or himself.
Either way, when I look over at him, dark red stains his cheeks. He clears his throat and pulls his hand back to his lap.
Gauzy silence hangs over us like a shroud for a moment before he slides forward on his chair and claps his hands together. “Sorry. I’m not usually so melancholy. Let’s pretend that never happened, okay?”
While I’m fascinated by his admissions and curious about his past, he’s clearly not ready for more. I respect that because if the shoes were flipped and I was wearing them, I wouldn’t be either. I swipe a hand across my forehead. “Already forgotten.”
His lips twitch in the beginnings of a smile before they straighten out. He stands and digs into one of his pockets before gesturing in the direction of the claw game. “Come on and I’ll win you a toy.”
“Oh, very gentlemanly of you.”
“Well, I need to redeem myself now. I can’t be spilling feelings all over the floor. That’s just unseemly.”
“True. It was kind of disgusting. I was about to ask for a trash can to puke in,” I say, with an exaggerated grimace.
He snorts—a noise I’ve never heard him make before—and a wave of amusement lifts us both out of the doldrums of our old conversation. “Well, it’s not murder, but let me skewer a stuffed animal for you.”
“The way to every woman’s heart, caveman style.”
“I’ve been doing research on ways to court omegas, and winning them prizes was moderately high on the list,” he tells me seriously.
Why am I not surprised?
He shoves a bill into the ancient machine, and it springs to life, carnival music playing and lights flashing.
“Which prize do you want?” He gestures at all the tightly packed stuffed animals.
Standing, I saunter over and peer down, looking for one that seems like it might be loose. “How about the turtle?” I point to a bright green and turquoise toy about the size of my fist.
Luka cracks his neck and shakes out his hands, taking this far more seriously than I expected. He also proceeds around the side of the glass and crouches to check out just how the turtle is tucked in amongst the turkeys and dolphins and puppies.
“You okay there?” I’m seriously beginning to question his mental sanity.
“There’s a method to it,” Luka retorts, his expression pure male focus. I’ve seen this sort of thing on Teddie’s face before. My brother went through a very intense gaming phase, and he had that same tight look whenever he played.
“You do know it’s okay if you don’t win?—”
“Shh!” He cuts me off, raising his hand.
I’m tempted to high-five him just to be annoying, but I don’t because alphas can be a little over the top when they laser in on something. I stand back and sip my soda as Luka paces back around to the front of the machine, leans over the controls with an incredibly menacing look that would shake those stuffies to the core if only they were sentient.
