Page 21 of Trust No Alpha
“Shut the fuck up right now!”
“And Father. Father said to say it wasn’t your fault. But I’m beginning to think it was all your fault. The way you are. Fuck you’re so—I dunno—incandescent or something. You’ve been seducing him all along, haven’t you? You could be rightfully his. He could take you and there would be no crime. If I took you right now, there would be no crime.”
“Oh there would be a crime all right. Because I would kill you!”
Mathias licked his lips, looked me up and down, then finally let me go. I was shaking all over, but I took a deep breath and controlled it. I would not let him see that he actually frightened me. Mathias. My litter-mate. And now the one who held the only key to my door.
He stood up from the couch, still looming over me. “I don’t know how Father showed such control all this time. You should be grateful for his love.”
“I am grateful!”
“I feel like I have the Burn right now. Maybe you incite it in Alphas.”
I must have missed the moment when Mathias had turned from sweet little boy to nasty cold Alpha teen. Had maturity and the Burn changed him so quickly?
As kids, we three, Mathias, Trigg and I, only had each other for so long until Mica and Bren came along. We played together, laughed together, made pacts and had secret clubs. We were the trio who stuck by each other’s sides. We would have died for each other.
That should not have changed. And yet, since Doctor Poe had seen the truth about me and revealed it, everything had changed. Mathias, who’d now been through the Burn, had changed as well. I didn’t recognize him.
His words chilled me. I looked down to see the bulge in his trousers. “Are you saying you want to rape me?”
“You don’t get it, do you? It isn’t rape. You’re an Omega.”
“Any decent Alpha would ask for consent!”
“It’s a gray area in the law, but only outside the Burn. During the Burn, there would be no official crime. We studied that subject together.”
“That doesn’t make it right! And you’re not in the Burn right now. Besides, I’m your brother!”
He gave a bitter laugh. “You always thought you were better than me and Trigg. But now look at you. You’re not number one anymore.”
“Is that it? You just want a power play with me?”
“Tempt me some more and I’ll show you what I want. For Father’s sake, you deserve to be nothing more than a hole to fill. You don’t deserve all this.” He waved his hand about my rooms and all my new things.
We were brought up to be proud and perfect Vandergale Alphas. Everything Mathias was spouting we’d been taught side by side. I’d learned all of it just the way he’d said it and hadn’t given it much thought. I was an asshole, just like he was. I believed Omegas were holes to be filled, and that the Burn Alphas went through meant they were superior and needed to be in charge and not held accountable if something went wrong. Our species would die out if Alphas weren’t in charge taking what they needed, breeding the breeders.
These facts and ethics were in the text books I’d read, reinforced by tutors, and by Father himself.
The reality of it hadn’t entered my mind. It was as if I’d been asleep my whole life until Doctor Poe revealed my physical Omega traits.
Mathias stood before me, dark hair, dark stance, and by rightful claim dominated the conversation, the room he stood in, and me.
But I knew I could still take him in a fight.
I turned my back on him. This man I didn’t know anymore. This brother mine who held the only key to my rooms.
After a while, I heard him leave, the door slamming behind him.
One thought crossed my mind.
I have to get out of here.
Chapter Nine
Thorne
The snowfall came late in the day. It smelled faintly of cherry shaved ice.
