Page 2 of Small-Town Secrets
I wassoover alphas.
But when I tried to say something, he just spoke over me. "You need to teach those boys a lesson!” he continued. “You need to make them—"
“Lay off him, Burt,” someone cut him off from the side. “I’m sure Laurence will punish his kids appropriately, won’t you, Laurie?”
“Sure.” I looked at the newcomer a little perplexed. It was Marvin, another omega. He’d been my best friend growing up, but I hadn’t spoken to him in a long time and he had no reason to come to my defense.
The alpha before us huffed. “I gotta get home to my wife, but you had better raise your boys right from now on.”
I didn’t honor that with a response as Mr. Hall stalked off.
“Thanks for that,” I said to Marvin.
“Don’t worry about it,” he waved me off. “I just got my daughter in the car when I saw you. She says she’s in karate with your kids? Too bad that got canceled, huh? But maybe I can do something about that.”
I only nodded and let Marvin talk. He’d always had a tendency to do that for as long as his breath lasted him and even longer.
“Anyway, I gotta get back to my car.” He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “See you around, yeah?”
“See you.” Although I probably wouldn’t. There was more than one reason that I hadn’t made any efforts to reconnect with Marvin.
It was best if he didn’t know that he was my sons’ uncle.
It was best if nobody knew.
But never mind that now.
"I'm so sorry I'm late again, Mrs. Wilhelm," I said approaching my sons' teacher.
"It's all right, Mr. King. You're not that late and I know you've got a lot on your plate." With a smile, she released my sons' hands. "Go say hi to your daddy."
"Hi, Daddy," Chris was first to greet me. I gave him a hug and then his brother got one too.
"Time to get home, you two. Did you have a good day at school?"
Chris eyed me with some doubt instead of responding to the question—I couldn't blame him. He'd seen me talk to Stacey's father, and he knew what he'd done, but I wasn't going to cause a scene in the school yard. Still, Chris was cautious, waiting for the explosion to happen. My other son started talking like a waterfall, though.
"Mrs. Hall read us a book, Daddy!" he started, grabbing my hand as we walked to the car. "It had dinosaurs! And all the other animals, but they were living in a village together. It was really cool. I hope we hear the rest of the story tomorrow."
"Dinosaurs, really?"
"They weren't very smart dinosaurs," Chris interjected with a small pout.
"No?" I opened the car doors and watched the boys climb in, making sure they buckled up.
"Dinosaurs don't need to be smart!" Tyler protested. "They can justsmasheverything."
"You can't just smash everything." Chris rolled his eyes at his brother.
"I can smashyou!" Tyler grabbed one of the toy soldiers that were scattered over the backseat of the car and threw it at Chris—who caught it in the air and threw it right back.
"Hey, now! Be nice to each other or no dessert for you."
"What's for dessert?" Chris asked.
"You won't find out if you're not good." I closed the back door and climbed into the driver seat, buckling up myself.
"You're going to punish us anyway."
