She didn’t say anything for so long that it forced me to look up at her, somewhat sheepishly. When I did, she was looking at me in a way I couldn’t exactly identify or decode. But she didn’t look mad.
“That’s very sweet of you.”
I knew I was blushing. I could feel it. That was probably also incriminating.
“Ah, no,” I denied, only because her calling itsweetmade it seem a little too close to what it really was. “We’re just, uh… You know, we’re friends and it’d be nice if it wasn’t bothering him so much, is all.”
She gave a slow nod, but I wasn’t totally sure if she was buying it. I was afraid to say anything else and make it worse. I was sure just frantically denying it by screamingI’m not in love with Kieran and there’s nothing going on with usprobably wouldn’t make things better, and unfortunately a more convincing argument was not occurring to me at the moment.
“Well, I’m not sure how he feels now,” she admitted. “I tried to get him to talk about it, for a long time after that.”
“I remember,” I said. I remember they’d forced him to go to counseling, where he’d refused to talk, and eventually they’d stopped making him go.
“And I’ve always hoped that he’s worked it out in his own way. And maybe that’s the case.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, but I didn’t think that was true. Kieran did an okay job of hiding any angst from our parents, and people at school, and then work. They saw a kind of grumpy guy who happened to get a little moody now and then, but no real cause for concern. I was the only one that could get through his mask and see there were things haunting him. “So… Did he get hurtthat night? Worse than usual?” I added, if it wasn’t obvious. There was no need to hash through the entirety of his childhood, nor the entirety of her marriage to such an evil, cruel person.
“Not exactly,” she said, and glanced around before scooting in a little closer to me, probably checking to make sure Kieran hadn’t come down the stairs. “That night was really bad for all of us. But it wasn’t because of Kieran getting hurt.”
She paused, and I watched her think for a moment, like a reel was playing in her head. Guilt swamped me, cementing the fact that I was making her relive something I couldn’t even imagine going through. She seemed to notice my stricken expression, and rubbed a hand over my arm again.
“He’d gone to a friend’s house that afternoon. While he was gone, his father and I got into a fight. We were always fighting,” she mused, and to my relief she didn’t sound particularly pained. Like she was telling a story that had happened to someone else. I guessed maybe my dad had done a good job of helping her get over all of that and letting her move on. I hoped I could do that for Kieran.
“But for whatever reason that night, it really escalated,” she went on. “We were screaming at each other, and then… He just got so mad. It was like something broke in him,” she remembered, brows drawing together a bit. “Well, I guess you don’t need the gory details,” she decided. “He started hitting me. A lot. I couldn’t really get away from him, and I was afraid he might kill me.”
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said, my voice cracking. I could feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, and I quickly wiped them away with my sleeve. Getting emotional wouldn’t make it any easier for her to finish. I’d already known that part, but it was so hard imagining something like that happening to someone like her. She’d always been so kind to me, from themoment I’d met her. Without her, my dad would have been so lost and unhappy. We both would have.
“It’s alright,” she assured me softly. “That was a lifetime ago. You don’t have to feel upset.”
“I’m okay,” I said, giving a resolute sniff and willing the tear residue to suck back into my eyeballs.
“Anyway, Kieran happened to come home, just then. He wasn’t really a kid anymore,” she explained. I knew Kieran had been 14 when his parents had split up. “He’d started getting bigger, more muscular,” she went on. “He was…”
“Becoming an alpha,” I finished.
She nodded a bit. “I don’t think he’d exactly realized it yet. Not the alpha part, of course he didn’t realize that until… Well, until it happened.”
Clearing my throat, I was glad she hadn’t extrapolated much on that thought. I always felt incredibly embarrassed discussing the secondary puberty that happened when someone started presenting as an alpha or omega. I remembered feeling like a circus freak the first time I’d felt myself leaking slick, and how miserably humiliated I’d felt after that when my dad had dragged me to a specialist to test my blood for the omega hormone. If Kieran hadn’t already shown as an alpha, I might have cried for feeling so foreign and strange and alone.
Of course, I didn’t feel that way for long. And I definitely didn’t feel that way now. I was thrilled to be an omega, otherwise I couldn’t be Kieran’s mate.
“I mean, I don’t think he realized that he’d become too big to really be physically bullied anymore. He mostly just avoided being home at the same time as his father,” she explained. “But when he came home and saw what was happening, he…” She trailed off, gesturing with her hands. “Well, he defended me.”
The way she phrased it felt ominous, putting a little curl of anxiety in my stomach. “Meaning?”
“Well, he… He got Michael off me.” It was rare for anyone to ever even say Kieran’s dad’s name. I didn’t like hearing it. “And then, I think…” She hesitated again. “I can’t really say what was going on in his head. Because, like I said, he hasn’t really talked about it. But I think maybe everything that Michael had done to him, and to us, over the years… I think it had all been kind of building up.”
Suddenly understanding, my hands tensed where they rested on the table.
“So he snapped, is basically what you’re saying.”
“Basically,” she agreed. “It took a lot, but I was finally able to get through to him and get him to calm down. By the time the police and the ambulance got there, his dad was in pretty bad shape. Really bad,” she reiterated, and she didn’t have to keep going for me to understand. Kieran had almost killed him.
“Did Kieran get in trouble for that?” I wondered, unable to stop myself from asking.
“No, not really,” she said. “He was so young, and the police took my statement. I was in pretty bad shape too, so it wasn’t very hard for them to believe me when I said he’d only been defending me. And then once Michael came to in the hospital, I’d already left him and taken Kieran. He didn’t press charges, and he didn’t contest the divorce. I think… I think maybe he was afraid of what Kieran might do to him if he tried anything.”
I didn’t say anything, my mind racing with the new information. So much was clicking, making sense now. The way he’d always warned me about alphas, insisting I should be afraid, even of him. Especially of him. The way he always looked so guilty and filled to the brim with self-loathing when he’d gotten a little too excited or rough with me. The way he’d been so desperate to keep himself from me. He was afraid of hurting me. Or hurting someone because of me.
