“She’s already brushed off concerns about the study’s integrity. If she’s unconcerned about accusations of unethical behavior, then we’ll know we need to proceed with reporting to the IRB without her.” We needed to hurry in case Dr. Davis started covering his tracks.
Bridget looked mollified. “Okay, I can work with that.”
The door to the prep lab opened. I turned, expecting Anvi, but saw Dr. Davis instead, like we’d conjured him up by talking about him. His face was red with apparent rage. He stalked towards us, and I instinctively sidestepped to block Bridget.
“You,” he said, pointing at her. “Fucking Omega. I just got off the phone with Andrew St. James, and he’s telling me he doesn’t want to continue in the study? Did you tell him to drop out?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.
“I know you did. You want to fuck him, right? Maybe you’re already fucking him for all I know.” Patrick completely ignored me and leaned to the side to stare at Bridget.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bridget said, her voice thin and wavering.
“Why would you assume this has anything to do with our team?” I asked, trying to bring Davis’s attention back to me.
“I’m not fucking talking to you,” he said, finally looking at me. “I’m talking to that little whore who’s ruined my research.”
“No. You will not speak to her or about her that way.” I blocked his eyeline to Bridget again. “If you have an issue with any member of our team, you can speak with Lisbeth.”
Patrick inflated with rage. “This is my clinic, my study, my fucking team. If I wanna talk to that little cunt, I will.”
A red haze descended, the one I fought so hard to keep locked up tight. The primal urge to bark him into submission until he was a puddle on the floor warred with the rational part of my mind that reminded me an insult wasn’t grounds for disembowelment.
I had only used my bark once before, right after I had presented as an Alpha. I was seventeen, on the cusp of leaving for college, and my father had been complaining about something, as usual. It could have been the money my mother had set aside for my college, the dinner she’d cooked that night, or maybe she’d just breathed too loudly.
It had been years since I’d stood up to him. When I was thirteen, I had tried to intervene and pull my father off my mother during one particularly violent episode. He’d thrown me into the wall hard enough to break my front tooth.
“Oh toto,” my mother had crooned in my ear that night, after my father’s rage had blown itself out. “You do not need to fight my battles for me. I can’t stand to see him hurt you.”
But that night, the newly awakened Alpha part of my brain lit up with the knowledge I could stop him. I’d burst into the kitchen and the tableau burned itself into my mind. My father, his eyes wild, stood over my mother who was cowering in the corner, his hand tangled in her hair, his fist raised.
“Let her go,” I’d barked.
His hands had dropped like a broken marionette. He sagged backwards. Triumph surged through me, along with a heady feeling of power. My mother still looked terrified.
I took a step toward him. “On the ground.”
My father’s knees dropped to the floor with a sickening crack.
“You don’t touch her anymore,” I’d said, still advancing on him.
“Toto, no,” my mother had pleaded.
“It’s okay,” I’d replied, still feeling that power running through me. My inner Alpha was flexing to life for the first time.
My father looked at me differently than he had before. It wasn’t respect in his bloodshot green eyes. It was fear. I relished it.
“Little fucker,” he mumbled. I could smell whiskey over his grassy Beta scent. “Think you’re a big boy now, huh?”
I’d ignored him and just led my mother from the room.
Once the adrenaline had worn off, though, I felt disgusted. Even if I’d done it for a good reason, didn’t doing that, making someone do something they didn’t want to do, make me just as bad as my father in some ways?
It hadn’t changed anything, anyway. I left for college, my mother stayed with him, and it wasn’t until he died that he finally relinquished his hold over her.
I had resolved to never use my bark again unless it was absolutely necessary. A life or death scenario.
I schooled myself into calm, pushed down the Alpha inside, and said through gritted teeth, “This is no longer a constructive conversation. I’m happy to schedule a time to speak formally about this issue with the Principal Investigator present.”
