AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We were just finishing lunch when the doorbell rang. Ric jumped up from where he was feeding Vivi her lunch and jogged inside. “I guess they must have forgotten something.” He called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the living room of the Villa.
I was just lifting a spoonful of chicken noodle soup to my lips when a crash of glass came from inside of the house.
“What the hell?” Leon stood up quickly from his seat and started for the door. “Stay here.” He ordered. Of course no one listened to him, and we all followed him inside to find Ric standing over someone with his fist cocked back, ready to hit whoever it was.
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” A familiar accented voice filled the room, and I gasped, rushing forward, I hugged Ric’s arm so that he couldn’t punch Marcus. Well, punch him again.
Looking down at the alpha who had broken my heart two weeks ago, I could already see a bruise blooming across the top of one of his cheeks. There was also a cut on his forehead from, what I now realized, was the glass from the mirror in the entryway.
“You bastards got my sister pregnant, and then you hurt her. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pummel you into next week.” Ric shouted down at Marcus, and his face was so red from anger that it was starting to turn purple.
Eloise gasped from behind me, “Ric, I told you that in confidence!” Betrayal filled her voice, and Ric finally seemed to realize that he had an audience and that I, his pregnant sister, was hanging onto him.
“He doesn’t know,” I whispered to him. “None of them know.”
All of the color drained from Ric’s face. “Oh shit...how much did I fuck up?”
“Just a little bit.” I said with a sigh. Ric released his grip on Marcus’s shirt. The alpha fell flat on the floor with a groan, and Ric stood up straight, looking apologetic and a bit sheepish.
“Ellie, can you please grab me a first aid kit?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “And everyone else, if you could give us the room for a couple of minutes?”
Everyone filed out of the living room and went back outside, and I could hear Cherry asking one of the adults what was going on.
“I’m sorry, Mads, I...I just saw him and lost it. I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Ric ran his hands down my arms, looking for imaginary broken bones or cuts that I couldn’t have gotten just by hanging onto his arm.
“It’s fine, just try and keep it together. Go cool off outside.” Ric hung his head and left the room.
“Here’s the first-aid kit,” Eloise held a plastic white box with a red cross on it out to me.
“Thank you.” I said quietly, and looked into Eloise’s guilty eyes. “I thought you were going to keep it to yourself.” I didn’t mean to sound accusing, but I had trusted Tibby and Eloise, and that trust had just been broken.
“He kept wanting to take you to a doctor here because you couldn’t keep any food down, and I finally broke and told him. He must have stopped listening when I told him that none of your pack knew yet...” Eloise trailed off. “But you’re right, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have broken your trust like that.”
She gave my hand one last squeeze before joining the rest of the group on the back porch. I still had my back to Marcus, and I took one, long steadying breath before finally turning to face him.
He was sitting up now and had his fingers pressed to the bloody cut on his forehead. “Your brother sure does pack a wallop.” Marcus hissed, glaring at his bloody fingers.
“I think you earned it.” All of the hurt that I had been feeling when I ran out of the ballroom in San Francisco was roaring back to the surface as I looked down at him. “Why don’t you sit on the couch and we can get you all patched up.”
Marcus obliged, quietly grunting as he got to his feet and he limped over to the couch. I got to work, silently dabbing at his cuts with cotton balls covered in hydrogen peroxide, trying to figure out what the first question that I wanted to ask him was.
“How did you find me here?” I asked finally as I squeezed some neosporin onto a q-tip and began to liberally apply it to the cut.
“Tibby called me.” Marcus replied.
“Sorry!” Tibby called from outside, and I could hear people shushing her.
“Stop eavesdropping!” I called back, and heard the shuffling of guilty feet as the group walked further away from the open sliding glass door.
Turning my attention to Marcus again, I continued my first aid. “Tibby called you, so what? Why did you come?”
Marcus reached up and stopped my hand, bringing it down so that I could see his green eyes. The regret and sadness that filled them nearly took my breath away, and made me want to tuck tail and run away from him. “Are you really pregnant?” He asked.
I nodded. “Yes, but it’s not like I’m trying to trap you guys or anything. I’m not the golddigger that you think I am.”
“He called you a golddigger?” An enraged voice that sounded like Leon’s shouted from outside.
Marcus winced. “Is there any way that we can take a walk or something? Where there aren’t so many vocal eavesdroppers?”
I applied a bandaid to his forehead and took a step back. “Sure, there’s a path that leads to the resort that we can take.”
I pulled my sandals on, and we left through the front door. The front of the villa wasn’t an actual road, just a cobblestone path that the occasional golf cart drove on and a wooden walkway lining it on either side for pedestrians. Most people were inside of their cottages and villas eating lunch, so the path was empty except for the occasional tourist.
We walked quietly for a while, both probably waiting for the other to start the conversation that had been a long-time coming.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, Marcus opened his mouth and began.
“My mum was a beta who wanted nothing more than to be a part of an alpha pack.”
