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I strode determinedly toward the cash register, but I only made it a few steps before I forced myself to a halt, my heart stopping along with my footsteps.
As if conjured by the memory, there he was.
In front of the produce, his eyes inspecting the bag of green beans he held in one hand. In the other, there was a shopping basket.
Two small steaks, vacuum-packed in plastic. A collection of fingerling potatoes, bumping against each other like pinballs as they rolled loose on the basket’s flat bottom.
Brent. And he was–my eyes filled with tears.
And then, as I stepped backwards, willing him not to turn around, praying to remain unseen, to get my overpriced coffee and go–
“Madison?”
I didn’t have to turn around to recognize his voice. Rian. And–I could smell them, although I hadn’t noticed over the scent of expensive coffee–Gray, and Lucas. I turned on the spot, trying to smile.
They looked… sad, I thought, tired, but Rian’s hand was clasped tightly in Lucas’s, and the beta smiled when he noticed the coffee I held in my own shaking hand.
“Couldn’t resist, huh? I realized this morning that, well, Gray gave away our last bag–hey,hey, it’s okay, Madison, it’s only coffee–” My eyeballs were burning as he reached toward me with his free hand, resting his hand on my arm, his touch tentative.
I wiped furiously at my eyes. “Sorry, I–sorry, it’s not that–”
“Mads?”
I squeezed my eyes closed.For fuck’s sake.Why,whydid everyone choose to be at this goddamn store right fucking now?
“Is this… is thisthem?” I heard Brent say. “These are the alphas you let–”
“Hi, Brent,” I said, cutting him off. I didn’t want to know what he had planned after that inauspicious start. His face wore a nasty sneer. He’d added a bottle of wine to his basket. If I’d had any question what he was shopping for before, I was certain now. “Date night?” I looked to the basket. My forced smile must have thrown him off, because the change of topic worked.
“What do you care?” he asked, and I couldfeelwhen Gray stepped closer to me, could sense his presence behind my back, protective. Solid.
“I… I don’t,” I said, and was surprised to find that it was true. “Good for you. And her, I guess.”
“‘I guess’? Thanks, Mads,” he said sarcastically. “That’s nice. Really nice.”
We all stood there for a moment, five people in an aisle of expensive coffee, and then Rian spoke.
“Well, if no one is going to introduce us, then I will,” he said, sticking out one hand to shake Brent’s. The other hand curled possessively around my waist, and I tried and failed not to lean into him. “I’m Rian Hart, I’m the beta of this pack, but it seems like no one else is going to say anything, so–”
I knew even as he said it that it was the wrong thing to say.
“A beta?” Brent said. Sneered, really. “You left me for a fuckingbeta, Mads?”
The air in the grocery store seemed suddenly to disappear, leaving the five of us vacuum-sealed like the steaks Brent was buying for his new date.
“Youleft,” I said, with as much conviction as I could manage. My voice still came out shaky. “You were the one who left.”
“An alpha is one thing,” he was saying, not listening to me. “I knew you would, after your little “late bloomer” thing, but a fuckingbeta?Come on, Mads, what the hell does he have that I don’t, huh? His cock–”
“You don’t want to finish that sentence,” Luc growled. I glanced back at the three men still standing behind me, and was startled by Luc’s thunderous appearance. I’d never seen him like this. His hands were held only in loose fists by his sides, but he was on the balls of his toes. I suddenly remembered the thirst trap gym selfies I had stalked before all of… this.
Gray, on the other side of Rian, was looking deceptively casual, but I could smell his rage. That burnt-coffee bitterness wasn’t coming from the perfectly roasted beans in the $20 bags that surrounded us.
“Come on, Mads… you think I would have left, knowing you were slumming it in a pack–” he glanced down, and Iknewin my stomach that he was seeing Rian and Luc’s hands, clasped together like the lovers they were, “with a bunch of fucking unnatural–”
Gray threw the first–and last–punch.
CHAPTERFORTY-SIX
