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CHAPTER 26
“Let me straighten yourtie.” Madeline reached out to me with manicured fingers and worked her magic on my incredibly crooked bow-tie. I don’t know how she did it, but after only about twenty seconds, my bow-tie was fixed. She ran her hands over my suit, smoothing it out over my shoulders until she was happy with the finished product.
We were standing in one of the green rooms off of the main ballroom where the Gala was being held, waiting until it was time for us to walk in together. Adair was surrounded by his people, who were giving him last minute updates and helping him go through his welcome speech. Marcus stood off to the side, fiddling with his own tie and looking a bit forlorn as everyone bustled around him.
“Gorgeous, why don’t you go help Marcus?” I murmured my request as she smoothed her hands down the front of my chest one last time.
“Are you sure he’ll accept the help?” Madeline’s cheeks pinkened in the same way that they always did when we spoke about Marcus. The two definitely had a thing for each other, but they were both too stubborn to really act on it.
“It doesn’t hurt to try.” With that, I gently pushed her in his direction and watched as she crossed the room to him. She looked absolutely mouthwatering in the floor length golden dress she was wearing. It molded to the gentle curve of her ass and sparkled under the bright lights of the green room. I was definitely looking forward to peeling it off of her later, but for now I just watched as she hesitantly reached out and began to fix Marcus’s mangled bow-tie.
Marcus, for his part, looked lost, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to reach out and touch her, or if he wanted to run screaming from the room. His animosity towards Madeline had morphed in the past few months into something that was more concerning to Adair and I. He had started to look at her like she was the one thing that he wanted in the world, and also like she was going to be his very end at any given moment.
Everytime Adair and I tried to sit him down to talk through his feelings about Madeline and how his feelings about his mother were getting in the way of something potentially great, he just shut us down.
“Do you think they will be able to come together on their own?” Adair had, at some point, come to stand next to me. Together, we watched Madeline and Marcus interact with each other like two shy animals that were meeting for the first time.
I slanted a glance at my packmate before shrugging. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I can’t help but feel like we might have to step in at some point and get the ball rolling, or we’re going to be old and gray by the time they finally get it together.”
“Carter!” Mortie called from the doorway. He was dressed in a suit that was probably older than I was, but it was still the nicest thing I’d ever seen him wear in the two years that I’d known him. “You’re on in a minute, everyone ready?”
The room flew into chaos as people began to get everything ready for our grand entrance. Marcus and Madeline rejoined us, and she slid her hand into Adair’s, shooting him a genuine smile that dazzled even some of the campaign volunteers who were passing by.
“You ready?” Madeline asked, using her free hand to fix Adair’s tie and smooth down the collar of his shirt.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Despite his relaxed shoulders and devil-may-care smile, there was a nervousness behind his blue eyes. This was really going to push him towards being his party’s pick to go on the ballot in November. For the last week, Mortie had been drilling it into all four of us that the image that we presented tonight was what would make or break Adair’s campaign. No pressure, right?
“You can do it.” Marcus said from my other side, surprising me as he wasn’t usually one to be super encouraging. Marcus, at his core, was a pragmatist. “You’ve worked your arse off for this, Adair. You have nothing to be nervous about.” He held his fist in front of me, and the two men stared at each other for a moment, as if they were having a silent conversation that only they could understand. Finally, Adair blinked away the nerves and connected his fist with Marcus’s.
Adair squared his broad shoulders and we moved towards the double doors that would lead us into the ballroom.
“Let’s do this.” He said, and nodded to the attendants who were waiting to open the doors.
As the doors opened, cameras began to flash on the other side and we stepped, together, into the limelight.
“You know, I was underthe impression that they didn’t even like other designations. Y’know since they’ve been an alpha pack on their own for so long.” A woman, who was attempting to gossip with me, said as she leaned over her glass of champagne. “But here you are!”
I kept my best smile on my face, even though deep down I wanted to turn and walk away from this woman. I searched my brain for her name, she had said it when she came up to me, hadn’t she? It was...oh, yeah!
“Kendra, I really must go and check in with Adair about something, we’ll have to talk soon.” I turned to leave, pretending like I didn’t hear her practically shout an invitation to go to lunch next week. There was no way in hell I would be getting lunch with her, or any of the other people who had approached me tonight in hopes of cozying up to my alphas.
Adair, Marcus, and Rio were famously private with their lives. Most people already knew better than to try to cozy up to them, but I was an unknown entity to them. They didn’t know who I was. Though I had seen a couple of eyebrows go up when I told them my last name. There were probably over a thousand people with the last name Zhao in the bay area, but only one who was the daughter of a famous international shipping mogul. Even though I hadn’t seen my parents since I was twelve years old, it didn’t stop them from keeping my name on their website to promote the fact that they were a ‘family business.’ Besides, it would have been bad for business if they admitted to the world that they were designation-prejudicedandchild abandoners.
When Ric went to talk to them the day that I snuck out of the house, I was pretty sure that they had signed over their rights to me on the stipulation that Ric never speak to any media about why I went to live with him.
It usually didn’t matter since most people never put two and two together about what family I was a part of, but most people weren’t the upper echelons of California society. All I needed to say was my name, and their mental encyclopedias of wealth, family names, and my value to them began to crank away in their heads.
The result? Ass-kissers. They either wanted to get close to me because of my last name, or because of the alphas I was very clearly in a romantic relationship with. It was absolutely exhausting.
“Madeline, are you alright?” Marcus’s accented voice came from behind me, sending a little shiver down my spine as I turned and offered him a smile.
“Yes I am, I’m just overwhelmed by all of the people.” Smoothing my palms over the glittering gold fabric of my dress, my eyes found the doors that led onto the balcony. “Do you want to grab some fresh air?”
For a moment, I thought that he would say no. Indecision warred over his handsome features until he finally offered me his elbow. “Of course.”
Coming from the warmth of the ballroom, the balcony was blissfully cool on my heated skin. The hotel that the gala was being held at overlooked the Sacramento river, and I watched the water glitter in the distance as I tried to figure out what exactly I was going to say to Marcus.
I could tell that he liked me. Earlier when I’d been fixing his bow-tie, his green eyes had held so much heat that I was afraid that I was going to catch on fire if I looked into them too long. I knew he atleastfound me attractive, but everything after that was just plain confusing.
