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CHAPTER 31
As soon as Madelinehurried away from me, I knew that I’d fucked up royally. All of my anger towards her had evaporated as soon as she apologized, and her brown eyes filled with tears.
I was immediately questioning what I’d seen...or at least what I thought that I’d seen. I had gone to look for her, worried because she had been in the restroom for a while. But when I made my way into the hallway I found her standing with her parents. Her back was to me, so I could only see her parent’s faces. At first, I was surprised that they were at the party at all because they weren’t on the guest list. Edward and Philomena Zhao were stone-faced in almost every single picture that could be found on the internet, but as soon as my eyes landed on them, I saw a smile on Madeline’s mother’s face.
My mind had taken over from there. After running into Charlotte, every shitty memory had come rushing back in and the first thought in my mind as I stomped back into the ballroom was:‘I knew I was right about Madeline, she’s been playing all three of us.’
I was just on my way to find Adair and Rio to tell them to pull the wool out of their eyes, when Madeline slid her hand into mine and said my name. Everything from there was a blur until I saw her retreating figure as she ran from the ballroom.
Now, I stood in the hallway, staring at the doors that I was sure that she had left through, and I knew that I was a fucking idiot.
“Oh dear, where’s your pretty beta?” Charlotte’s voice came from behind me, and my hackles were immediately raised.
“What the fuck do youwant,Charlotte?” I couldn’t understand why she’d even come up to me at all. I’d gone to secondary with her up until she was revealed to be an omega when we were nineteen. I’d thought, briefly, that I wanted her to be my omega. I had pursued her for the first two years of Uni, but she was a beautiful monster and had been considering three packs,andme at the same time. Despite the fact that she chose a pack with more money than sense, she still had a psychotic sense of ownership over the alphas that she’d rejected.
The last time I’d seen her was almost nine years ago when she had shown up on the doorstep of the apartment that Adair and I shared in London. I don’t know how she even got the address, but she was convinced that she had made a mistake and wanted to try again, despite the fact that she was wearing the bonding marks of her pack.
Now, she had shown up again to light a pyre of chaos and dance around it like the bitch that she was.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Charlotte reached out to pick a piece of lint off of my suit jacket, and I jerked away from her touch, taking a full step back from her. The blonde woman frowned at me like she couldn’t understand my reaction. “Are you seriously saying that you prefer a beta woman to me? An omega? Marcus, youhatebetas, remember your mum who treated you like shit because you were an alpha?”
I gritted my teeth so hard that my jaw popped as I glared down at her. “My mum and Madeline are very different people, and beta or no, Madeline Zhao is twice the woman you will ever be. You rely far too much on your magical omega pussy to get you places in life.”
Anger filled the omega’s blue eyes. “Well that may be, but see if she wants you now that she knows you’ve been with me.”
I stilled completely and felt my face drain of color. Charlotte’s eyes glittered with pure malice. “You and your pack need an omega to keep you together, or else you are going to end up all alone again. Call me whenever you’re ready, my pack could use some more handsome alphas in it.” With that, she was gone, leaving her cloud of cloying omega perfume in her wake.
I would forever regret giving Charlotte my first sexual experience until the day that I died.
The full picture of what had occured in the last half-hour became abundantly clear. At some point, probably when she went to the bathroom, Charlotte had cornered and taunted Madeline. She played on every insecurity that I’d willingly let her believe with my reluctance to court her the way that I should have.
Then, she had run into her parents and, while I wasn’t sure what had happened, it probably wasn’t anything good. She had reached out to me for comfort...comfort that I’d yanked away from her in my own misguided anger.
I wanted to scream, vomit, and then find Madeline—in that order. Unfortunately, my shitty decisions were coming back to bite me in the ass much quicker than I thought that they would.
“What thefuckdid you do?” Adair’s voice came from behind me as he grabbed the back of my suit jacket and pulled me down an empty hallway. He slammed my back into a shadowing corner and I grunted from the impact. Rio was standing just behind his shoulder, a panicked look in his eyes as he watched Adair shake me roughly.
“Adair, I can explain—” I began, but he cut me off with a blue-eyed glare.
“No. No more excuses, you read this and tell me exactly what you did to fuck up this badly.” Adair held his phone out in front of me, and the first thing I saw was Madeline’s contact picture—a picture of her with a colorful ice cream cone in front of her face—the next was what the message below her picture said.
MADELINE: Need some space. Will talk to you when I’m ready, please don’t call.
Guilt, fear, and panic filled my body. My mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air as I tried to form a response for him and completely failed.
“You were the last one with her, I saw the two of you talking, and now she’s gone.” Rio’s voice cracked like he was about to cry.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my ability to speak finally returning to me. “I saw her with her parents...and Charlotte is here.”
“Her parents, were they on the list?” Rio sounded surprised.
“What the fuck is Charlotte doing here?” Adair said at the same time. He finally let me go and I slumped to the ground and put my face in my hands.
“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions. But Charlotte fucked with my head, and then I saw Madeline talking to her parents and...” I trailed off.
“And what?” Adair asked, squatting down in front of me. He still looked angry, but I was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to pummel me into the wall anymore.
“I thought that she was playing with us...I didn’t see her face when she was talking to her parents. She came to me to get comfort and I rebuffed her.” Rio sucked in a sharp intake of breath at my words, and scrubbed a hand through his black hair. Hair that I’d watched Madeline comb and style for him during the car ride to the venue earlier this evening.
