by N. J. Lysk
“Yes?” She turned to him with her blue eyes wide, and Uri tried to focus on that and not on her unchanging scent, more repugnant to him each time it reached his nose.
“We are all here to sort things out,” the lawyer reminded her. “Please do not address your bondmate at the moment.”
She sighed, but conceded with a nod, eyes going straight for the kids sitting at the centre of the table. “Can we ask them whatever it is, so they can go sit outside?” she asked, the picture of a concerned mother.
It was a very good picture, but pictures didn’t trump forged signatures, Uri reminded himself.
“Of course,” Mx Yave said at once. “Mira?”
The girl turned to look at him but didn’t speak. “We are going to ask you tell us what you want, and no one will speak until you signal us. You can say whatever you want, and Mx Simons and I will make sure you’re safe.”
She glanced down at the table, then leaned closer to her brother by her side. “We want to go home with mum, and we want to see mother sometimes.” She stopped, the words must have cost her greatly but at least no one interrupted, just like Yave had promised her. “My mum didn’t... She didn’t know we were going. I... Tenir wanted to call her when we got there, but mother said we couldn’t because she’d be busy. We never called her, and we always call her to say goodnight.” At this, she seemed to collapse, bending forward and starting to cry in earnest.
Claudette was on her feet at once, crossing the room before anyone else could react, and first Mira and then Tenir, who’d started whimpering softly, pressed themselves to her beautiful blue jacket, crying against her middle as she curled herself around them and whispered reassurances.
Uri got up and went around the table until he was standing behind the children in Claudette’s line of sight. She looked up at him, as he had known she would, and he tilted his head towards the door. “We’ll get you some tea; you don’t need to be here for this part.”
She hesitated, then glanced down and gave a sharp nod. “Call me in before they go,” she demanded.
“Of course.” He inclined his head.
But before he could open the door, Serene’s clear voice rang across the room. “Tenir?”
The boy turned in his mum’s arms to look at his mother. Uri did the only thing he could think of and stepped into his line of sight.
Serene’s chair scraped against the floor as she jumped to her feet, face twisting with rage. “You—”
“Mx Coleridge!” Her lawyer followed her up and put a hand on her elbow to keep her from advancing forward and attacking Uriel.
Behind him, he heard the door open and bodies moving—he wondered if it’d been Claudette to react or one of the children, but it didn’t matter, his job was to keep the alpha from going after them.
“I apologize,” he said blandly. “I forget how tall I am. Maybe we should all just sit down again?”
Serene was meeting his eyes in a straight-on challenge, but she wasn’t moving closer, and she’d clearly got the point that Uri was much stronger than her and attacking him would be unwise. If he’d needed any confirmation that her emotional processes weren’t normal, the way she took her seat like a queen and gestured for all of them to do the same would have been enough. Perhaps the betas found it believable, but Uri—unbonded though he was—understood that kind of self-control was beyond impressive, it should have been impossible. A gift only someone with little ability to feel fear could brandish.
“You heard my daughter. My children do not want to be separated from me.”
“No,” Mx Yave agreed. “But you do want a comfortable life, don’t you, Mx Coleridge?”
“If you’re implying my client will give up her custody rights for money—”
“Money?” Mx Yave interrupted. “I am no longer speaking of money, I’m speaking of avoiding prison. Forgery and kidnapping would keep your client there for up to a decade.”
“That’s absurd!” Serene snapped. “They are my children, no judge in the world will agree that I kidnapped them.”
“There’s a precedent,” Uri offered, putting his own reader down now. It was his own research too. “A similar case, although there was no forgery back then, it was also an alpha who took the child out of the country without their omega’s authorization. The judge gave him five years in a rehabilitation centre.”
“Mx Simons,” she said pointedly to her lawyer.
“I know of it,” he said, but his eyes were more on Mx Yave than her. “Would you please give me a moment alone with my client?”
“Of course.” Mx Yave inclined his head and led the way out.
THE REQUEST FOR PRIVACY was a dead giveaway, but Mx Yave didn’t say anything. Instead he went to see if Claudette and the children liked the biscuits.
Mira’s cup was cooling on the table as the girl clung to her mum, but Tenir had shoved at least two of the delicacies into his mouth and looked like a squirrel as he chewed.
“Think he’s gonna need the recipe,” Uri commented.
Claudette’s eyes flew to his face, attentive and wary. He gave her a nod, not a promise exactly but close enough she went back to carding her long fingers through her daughter’s hair. “Ten,” she said without looking, and the boy froze in place. “One at a time,” his mother continued.
“Don’t worry,” Uri’s boss offered. “I’ll tell your mum where I buy them.”
Uri hadn’t heard them speak, but maybe they were whispering or signing. Maybe they didn’t need words; Mira pulled back, and Claudette offered her a tissue to dry her tears. The girl did and then, just as nonchalantly, took her cup and cradled it in her hands. She just held it, as if enjoying the heat, until her mother put her hand on her shoulder, and the girl sighed and took a sip.
Uri couldn’t quite imagine being able to ease someone’s pain like that. Of course, being a parent also meant being able to cause someone pain like that.
Claudette suddenly straightened, head turning towards the door, and Uri knew to turn his body so he was between whoever was coming in and her—an alpha instinct that he had no need to regret.
It was Mx Simons, although Uri’s nose picked up that the man’s client wasn’t far behind. “We are ready for you,” the lawyer announced formally, not crossing the doorway.
“Of course,” Mx Yave replied.
Uri heard him ask Claudette to come inside. He had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her that she didn’t have to, that they could solve this without her. She was a grown woman, at least ten years his senior, and she could handle her own life—whatever his body insisted about her needing shielding.
The first thing he noticed when they walked in was the other alpha’s scent had finally changed.
It wasn’t a great improvement, of course, because the slightly off-putting aroma of overly sweet flowers had now turned into something astringent like bleach. He saw Claudette hesitate out of the corner of his eye but somehow, even though it was her alpha bondmate who was angry enough to stink up the room, she took another step forward.
He followed her example and pretended for the betas’ sakes.
Of course, it was pointless, the betas might have been noseblind, but they were lawyers.
Mx Simons gestured towards the table. “Shall we sit?”
It was not his place to offer but his tone and posture were enough for Mx Yave to nod his assent.
“First of all, my client would like say something to Claudette.”
Uri’s heart skipped a beat; it was the first time the opposing counsel hadn’t needed to be asked to use their client’s first name.
“Would that be okay with you?” Mx Simons asked, turning to the omega in question.
Claudette paused next to a chair, eyes luminous but cold—her scent was muted, something Uri had some experience of but still found disconcerting. Like looking at someone’s expressionless face while your brain scrambled to make sense of their intentions. “Speak,” she said in a grave voice.
Serene’s
scent flared, maybe no matter how cold hearted she was, she couldn’t completely repress her instinctive need to control her omega and to have that omega give her a direct order...
It took her a moment to find her voice. “I want to apologize.” She sounded calm and regretful, the perfect performance if you couldn’t tell how absolutely fake it was by the pheromones that gave her away. “I made a mistake and I hurt you, it’s the last thing I ever—” She cut herself off, and to Uri’s utter shock, her scent shifted, turning bitter and sour. Pain, he could have sworn, if... “I promised to protect you.” Her voice caught, her eyes were shinning. She was...
Claudette’s own scent changed, inevitably reacting to her alpha’s distress. Apparent distress, Uri reminded himself. Or distress because she knew she had lost, not because she’d hurt her omega. But he wasn’t so sure his client could keep that in mind when—
“You did,” she said, her own voice tight. “And you lied.”
“I’m sorry,” Serene whispered, swallowing hard and looking at her mate imploringly.
Oh, fuck, Uri thought.
Claudette shook her head almost violently, her hair whipping around her. “I don’t care,” she snapped, the words torn from her throat.
And for a second, Serene’s façade came down, anger flaring like smoke in her scent. She was lying.
And Claudette knew it. Of course Claudette knew it, she’d probably known it for years, even if she’d loved her mate too much, or been too afraid of her to say it to her face before now.
“What?” the alpha asked, eyes widening dramatically. Her scent was bitter again—how on earth was she doing that? Did she use an unhappy memory? Uriel found the notion that people could read his emotions off him without his consent profoundly invasive, and yet, this was...
Claudette turned her face to the sight, smelling like a burning building, gasoline maybe, or some other poisonous chemical. She was stiff, probably to keep from shaking. “No,” she managed to get out in a thready, thin voice.
“Claudette—” Serene started, and Uri knew, with a certainty he couldn’t have explained, that he couldn’t let her speak.
“That’s enough,” he said, getting the small alpha’s burning glare in return. “She’s said no, and we all know the influence you have over her.”
“We are bonded,” Serene said slowly, and she was calm again. She was certainly angry at Uri, but she could control it. Just like she could control her scent. Just like she’d been able to control her bondmate for years.
“Yes,” Uri agreed. “And my client has requested to repudiate that bond.”
“I have,” Claudette added.
“That is all said and done, then,” Mx Yave intervened, drawing their attention, taking a chair and placing a folder Uri hadn’t even registered on the table between them. “Let’s talk about how we’re going to do this. For the good of the whole family,” he added with a mild look at his counterpart.
“Serene,” Mx Simons said in turn, conceding without argument. “Please take a seat.”
The alpha held still for a moment, watching her omega, who in turn was staring at her own hands on the table top, then took the chair her lawyer had pulled back for her.
“I think it’s been made abundantly clear that repudiation is not optional for my client and that if Serene were to refuse, we’d go forward with the criminal case regarding the children’s removal from the country without proper authorization.”
“Indeed,” Mx Simons said tightly. He couldn’t be enjoying being in such a weak position to negotiate from.
“The initial offer of economic support is no longer on the table either,” Mx Yave proceeded. “But if your client is willing to cooperate, Claudette is ready to make allowances regarding the children. She’ll allow visits to your client’s place of residence within Europa as long as your client agrees to a locked GPS tracker for all of them for the duration of each of those visits.”
The alpha stiffened at the words, but the self-control Uriel found so disturbing came in handy at times when someone else would almost certainly have reacted violently. “How many days a year?”
“None,” Mx Yave said. “My client will have sole custody, but she will agree on good faith to visits during the holidays as long as the children themselves want to go.”
Uri didn’t think any of them missed the use of the future tense, not the conditional. They had all the cards, and Mx Yave was playing no games.
“What about my parents?” Serene asked.
Uriel’s instinct was to cut off the whole family, but Claudette had made it clear her parents-in-law were family and that wouldn’t change no matter what their daughter did.
Uri’s boss took a moment longer than necessary to explain, “Nothing will change for anyone else,” he told the opposing lawyer. “But if she were to meet with them while the children visit, the tracker will be required, and my office should be notified at once. This can, of course, only happen during business hours, so I recommend your client plans her visits carefully if she wants this arrangement to remain in good faith.”
That had been Uri’s suggestion, which Claudette had grudgingly agreed to. It did require the grandparents to sign an agreement to honour Claudette’s wishes and notify them if their daughter tried to contact the children while they were in charge of them. She insisted it wasn’t necessary, that the grandparents were only concerned for the children and indignant about what Serene had done, but Uri had been a lawyer long enough to know putting things on legal paper helped ensure any doubts anyone might be harbouring go away real fast.
For a moment, Uri thought Serene would object, but she looked straight at Claudette and nodded instead. “Very well, as you wish.”
The way the omega stiffened gave away the significance he was missing to that phrase. But Claudette just waved at Uri a request for the papers.
It often seemed anticlimactic to sign an agreement after long and fraught negotiations like this, but this time there was an underlying doubt too. Had Serene agreed too easily because she had something else in mind?
It would have been absurd to expect anything else from someone who’d spent years toying with her mate’s feelings and wellbeing, but Uriel had also been a lawyer long enough to know he couldn’t control what happened outside a court or a conference room. The world outside was still a difficult place full of people ready to take advantage of others’ vulnerabilities, and he was just one man working with other good people to make sure that didn’t happen.
And whatever his gut said, his head remembered that being an alpha didn’t mean being invincible or always able to protect those who needed it. Maybe being an alpha was one of the forces pushing him to get in front of those who flagged, just as his upbringing was, and that was fine.
He was fine with who he was: a complicated, contradictory human being, with impulses he sometimes feared and desires he didn’t quite understand, and a deep need to help others he couldn’t completely justify with either biology or culture. He didn’t need to explain because he didn’t want to change it.
And what he wanted to change, or at least to consider changing, he would take one step at a time. Or rimming session, really.
Power corrupted, he’d always known it, but power also couldn’t be given up that easily. It was a gift and a curse, from the gods, or their genes, or coincidence. Some people had money, or good looks, or the right colour skin, or the size and force to impose their will one way or another. A lot of those people were alphas, and men, and white, and rich.
But power meant that all of them had a choice.
Serene had made her own. She signed the divorce papers and told her omega she would see her soon with what sounded like genuine regret, scent unchanging. Uri wondered if she could feel anything like it or if she was just angry something of hers had been taken, if her instincts simply demanded that she get it back any way she could, and she had no other impulses to stop her from trying...
“We will contact you about the time and plac
e of the procedure,” Mx Yave said in response, utterly pleasant while Uri was too angry to speak.
The other alpha didn’t respond to that, turning and leaving the room, followed by her lawyer, who took a moment to nod at them. Uri wondered if he regretted taking her on as a client, or if he was thinking that everyone deserved good representation.
Uri was an alpha too, but he wasn’t just an alpha. He was the choices he made as well. Someone with power but aware of it, trying his hardest every minute of every day not to use it for the wrong things, to use it for the right things. As he watched his client sag forward and press her forehead onto the glass table, trembling a little with unspent adrenaline and smelling like rain on hot pavement, he knew that for today, at least, he’d succeeded.
Chapter Twenty-One: Thomas
Thomas did a double-take as Carry burst out laughing right after Keenan scored. Carry wasn’t the expressive type, and on the ice he was usually too focused to smile, let alone laugh. Keenan, on the other hand...
He didn’t have long to wonder; they were using their bond and it took serious effort to keep up with them when they got this intense.
It was also completely worth it, especially now that they’d let him in on their secret, and he knew he could rely on them keeping track of each other even when they shouldn’t have been able to.
They were ten minutes from the end of the game, and he’d got only three assists, no goals, but he was grinning like a maniac at the numbers on the board anyway. He would tell Kyeran next time—
And then he saw an opening. The Salamander’s defence was running on fumes, which meant it was the perfect moment to implement a move he’d come up with when they were messing about trying to figure out the bond and his place in the line.
He signalled to Carry since Keenan’s eyes were trained on their rivals in preparation for the face-off. Moments later, Keenan took the puck and shot forward, almost bent at the waist, all the considerable power of his body propelling him towards the defence players waiting to defend the goal.
Carry was a blur as he followed, and Thomas bent forward to catch up with them. The Salamanders’ centre and left-winger tried to go after Keenan, only to discover the puck was no longer there but in Carry’s possession. In the ensuing confusion of that impossibly smooth pass, Carry gave it to Thomas.
