My hand stilled. “Why do you get like that every time I bring up Gordo? I know you’re an Omega and all and you’ve probably got evil Livingstone magic in you, but it’s not his fault. You really need to get over whatever the hell is wrong with you. Gordo’s good people. I mean, yeah, he’s a dick, but so are you. You guys have more in common than you think. Sometimes you even make the same facial expressions.”
He snapped at me.
I laughed and fell back against the grass, hands behind my head. “Fine. Be that way. We don’t have to talk about it today. There’s always tomorrow.”
We stayed there, just the two of us, until the sky began to streak with red and orange.
AS I SAT BEHIND my dead father’s desk for the last time on a cold winter morning, I wondered what he would think of me.
He told me once that difficult decisions must be made with a level head. It was the only way to make sure they were right.
The house was quiet. Everyone was gone.
My father was a proud man. A strong man. There was a time when I thought he could do no wrong, that he was absolute in his power, all knowing.
But he wasn’t.
For someone such as him, an Alpha wolf from a long line of wolves, he was terribly human in the mistakes he made, the people he’d hurt, the enemies he’d trusted.
Ox.
Joe.
Gordo.
Mark.
Richard Collins.
Osmond.
Michelle Hughes.
Robert Livingstone.
He was wrong about all of them. The things he’d done.
And yet… he was still my father.
I loved him.
If I tried hard enough, if I really tried, I could almost smell him embedded in the bones of this house, in the earth of this territory that had seen so much death.
I loved him.
But I hated him too.
I thought that was what it meant to be a son: to believe in someone so much that it caused blindness to all their faults until it didn’t. Thomas Bennett wasn’t infallible. He wasn’t perfect. I could see that now.
Days ago, I was on a ledge.
Below me was a void.
I hesitated. But I thought I’d already been falling for a long time. I just hadn’t realized it.
That final step came easier than I expected it to. I’d already prepared. Drained my bank accounts. Packed my bags. Prepared to do what I thought I had to.
Which led me to this. Now.