My head went light and floaty, spots swimming in my vision. We should’ve been at my parents’ place by appointment, dressed perfectly, a cool and collected power couple making our announcement like adults.
Instead, here we were. Capering. In our underwear—one of us, anyway. With a wooden spoon.
My mother’s mouth dropped open, and one perfectly-manicured hand flew up to cover it. Her light blue eyes, so much like Blake’s, went wide.
And my father…his square-jawed face flushed nearly purple as he stared Dimitri down, one hand flexing as if he needed to restrain his claws. He didn’t have the height most alphas did, being only an inch or two taller than me. But he had the broad shoulders, heavy muscles, and attitude of the typical alpha, and the way his body had stiffened inside his ever-present gray suit spelled trouble.
“You should introduce us, Brook,” Dimitri went on before I could intervene. What had happened to my voice? It was like my vocal cords had been paralyzed. “Since we’re family now, and everything.”
“Family?” my mom choked out, just as my father finally exploded with, “You have no call to tell my son what to—”
He cut off with an incoherent sound as Dimitri moved, taking one prowling step forward, putting himself between me and my parents, the spoon somehow becoming threatening with the way he had it gripped in his hand.
“I’m his alpha,” Dimitri growled, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. “He may be your son, but he’s my mate. I have call to tell him anything I want. And right now, I’m telling him to introduce us. Or you can leave.”
Christ, what was the matter with him? How dare he speak for me like that! But the other half of me, the cowardly half that couldn’t speak up for myself anyway, absolutely fucking loved it. My alpha, defending…no, not defending me. Taking over. Taking control, exactly the way I didn’t want him to!
But I couldn’t put myself between two angry alphas. My spine tried to crawl out of my back and slither away at the thought of it, and I could only stand there, still frozen, fists clenched at my sides to keep my own claws from sprouting, and wait, either for them to fight or for one of them to back down.
The stare-down seemed to last forever. My father’s eyes weren’t glowing, because they rarely did—he said a real alpha didn’t need to posture like that. But everything else in his body language bristled with rage.
And then he backed down.
He stepped back, standing next to my mother, yielding to Dimitri.
I couldn’t believe it.
“You should introduce your alpha, Brook,” my father said, very low. “Since he’s now a part of my pack.”
His slight emphasis onmypack made it clear that he wanted us to think he was making a gracious concession, as the real alpha in the room.
I wasn’t fooled.
And I doubted Dimitri was either.
But he smoothly transferred the spoon to his left hand, managing not to make it look silly—and absently, I realized that this was what my father always overcompensated for, his inability to show this kind of effortless command of a situation—and turned to me, raising an eyebrow.
Right. My cue.
To do what the alphas were telling me to do.
And if I refused, or showed any unhappiness about it, I’d look like a brat with no self-control.
I felt cold, and small, and insignificant, and I’d done this to myself. Engineered this situation on purpose, thinking that somehow it’d be better than if I let my father engineer it for me.
“This is Dimitri Pechorin, my mate,” I said, forcing the words out of my dry throat. “Dimitri, my father, Boyd Castelli, leader of the Castelli Pack and CEO of Castelli Industries. My mother, Whitney Castelli.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Dimitri murmured, shaking first my father’s hand and then, after her palpable hesitation, my mother’s. And then he nearly gave me a heart attack. “We were about to have dinner. Want to stay? There’s more than enough. I made blinchiki, you know, Russian crepes.”
“Youcooked,” my father said disbelievingly, with a curl of his lip.
Right. Because real alphas didn’t know how to use a stove.
My mother glanced at him, biting her lip. “Russian caviar is appropriate with crepes,” she put in. Trying to defuse the situation? Being passive-aggressive? God, they were so dysfunctional. I couldn’t even tell anymore when they were sniping at each other or not. Or when they were sniping at me.
“No caviar,” Dimitri said. “Brook doesn’t like it.”
And then he turned his head and shot me the faintest twitch of a smile.
