He’d remembered. That offhand remark I’d made when he was needling me about the silver spoon in my mouth. He’d remembered, and he’d made it clear that he knew more about what I liked than my own parents did.
I took the couple of steps to close the distance between us, wrapping my hand around his bicep and—not quite cuddling up to him. But almost. Maybe we could present a united front after all.
“You’re more than welcome to stay for dinner,” I said. “If you don’t have time tonight, we can come to dinner with you in a day or two. I’d like you to get to know Dimitri properly.”
My father looked from me to Dimitri and then back again, fixing me with a cold, acrimonious glare that almost had me cringing and dropping my eyes.
Almost.
Because this time, I had Dimitri’s solid, bolstering presence at my side, his hard muscles under my hand. My fingers tensed, digging in hard enough to hurt someone other than an alpha were. Dimitri leaned almost imperceptibly closer to me.
And that gave me the courage to look my father in the eye and lift my chin, facing him down in a way I never had before.
“The time to get to know him properly would have been before this absurd mating, Brook,” my father snarled. “We will be discussing this at length. You will come to see me tomorrow, in the office, at seven sharp. Do you understand?”
“I’ll be there,” I said, my stomach churning. The office, at seven in the morning, on a Sunday. It was a clear power play.
And it had worked, because he had all the power when it came to anything involving the company or my attendance there.
Dimitri shifted at my side, clearly about to speak up, and I squeezed his arm even harder.Shut up. He got it, thankfully, but I could feel his irritation through the bond and through the tension that stiffened him at my side.
My mother kept her mouth shut, too. Her husband had made his decree; she’d follow it. That was how the Castellis did things.
After a moment of even more painful, tense awkwardness, my father said, “We’re leaving, Whitney.” And he turned to the door and opened it without saying goodbye or acknowledging us again in any way.
The door slammed behind them.
I realized I was standing there, eyes closed, breathing deeply and clinging to Dimitri’s arm like I never intended to let him go.
I let him go in a big hurry, dropping his arm as if it’d burned me and stumbling back a step or two, needing to get the hell away from him before whatever his proximity had done to damage my brain became permanent.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded, stumbling mentally and emotionally as much as physically but determined to regain a little bit of my footing, in every respect. “You acted like you were—you—myalpha?I have call to tell him anything I want? What the fuck, Dimitri?”
He turned, face expressionless. “I thought that was what you hired me for.”
“I told you I was in charge! Except for the mating itself, I was the one in control. You’re here to back me up, to make me look good! Not to do exactly what my father wanted an alpha of his choosing to do with me!”
I stopped, panting for breath, chest heaving. Horrifyingly, I seemed to be on the verge of tears, so much rage and frustration welling up in me that I almost choked on it.
Dimitri stepped forward, knuckles white around the spoon, and I stumbled again, unable to stand my ground.
He stopped dead, face gone white, eyes glowing gold. “For fuck’s sake, Brook, I’m not going to hurt you! I would never hurt you.”
“Okay, so you wouldn’t hurt me, but you don’t have any problem with treating me like a kid, or a subordinate, or—a possession. You’re exactly the same as he is!” That feeling still lingered, the sensation of safety and security and courage I’d had when I pressed myself up to his side and held on to him. And it only made this so much worse. Now that it’d faded a little, I saw how he’d betrayed me—how I’d betrayed myself by going along with it. “You’re exactly the same,” I repeated, the last word trailing off in a hitch of my breath that I couldn’t control.
Enough. Fuck. I’d done this to myself. And I pushed past him, nearly blinded by tears, needing to get upstairs and lock myself in my bedroom, or my office, or anywhere I could be alone.
Strong hands caught my upper arms, and there was a thump as the spoon finally hit the floor. I struggled, thrashing and shouting, but Dimitri wrapped his arms tightly around my body, pinned my arms, and crushed me against him, hard and hot and too big to fight.
And I had to give in, going limp in his hold, tears streaming down my cheeks at last. I’d wanted to get away before he saw them.
Now he’d know how weak I truly was, how much I deserved the way he’d treated me.
He started to move, and I didn’t resist. We ended up on the couch a few feet away, Dimitri dropping down and pulling me with him, almost into his lap.
I hated it. Hated the way my body wanted to relax into it and let him take over. Stop fighting, stop arguing.
I was so fucking tired.
