Omega

Chapter 5

"You have seriously lost the plot," Shelly grumbled as I slid up onto the stool.

It would seem that she is still annoyed that we left the club early last night. She wanted to stay at the club. I wanted to leave. I pointed out that all of those hot wolf guys that she was referring to were, in fact, Black Ridge members.

"So, you're saying that you would be okay with risking an interaction with a rival pack member?"

"That? No. I mean your little bathroom dalliance. Sounds like you are kind of a hypocrite, Megs."

"Yeah, I am."

Alec was at the far end of the bar, unable to hear us in our little huddle. I'm sure he was listening anyway. The wolf had an uncanny knack for hearing secrets.

"Are you going to stop, though? That's the million dollar question."

"He's like an addiction that I am aware of and want to defeat but can't. There's something about him that I can't resist."

"I can imagine," she muttered. "After all, I saw the odd walk last night. Looked like you'd been given a pummelling by a rather gifted appendage."

I chuckled. "You're so polite, Shel."

The door swung open, slapping against the wood.

"No, don't mind the wall," Alec grumped. "Feel free to put holes in it whenever you want, Joey."

"Sorry," he muttered, rushing towards us.

"Hey, Jojo."

He nodded, looking and sounding as if he'd run here.

"I was talking to my friend Noah. He works behind the bar at the Jade Palace."

"Wait," Shelly said as she narrowed her eyes. "You have a friend there and never told us? Disowned."

"I'm sorry," Joey rolled his eyes. "But it should be the least of your problems. He said that someone asked for the boss and went into a meeting with him. The Jade has been bought out."

I could feel my heart thudding hard as I stared at Joey.

"As soon as he said the guy's name, I came straight here."

"Konrad Marlowe?" I asked calmly.

Joey nodded, looking at me with a lot of uneasiness.

"He can't do that, can he? It's in the West River territory."

"They can buy and sell as they please, but most alphas don't buy in other territories because they can't or shouldn't enter the area. We can't stop him."

I knew this was another message to me. I'd asked for this when I was dismissive to him after our interaction. Shelly looked at me. I could tell what she was trying to say without hearing a single word. This was retribution. He was goading me into the war.

The door slammed open again, and Alec shook his head.

"I'll just remove the wall, shall I?"

It was one of the elders. Gus walked directly to me. His hands went straight to his hips as Gus jutted his chin at me. The wolf was barely restrained. When he opened his mouth, I could see the barred teeth were reshaping.

"I take it you've heard the news?"

Tension radiated in my shoulders as I nodded.

"He's got balls. I'll give him that much. This is it, Megan. This is where you start to show the elders that you've got what it takes to be the alpha that this pack needs. How are you going to respond?"

"Gus, he's trying to goad us into a fight. I really don't think it's wise to rush into this. If we retaliate, we could lose lives."

"Doing nothing is not going to help your cause. Aside from your need to prove yourself to your pack, you need to prove to the Black Ridge clan and all the others looking at us and show them that you can lead. If you do nothing, you will prove them all right. Nothing equals weakness."

"And what would you propose? Should we buy a bar in their territory? Maybe a strip club or a cocktail lounge."

Gus shook his head, breaking eye contact with me. He made a sound that was too low for me to hear.

"You are proving everyone right, Megan. You're not worthy of the role of alpha. If Stephen were alive, he would retaliate."

"Yeah, and we'd have a lot of dead bodies to bury."

I felt a discrete finger jammed into my ribs, Shelly's way of saying that I had to pull my head in and accept that this was going to escalate regardless of what I wanted. I was to blame. I had to accept the repercussions of my actions.

"Alright, you are one of my betas. What do you propose as a course of action? Take on your duty as my counsel and suggest a path."

"I cannot counsel you alone. Your betas are a group, and as such, we must discuss and offer our suggestion as a united front. I will call them to a meeting, and we will decide what our suggestion will be."

Gus turned, tapping away at his phone. His lips pressed tight, restraining the smile.

Joey had moved further down the bar to talk to Alec, but Shelly was still beside me, jabbing her finger into my sore ribs.

"You need to confess, Megs," she whispered. "Tell them before they find out from somewhere else."

"I can't. They already think that I'm unfit to lead. He compared me to Stephen. Did you hear it? I'll never be good enough, and if I tell them what happened, it will just confirm it."

It was bad enough that Konrad was so cocky that he didn't care if his pack knew what was happening.

"What did he want? The territory?"

"To merge clans and to become his mate."

Shelly's eyes bulged as her mouth hung open. As it closed again, her eyebrows raised.

"So, you're telling me that if you accepted his deal, you'd get to have amazing, orgasmic sex for the rest of your life with that insanely gorgeous wolf? Do I need to call the doctor?"

"Seriously?" I muttered, giving her a derisive glare. "That's all that you take from that? Not the fact that we wouldn't be West River anymore or that he'd kill off the elders, which includes your father and the young males. Which, by the way, how many brothers do you have?"

Shelly rolled her eyes, giving me a snorted huff. She'd tell me too many if she wasn't trying to defend her point.

"Because you and I both know how our relationship would be. He'd keep me at home, not in the packhouse. I'd be pregnant constantly, and he'd be whoring it up around town with all of the pretty wolves. I know how alpha males play the game and I'm not interested."

"Yeah," she muttered softly. "Definitely not the life any of us want."

"West River is my right as a Nolan. I can't let that go with an agreement. I can't just lay down and let this happen."

I don't know what I would do or how I would respond.

It was shaping up to be a war. At the end of it, there would be blood on our hands. This was not the future that I wanted for West River.