We’re sitting in silence for a while, both with our own thoughts, until there’s knocking on the door again and I frown at Spence before I stand up. I open the door, not really wanting to be disturbed and wondering why my assistant let someone walk past him, but then find a gangly kid in the hallway. Interesting.
He quickly dips his head, holding out two letters. “I’ve got two invitations. One for Zachary Tempest and one for Spencer Raiden. It’s for the Night Gala, this coming weekend.”
I accept the letters, but before I can ask him anything, he darts off. What the hell? The guy’s not an Alpha, or a Beta. I think he might be an Omega. Why would they ask Omegas to bring these letters around? That’s... It almost seems irresponsible this close to the mating season starting.
Spence appears behind me and plucks one of the letters from my hand, opening it. His eyes going over the invitation as he chuckles. “Oh, fun. I guess that they either forgot that they kicked us out of last year’s party, or they really think it’s a good idea for us to show up again.”
“Just last year?” I don’t even open the envelope, I already know what’s going to be in it. “We’ve been invited five or six times now and we made it to the end of the party... twice?”
“True. Though, to be fair, those other times we snuck out ourselves, we weren’t kicked out. That was just last year.”
“Very true.” I lean against my desk.
The Night Gala is an exclusive shifter event. The invitations only go out in the week before it happens, to keep the location and the theme a secret for as long as possible. It’s mostly a party to show off your wealth and pretend that you’ve got your life together.
They invite Alphas, Betas and Omegas, since it does double-duty as a place for single people to meet right before the mating season starts. But Spence and I usually manage to get some actual fun out of it, even at the expense of the organisers and other people at the party.
“I think we might need to show up one last time.”
“One last time?” Spence raises an eyebrow. “What are you up to now?”
I grin. “We should let them know, once and for all, that inviting us really isn’t in their best interest... That it’s better for them to leave us out of these things...”
We only still get invited to these things after all the crap we’ve already pulled, because we’re from some of the most important clans in the city, in the whole area. So not inviting us is out of the question. that would get the event in even more trouble than we can make for them.
“How...” He shakes his head. “No, don’t tell me. You know that I’ll go along with it anyway, and it’s no use for me to get stressed about it before it happens.”
“Hey! We can still play within their rules, just... you know... our version of them.” I pick the invitation up again, opening it. It doesn’t have many specifics, just where the party will be and what time it starts, plus a couple of guidelines on what type of clothes are acceptable to wear.
If my family wants me to show up with a ‘respectable’ date, then I can give them that, even if it’s not exactly what they’d expect. I don’t need an Omega, I really don’t need one. I’m fine by myself. I don’t need anyone else.
Now I’ve just got to show the rest of the world that, so that they’ll finally leave me alone.
If this works, then maybe I’ll even have some fun at the party. Because there’s nothing more fun than shocking a whole room full of conservative hypocritical assholes.
9 Spence
“This is the worst plan you’ve had yet.” I glare at Zack as we walk to the cafe where Cyra works. “How is anyone going to take you seriously after we do that? Or me, for that matter? Do you really think this is funny?”
“It’s not like we’ve not done worse.” He smirks. “And it’s not like people don’t already think it anyway. I think that’s why our parents are getting more and more annoying about this whole ‘Omega mate’ thing. They’re starting to worry about the rumours about us actually being together potentially being true.”
“So, instead of letting them know that, no, we’re not in a relationship, you want to go the other way and actually make them believe that we are?” What has the guy been watching now? Did he fall and hit his head in the shower this morning or something? “And this is going to help us, how?”
“It’ll show that our family’s companies are very ‘modern’ and ‘accepting’ because they let their employees date same-gender people? Especially two of their highest ranking Alphas?” He opens the door of the cafe and his eyes immediately dart around, until they land on Cyra.
I laugh. “And anyone is going to believe that, after everything you’ve pulled for years?” I sigh, because he’s no longer listening to me, he’s already walked off to Cyra, leaving me to find us a place to sit.
Really, how anyone could believe that we’d be a couple... He’s way too into girls and Omegas for that, has always been. His going after girls is usually what gets us in trouble, which I then have to get us out of.
I sit down at the same table we sat at on Friday and Zack comes sauntering over, smirking evilly. “What now?” This can’t be good.
“Nothing...” He flops down in a chair. “I was just checking that her skirt was long enough today, wanted to prevent another accident. But she was wearing jeans...” He pretends-pouts at that.
I groan, wanting to strangle the guy for a moment,
