Chapter 3: Future Alpha, Future Mate, Future Husband.

Adel’s POV.

“You look beautiful this evening, Adel,” Maddox whispered, sending shivers coursing through my body, as he kisses me on the cheek before passing me by to go speak to the men in the room.

‘He has a job to perform,’ Anara whispered to me, soothing me slightly.

‘But why does it feel like a rejection?’ I asked her.

‘Because your heart is pure…’

Anara’s words are interrupted by the sound of breaking glass.

“B*tch, watch where you’re going,” my uncle barked at the human staff member who likes to be called GiGi.

Uncle Beau, blinded by his selfish intention, rolled into the small library Pappa insists on entertaining guests in after dinner. Uncle Beau who is late, and slightly drunk, was a complete and utter disaster during dinner, being drawn to the side by pack members to try to tamper down his rage. Not able to completely sidestep out of his way, Uncle Beau’s arm checks mine, tipping my drink dangerously close to the white dress that my stepmother insisted I wear to my engagement dinner.

In lightning speed, a firm hand rights the tilting crystal flute, saving my dress. I hadn’t even noticed whom the hand had belonged to as the heat of embarrassment of my uncle's entrance crept up my throat, heating my ears, most likely coating them with a vibrant red, instantly cursing my step-aunt internally for forcing me to wear my hair up.

“He always enter rooms like that or is tonight special?” The quiet voice belonging to Maddox’s younger brother pulled my attention away from the frighteningly awkward display of my drunk uncle and Maddox talking.

“I wish it was just reserved for entertaining the Heir Apparent of the Blood Moon Clan,” I responded quietly.

“Must be something in the water,” Phoenix muttered almost too quietly for my ears to hear.

“Ma’am.” GiGi approached us, her hands shaking slightly against the silver metal tray as they flittered between the large shifter standing next to me, and the chaos in the room. “Young Mr. Monet was asking for us to bring out scotch…”

“I think coffee would be best, GiGi…” I smiled at the woman who was in her mid-thirties, stress lines deepened on her forehead as she looked back at me. “Tell Jasper to have Hunter, Lucas, and Nathan prepare coffee for our guests, and before you, Calista, and Celeste retire for the evening, please attend to the Alpha Apparent’s rooms once more.”

“Yes, ma’am… Thank you, ma’am.” GiGi’s face relaxed instantly as she took a full drag of oxygen in her lungs before practically rushing out of the small library.

“Your staff comes to you for direction but doesn’t seek out your father's wife?” Phoenix quietly asked, settling in comfortably next to me by the entrance of the library, leaning against the wall.

“Steph— My stepmother has no… taste for parties or what it takes to plan something like this—She more over enjoys planning what people wear…”

“You planned your own engagement party?” Phoenix’s voice holds a certain sense of shock that I once again drag my eyes from the chaos in front of us, to be pulled back in by his deep dark eyes.

“I did. Tell me, did you enjoy how your steak was prepared? Did I get it right?”

A slight smile ticked at the corner of his face, the only show of emotion on his stone-like face.

“I did. Tell me, did your stepmother pick out the outfit you wore on the staircase this morning?” Phoenix’s question brought a familiar heat back to my ears.

“No. She would shame me if she found out I let you or your brother, for that matter, see me in that ratty thing.”

“I don’t know. I sort of liked it. Were those orange polka dots on it?” The small polka dots he referred to caused me to close my eyes and cringe internally and externally. “Now I know they weren’t polka dots… what were they.”

“It’s embarrassing.” I opened one eye to look at the younger brother of the man I’m to marry in less than a week.

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Phoenix assured me.

“Promise you won’t tell your brother?” I opened both eyes to pin him with my best serious expression.

“Already have me keeping secrets from our Alpha?”

“From my future mate… Do you wanna know or not?”

“I’ve never wanted to know anything more in my life.” His eyes practically shimmered with humor he didn’t express on the outside.

“Cheetos.”

Phoenix blinked, as a moment passed between us, him clearly processing what I had just bluntly, and harshly whispered to him in pure and complete secrecy.

“Cheetos?” Phoenix asked me, confusion marring his deadly serious face, his head tilting down closer to mine.

“I’m afraid so. You see, I have an addiction. To Cheetos. It’s so bad that the entire household has been sworn to never purchase them for me. But there’s one staff member who will smuggle them into the house, and hide them in her— I mean their locker… On days that I get especially stressed out, I’ll sneak down to the kitchen to where my secret stash is and sit in the dark and eat Cheetos…”

“Cheetos—”

“Shh… Don’t say it so loud. I’m trusting you here with my darkest secret.”

“Eating Cheetos is your darkest secret?”

“As of right now, yes…”

“Then that simply won’t do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“We’ll make it our mission to give you more secrets in the homestead then. You can’t live with having Cheetos as your only secret…”

“What kind of secrets do you have, I wonder,” I asked the second son of the Alpha.

“Don’t ask me that question, Adel…”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid of what you would do if you knew the answer to that question.”

“You owe me a secret,” I tossed back at him, enjoying how easy the conversation is between the man who doesn’t easily give his words to people.

“I don’t like to be around people,” he responded with no hesitation.

“That’s no secret,” I laughed, rolling my eyes.

“Oh, but it is. Most people take my lack of conversation as me just being an a**hole. But the truth is, I don’t find many people that I don’t feel… I don’t find the words escaping me, or my skin is so uncomfortable that I can feel my skeleton wanting to burst out of my skin—”

“D-Do I make you feel like that? Uncomfortable?” I instantly grow self-conscious that I’ve been making Phoenix feel what I can only imagine is painful.

“There are only two people in the world I have ever met who make the feelings stop. My brother… and you.”

“Oh.”

His words leave me stunned. The chaos in the room that my uncle brought with him only seems to ramp up when Freddy is brought coffee instead of the scotch he requested. Tossing the coffee cup against the wall, my eyes watched the brown steaming liquid drip down the white wall as the overwhelming smell of coffee coats the air.

“Shall we talk wedding plans in my office?” Pappa asked Maddox, drawing Maddox’s angry gaze off Freddy back to Pappa.

“Yes… Nix,” Maddox commands his brother's attention away from me not even regarding my presence before following Pappa out of the library.

“Your secret’s safe with me, Chridhe… Till we see each other.”