BRENTON
Brenton left the bedroom quietly, watching her fall asleep. He fucked up and he wasn’t sure why he said what he did. He closed the door and leaned on it for a minute.
“That was some shit my father would have said,” he said to himself, resisting the urge to punch a hole the wall. He knew why he did it but he didn’t want to admit it to himself. He shouldn’t have had a drink. He shouldn’t have had a few of them while watching her dance.
He finally made himself walk to the den, where his entire real family was waiting on him. He entered the room to glares and condemnation.
“Alright, Brenton,” Troy growled at him. “Let’s hear it. Everything was going fine. She was fighting us a little but it wasn’t really a problem and you-”
“Yeah I know,” he sighed, sitting slowly down on one of the leather couches. “I don’t know. I’ve sobered up a bit since then and I just don’t know.”
“You had a great little time on the dance floor with her. And she called out later for fucking loving it,” Gabe threw at him, angry at Brenton.
“Oh,” Zachary growled. “I know what happened. He had a great time and hated it and lashed out. Because that’s Brenton Kingson. Refuses to have fun, refuses to like any one. Refu-”
“Fuck you Zachary,” Brenton snarled. “At least I don’t punch my way through life.” Brenton was actually just pissed she was dancing with other guys. He was furious that the others in their pride flirted with her while he was there. He hadn’t expected the jealousy and lashed out at the wrong person.
“Yeah and you’ll notice that I haven’t been punching her!” Zachary threw a magazine from the coffee table at Brenton. “None of us have lashed out at her. I don’t even have the urge to and we all know I was the one everyone was worried about! She’s just a chick! Just another girl who is living her life!”
“You did hate her the minute Troy told us about her,” Andrew’s tone was patronizing and it made Brenton’s head hurt.
“Before I knew anything about her, yeah. I thought she was some fucking plant here by one of our extended families trying to get at us.” Zachary fell back into the couch he was on across from Brenton. “Or someone here to get with us and get our money. It seems like she wants nothing to do us though. And she probably won’t after this.”
“We need to refocus,” Brenton sighed. He needed to a leader, had to be. There was nothing else in life for him except helping these guys achieve their dreams and be happy. “Let’s go easy on her for a couple weeks, no big get-togethers, no parties or bars. Just easy shit like dinner or lunch. Fuck, let’s try and not letting alcohol near her.”
“You make her sound like she’s the one with the problem,” Andrew finally growled. “She was fine until you lashed out. After that, I can’t blame her for being furious enough to get toasted. I can fucking relate. Tons of shifters wanted everything to do with all of you and nothing to do with me since I was the ‘help’.”
“You know we never-” Brenton looked at his friend. His fucking brother. They were all brothers at the end of the day, fuck genetics and blood relations.
“It doesn’t matter!” Andrew snarled. “You made her feel worthless. You fucking know better then that Brenton! Your fucking father use-”
“Don’t talk to me about my father, Andrew,” Brenton whispered, glaring at Andrew. Everyone in the room was quiet now except for heavy breathing. “He once told me I shouldn’t be your friend and I told him he could go fuck himself. I don’t need to remind you what happened next.”
“You going to apologize to her?” Andrew asked, searching Brenton’s face for a clue. Brenton allowed it, waiting patiently for Andrew to sit back down. When he finally did, Brenton gave him a response.
“Yes. I did before I left the room but she probably won’t remember that,” Brenton sighed. He wouldn’t tell them about her crying. She had held back the entire way home, obviously not wanting to shed tears in front of them and he would let her keep that privacy. “I’ll make her breakfast and all that. Try and make some amends. Maybe I should stayed sober tonight so I could approach her with a clear head. I fucked up a lot tonight.”
The guys around him all nodded. How nice of his pride, really making him feel better tonight.
“I’ll make the breakfast, you can give it to her,” Andrew finally chuckled. “I don’t trust any of you in the kitchen unless I wanted to burn this place to the ground.”
They all got a laugh out of that and Brenton heard the truth to the words. Brenton only played around in the kitchen when he was bored and he wasn’t good at it.
“About her saying she was a charity case-” Brenton started but was cut off.
“She is one. Let’s just admit it now. We’re treating her like one. Driving her around, buying her shit for the cat that the cat honestly didn’t need on day one,” Zachary growled. “I’m apart of the problem, I’ll own up. It’s only been a few days and I want that poor chick have the fucking world. But I think we’re going about this wrong. She doesn’t fucking want that.”
Brenton listened to everyone yell out that they thought Zachary was wrong. Brenton hadn’t even gotten the chance to try to give her anything and he felt a small piece of jealous float in heart. She deserved it. She’s been kicked and stepped on and throwing out be everyone who was supposed to care about her and she did nothing to deserve it. Shit, he groaned internally, she didn’t even know they knew about her. She had no idea why they were so helpful. They all had a soft spot for the abused girl, the forgotten girl. They were all abused and forgotten themselves in one way or another.
“What do you suggest?” Brenton whispered, silencing the room. Perk of being an Alpha, when he spoke, they all listened.
“I hated all you fucks when I was young. You forced me into the family anyways. You forced me in to the pride,” Zachary growled. “I didn’t want friends, I wanted more then that. I wanted something more permanent and I didn’t even know it. We do it to her. Bring her in without her friendship. She’s here, we can do it in the morning! Shift in front of her, confront her with why we’re hanging out. She needs to know and come to terms with it now.”
Brenton stopped and remembered Zachary when they were kids. He was always an angry asshole and his parents treated him like shit for being a white tiger. Tigers were weird about their family lines and having a white tiger was a bad omen. It wasn’t that anything was wrong with Zachary but the white tigers were rare as hell and were considered a sign of a dying family line for tigers. Breed outside the tiger families or die off. Other felines didn’t have the same problem since they had never been so insular or proud.
It had made Zachary bitter about parents and other shifters. No matter where he went, everyone knew what he was. His family disowned him from his inheritance before he was even six years old, thinking they would have a second child and everything would be fine. There was never a second child and his parents’ livelihoods and money went to distant relative, leaving Zachary absolutely nothing except for the young pride that forced themselves on him.
Brenton had been in charge of that. He smiled at that specific memory.
“You’re right,” he agreed with Zachary. “We bring her in. We bring her in the pride and treat her like a pride member, a family member. You don’t have to be friends with a fellow pride member. If she wants to ignore us seventy-five percent of the time, she can. Then she comes for pride functions only and we work it out from there. She might not want to shift but if she gets hit with the fever, we’ll be there. None of that changes. But we’re taking feelings and emotions out of it. Hopefully.”
“She still needs to trust us,” Andrew groaned.
“Then she learns to trust us as her pride. Me as her Alpha, you all as her superiors.” Brenton wanted to make it clear to them. “When she wakes up, we let her eat, drink some coffee and get some ibuprofen in her. Then we take her to the back and show what we are. What she is. Shit, just being around us might force the shift without me needing to go all Alpha on her.”
He had never done it, force a shift in anyone. It’s one of those things that separated a dominant shifter from an Alpha shifter. One was born an Alpha and that offered certain… abilities. An Alpha shifter could call out the animal within another shifter against the person’s will or force the animal back. It was most useful for half-breeds and children, though harder with half-breeds as well since the animal is normally dormant. He could also force shifters to follow orders by giving them what was essentially a very strong suggestion, but he hated doing that when it wasn’t completely necessary.
“It feels like her animal is just beneath the surface,” he whispered to himself. He raised his voice so the others could really hear him. “Shit, it feels like she could shift in a heart beat if she just knew how.”
“Really?” Troy looked at him curiously.
Shifters normally couldn’t see those types of things in others. It was an another Alpha thing, and helped him judge the moods of those he lead. For example, Zachary’s tiger was always right underneath the skin, ready to burst out and become a fucking man eater whereas Andrew let his cougar sleep fairly deep and needed to really call his second form out. It told Brenton a lot about the men around him. She wasn’t nearly as bad at Zachary but when she got angry earlier in the night, he felt the feline in her come up and get ready. He just didn’t know what that cat was and he really wanted to.
“Yeah. I’ve explained it to you before,” he nodded to them all. “It’s already three in the morning, let’s get some sleep and be up by eight. I have feeling she’ll be up at nine or ten so we’ll have time to prepare in the morning.”
“Do we tell Sheriff? He’s obviously got know what she is…” Gabe looked concerned.
“I think we should drop him a call and let him know that we are offering her pride membership. It’s feline business. He might not like it but…” Brenton shrugged. “He’s not a feline and we’ll stress that this is for her safety. He might have helped her through the Fever if she thought to call him but this way is better.”
“I’ll make the call,” Andrew mumbled. “Then I’ll get to sleep.”
They all slowly rose and left the room. When he was finally alone, he let his mind wander. He walked slowly to his personal bathroom and decided on a quick hot shower.
He thought about how it was to dance with her. Fuck, she had been so much smaller then him, it brought out every primal urge to claim her for his own. He hadn’t been ready for that. He was sent to find her by the guys and he found himself molded against her ass like he couldn’t stop himself.
He gripped his cock and groaned at how hard he was. If Troy hadn’t walked up on them, he would have tried to take her home, forgetting the entire reason they were there.
She was a fantasy made real, tattooed and feisty. Secure in her sexuality and how her body moved. He didn’t care if they were just trying to keep her from causing them any trouble. Gabe had been right, he wanted her. He wanted to see every inch of her where an artist had drawn on her body. And that little cat on her wrist was just… fascinating and a beautiful coincidence.
He jacked hard at the thought of her in the bed down the hall, envisioning himself there, making her body sing like she had wanted on the dance floor. It could have been him with her but he fucked that right up. He envisioned her curves and how she swayed to the music, how aroused she smelled while they danced. She responded to him like a champ and he loved how she gasped, feeling him pressed up against her.
He barely made it to a good point in the fantasy of having her in bed. He blew his load in the drain, groaning. And then she was at the table and he realized she liked all of them. That was hotter then he thought it would be. It was just so hot to see her in Troy’s arms, laughing. Gabe had been fucking right about them all. And Brenton had been furious.
He finished bathing quickly, trying to push the thoughts out of his head. He didn’t sleep easy that night.