Not just the Beta (Oriana and Slade) novel Chapter 63

Slade

The day was here, he’d finally passed the final exam for Alpha College and was packed up and ready to leave. Had been released from that moonstone band around his wrist and said goodbye to Alpha Gretta. He was the last of his classmates to leave, seeing as he’d taken time off after Ori’s leaving, to help with the beginning of the search for her, he was a week behind everyone else.

He was sitting outside the main building with his suitcase in the departure zone, could feel Palmer and Yuri were here to collect him. He stood as the car came into view, waved them to stay in the car, as he tossed his suitcase in the boot and then climbed into the backseat. “Any trouble boys?” he asked.

“Nah.” Palmer chuckled.

“The boy looked pissed as we drove passed him, and waved from the highway.” Yuri chuckled.

“How far did he get?” Slade asked.

“About an hour or so away, he called Anders and told him he had a flat tyre, that he was going to need more time on his job because he now had to stop and fix it.”

“And?” Slade asked.

“Anders looked right at both of us, we’d been the ones to insist he get that time limit like Ori did, to see if he could do the job, stay awake and arrive on time. He frowned right at us. We made a point of hanging out with the Alpha Unit today, were with our dads taking instructions so to speak.”

Palmer smiled at him in the revision mirror.

“Did he?” Slade asked.

“No, though he sounded reluctant in his words of ‘sorry son, 13 hours is all you get. Hayden whined and Anders actually hung up. It took Hayden all of 10 minutes to call back and tell his dad his spare had been flat as well.” Yuri snorted.

“Complain it was on purpose?” he asked.

“We’re not so stupid as to puncture it.” Yuri smiled at him. “Just let all the air out was all.”

Palmer chuckled “Anders rounded on him for not being responsible and checking all the tyre pressures before leaving, for not maintaining his car as well.”

“We offered to come and get yet, seeing as Hayden wasn’t going to make it in the time frame. Your dad waved us off to come and pick you up. It was our plan all along. A little payback for what he did to Ori’s car. Though we didn’t slash his tyres and leave a trail that led back to us,” Palmer stated.

“Good. He can’t blame anyone but himself for it.” Slade murmured.

“Other than that, he’s pulled his head in since that week in the cells.” Yuri sighed now “Your dad is currently happy with him.”

“That’s not my problem,” Slade stated, and it wasn’t. That boy would not be the future Beta, he was certainly not going to ascend up the line and become the actual Beta. No, he was going to be relegated to nothing inside Highland Hills, it was all just a matter of time.

They arrived home, and he got out of the car to find his mother and father along with his sister Dariah and brother Clay all on the front steps waiting for him. The Alpha Unit were by the packhouse front doors, not a formal meet and greet, but respect showing, his family seeing him was more important than pack lineup.

He got out of the car and smiled for the first time in a longtime, at his sister Dariah. They had a good relationship, and she’d texted him three or four times a week the entire time he’d been gone. He walked over and hugged her. “No one gave you a hard time while I was gone?”

“Of course not.” She smiled and hugged him back. “I did miss you though.”

“I missed you too,” he told her honestly.

He turned to Clay and put that boy right in a headlock and knuckled his hair, “Hey,” the boy struggled. “Why do you have to do that?”

Slade let him go and watched him run a hand through his hair. “Cos it’s fun for me, and I ain’t been able to do it for a whole year.” He smiled at his little brother. “Got taller while I was away, I see.”

“Yes, I’ll be bigger than you one day.”

“We’ll see.” was all he said to that one, who knew he could well be taller and bigger.

“Slade.” His father frowned at him.

“Father, mother.” He stated simply, greeting them formally. As he had been doing all year long when they called to speak with him. He saw his mother sigh and his father’s frown deepen. “I see the Beta, you appointed couldn’t do the simple task of picking me up from Alpha College on time; unlike my former one. Irresponsible of him, anything could have happened to me standing around waiting on Goddess only knows how long for him to turn up.”

“Someone sabotaged my car,” Hayden stated.

“Forgive me father… I guess seeing Hayden there out the front of the packhouse reminded me of everything that happened the last time, I arrived home.” He stated, keeping the anger out of his words. He saw his own father frown. “I guess I’m not quite over it,” he added.

“Son,” his father sighed, “It wasn’t Hayden’s fault. You can’t blame him for what happened.”

“Hmm, I don’t know if I feel the same way. Considering his comments that day. It certainly sounded liked he was enjoying Ori’s pain to me. I’ve yet to hear him apologise for that even.”

“He was just excited about becoming your Beta.” He heard Anders state from across the room.

“Excited?… More like gloating and rubbing it in I would say.” He muttered and took a USB from his

pocket, held it out to his father.

“I have investigated, as an Alpha heir should, the future Beta, that you insisted I take on. Even after you broke the Alpha deal you struck with me. It’s an interesting read, all the things I’ve found out that he did over the years. To make Oriana look irresponsible in her father’s eyes, or actively tried to sabotage her, just so he could get her title. I have several copies.” He stated as his father took it with a frown.

“If you don’t punish that boy accordingly, I’ll out him to the entire pack myself.” He turned and walked to the door, stopped when his father stated his name, sounding more than exasperated with him.

“I haven’t had so much as a beer in the past year, or hung out with Palmer and Yuri, I’m going to go and do that. You deal with that, or I will, as the heir to the pack, and my wraith, I think, will be worse than yours or your Beta’s…don’t you think?” He murmured, and then he walked off away from both of them.

There would not be peace and harmony between him and his father as there had once been, or between him and the Alpha Unit either. None of them had apologised to him for what they’d done. It had been a year now and still, they’d not admitted they were in the wrong.

It disappointed him completely where all of them were concerned. His father had told him Ori chose to leave; they did not make her do that. So, her not being here in the pack now, that was not their fault. Slade, however, did not see it that way at all.

It was completely their fault. Her leaving was the fallout from what they had done to her. The way they had done it, actually. She might have stayed here if they’d done things the right way, in private in his father’s office as it should have been done, and before the announcement to the pack was made.

Slade still believed she would have stayed if he’d been allowed to talk to her; tell her the way he’d planned to. Explain his reasons before she’d been removed from him and pushed aside, that she would have understood, it wasn’t what he wanted, but did it in order to save her family from being banished. As he’d understood, that was what was going to happen at the time.