Will authorities investigate Darius Holt's transaction history considering that he has now entered the political sphere?
Any news regarding the whereabouts of Owen Mitchell is to be reported to the city police.
Darius threw his phone down onto the couch so hard it sprang back up and clattered across the floor. "What the hell! Who told them to send out search notices for Owen?" He ran his hands back through his hair and paced to the office window that stretched floor to ceiling. "Oh, my god," he whispered as he looked out over the blazing labyrinth of Falville. "He's going to kill me."
"Who's going to kill you?"
Darius jumped. He had forgotten his dad was still with him in the office. "Owen," he replied after his heart rate calmed slightly. "He said if I ever tried to find him he'd shoot me."
Daniel Holt raised his eyebrows, setting his book aside. "He said that?"
"I think the exact wording was 'I'll blow your brains out.'" Darius ran a hand down his face, feeling the rough stubble from not shaving for the past few days. He had been working too hard and too late to care.
Daniel Holt looked even more surprised. "Are you sure he's an omega and not an alpha in disguise?"
Darius laughed bitterly, scooping his phone up off the floor and sinking onto the couch opposite his dad. "Oh, he's an omega. Did you forget he's pregnant with my kid and that's how this whole mess started?"
"I didn't forget. I was trying to lighten the mood. You look like you're going to implode at any moment." Daniel Holt reached out and put his hand on Darius' knee. "Please take care of yourself instead of working yourself to death for this omega. No matter who he is to you or to the rest of the world, he's not worth it."
Darius stared at his dad in blank shock. "What?"
His dad seemed to realize that he had made a mistake. "Darius, I only meant that there's only one person you should be willing to die for, and that's your mate. I dated plenty of people before I met your mom, but I certainly wouldn't die for any of them except her. You need to use good judgment, Darius."
"But what if Owen's my mate?" Darius whispered, his voice breaking on that fatal last word. "What if he's my mate and I don't fight for him?"
Daniel Holt moved over to Darius' couch and rested his hand on Darius' shoulder. "If he's your mate, he'll come back. That's how it works. You don't need to do all this to try to pull him back. You can rest, Darius. Take a break."
Darius stood up. "I can't. He left because he didn't feel safe. I have to make the world safe for him. I don't want him to be pulled back to my side because of biology. I want it to be love and respect. I can't have a relationship based on fear and desire. I can't do that to him again. I won't." He walked back over to his desk. "I'm going to redraft a proposal before we go home."
Daniel Holt watched him from the couch, and Darius noted, almost subconsciously, that his dad did not pick up his book again for a long time.
Darius worked long past midnight, just like he did every night now, haunted by the phantom scent of Owen's pheromones curling in the back of his brain. He tried to drown it out with clicking keys and cups of coffee, but it was always there, taunting him with his uselessness. He added and deleted words from the proposal until his hands cramped. When he finally agreed to go home, he tried not to look at himself in the reflection of the car window, but he still caught a glimpse of his zombiefied face: pale with dark swaths of color hugging the bottom of his eyes.
"You need sleep," his dad said quietly as he pulled into their driveway.
No, Darius thought. I need Owen. The next day was worse. The board showed him no mercy, either for himself or regarding Owen. Some of them even said to his face that they were glad "the sexual distraction" had been removed.
Darius' blood boiled, but he kept his mouth shut. He had to settle for giving the fakest smile he could muster, and that shut most of them up. He was still the CEO, after all, and they had to show him at least a little respect. He went to a meeting in the afternoon, where he spent hours reading his proposal and defending it from the judges' vicious attacks. He was not surprised by their resistance; most of them were alphas and betas.
Only one omega had been elected a judge in Falville in the last five years, and she let everyone else do the talking, likely afraid of the consequences for speaking out in defense of the people who shared her secondary gender.
Darius was not surprised, but he could do without the headache it caused him. It took him forever to fall asleep that night, and he woke up the next morning hugging a pillow like a kid. He threw it across the room. He did not need comfort. He needed to work hard and draw Owen back to him.
But his stupid instincts were not nearly done fucking with him. When he got up, he nearly collapsed onto the floor. He grabbed the bedframe to steady himself. Since when had his knees been this weak? Since when had he been this weak? He was an alpha, for god's sake! He shoved himself upright and stormed into the bathroom to take a shower. But his body betrayed him all day, weakening his knees whenever he stood up and sending him into a world of dizziness and migraines whenever someone got too close.
When Noah stopped by the office on his way home from his shift, he immediately became concerned as Darius briefly mentioned these issues. "That's not right."
"Tell me about it!" Darius snapped.
"Get more sleep," Noah advised. "And make sure you're eating healthy and drinking water. That'll probably help."
Darius nodded. He could use more sleep, now that he thought about it, maybe even a nap. He scrolled through his inbox mindlessly a few times. His phone buzzed, and he snatched it up. His heart sank when it was from a group text and not Owen.
Noah gently took his phone away, powered it off, and set it facedown on the desk. "Rest, Darius. Or you'll be resting forever."
He knew Noah meant it as a joke, but his heart accelerated with anxiety. He could not die without seeing Owen again. "Fine." He got up from his desk, lay down on one of the couches and drifted into a dream where Owen called his name from the apartment door and smiled when he came around the corner, arms already reaching out for a hug. The smell of expensive perfume, a scent built into Owen's DNA, wrapped around Darius' body and soothed his tangled, threadbare nerves.
The worst part was waking up, because Owen was only a dream and Darius could only make indirect moves to bring him back into his reality. So, despite feeling like he had not slept at all, Darius got up and went back to work. He ignored every instinct pulling at his body, but it became increasingly harder as they shifted to something soft and shameful. Desires to claim Owen again morphed into a persistent need to be held and comforted by Owen. He did not tell anyone. He could not, for the sake of his reputation and the reputation of his company.
As far as the world was concerned, Owen had been a fling that was now gone. No one knew how much Darius had come to depend on Owen. They saw a strong alpha CEO and a weak omega assistant and assumed that the omega was the dependent one. Darius would be laughed out of every single business deal and social circle if people found out how untrue that assumption was.
So he hid behind financial reports and hid behind proposal drafts and hid behind his status. He hid behind anything and everything that made a good excuse until there was nowhere left and there was too much to hide.