Chapter 84: It’s because of that Alpha, Edward

"Why the hell were you so distracted during practice yesterday morning?"

Reid didn’t answer right away. He shifted uncomfortably, his gaze dropping to the wooden table as he suddenly found the grain of the wood fascinating.

He was actively wasting time, tracing an invisible line with his finger, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he swallowed whatever pride he had left.

The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy, until the tension was practically vibrating in the air.

​Finally, he let out a sharp, frustrated breath. "It’s because of that Alpha, Edward."

​I blinked, completely thrown off. "Edward Stein?" I asked, my voice laced with genuine confusion. "What the hell does he have to do with your distraction?"

​Reid’s head snapped up, his smoky eyes flashing with a sudden, volatile heat. "Because he was hitting on you, damnit!"

​I went completely silent. I tilted my head a bit, staring at him as if he had just started speaking a foreign language, before bringing my gaze squarely back to his flushed face. "What? Reid, to him, I’m a Beta."

​"Yeah, a pretty Beta," Reid hissed, his hands clenching into tight fists on the tabletop. He was practically vibrating with irritation. "He was clearly hitting on you, smiling all teeth, acting like some fucking gentleman."

​"That’s just because he’s nice, McCoy," I said, defensive logic taking over.

​"Nice my ass!" Reid barked, completely refusing to have it. He leaned forward, his frozen pine pheromones spiking with a sharp, possessive bite. "He’s trying to get on your good side. He’s trying to get with you even though he thinks you’re a Beta. He’ll fuck you either way!"

​"Reid!" I shouted, shocked by the sheer, unfiltered crudeness of his words.

​But Reid was entirely convinced, his chest heaving as he poured out the frustration he’d been bottling up. "I don’t like him. And I don’t like him smiling at you. When I saw him asking you out for dinner and drinks—"

​"—you just lost your mind and threatened to expose my secret," I finished for him, the pieces of the puzzle crashing together so hard it left me breathless.

​Reid instantly snapped his mouth shut, his jaw tightening into a rigid line as he aggressively turned his face away from me, refusing to meet my eyes.

​I slowly brought my hand up, covering my mouth as the weight of the realization hit me. This was huge. This was absolutely insane. In the end, the great Reid McCoy hadn’t been acting out of strategic malice or cold calculation. He was just jealous. Pure, unadulterated, territorial jealousy.

And he had let his mind spiral so far out of control thinking about Edward Stein approaching me that he completely lost his focus and butchered his own leg during practice.

​I swallowed hard, a sudden, unfamiliar pitter-patter echoing in my chest that had absolutely nothing to do with fear.

​"Well..." I started, my voice slightly uneven before I cleared my throat. "Why didn’t you just tell me?"

​Reid scoffed, a bitter, self-deprecating sound as he kept his eyes glued to the far wall. "Because it’s a shitty-ass reason, Cap. I planned to take it to my grave—especially after I beat his ass on the ice next Friday. But you wanted to know by all means and gave me a damn ultimatum. You said if I want you to stay, I gotta tell you. So..."

​He trailed off, looking thoroughly annoyed with himself for spilling his guts.

​I looked at him for a long moment, watching the rigid line of his shoulders slowly begin to ease. I let out a long, slow sigh, the residual anger I’d been carrying all day finally draining out of me.

​"Now that you’ve gotten it off your chest," I said smoothly, leaning back in my chair, "it doesn’t change the fact that you’re still a selfish, obnoxious, arrogant prick." I let a tiny, microscopic soften enter my voice. "But... it makes your heart feel a lot lighter now, doesn’t it?"

Reid pouted, aggressively turning his head away to stare at the kitchen cabinets as he muttered, "Yeah. It does."

​I let out a soft sigh, watching the way his jaw worked. The raw intensity of his irritation was fading, leaving him looking less like a threatening predator and more like a thoroughly frustrated rookie.

​"I don’t plan to get with Edward, even if he does have an ulterior motive," I said smoothly, my voice steady. "So cheer up and stop thinking about it."

​I couldn’t just brush his reaction off as entirely useless or irrational. At the end of the day, Reid was an Alpha—and right now, whether my pride liked it or not, he was my Alpha.

The biological bond was already wrapped around us, and it was entirely natural for an Alpha to become violently territorial over their Omega. I couldn’t blame his instincts for flaring up when another man stepped into my space, even if his way of handling it was completely toxic.

​Reid’s smoky grey eyes snapped back to me, the dark pupils still slightly dilated.

"Don’t go out with him," he commanded, his voice dropping into a rough, gravelly warning. "Even if it’s just for drinks. If he tries to force himself on you, you can’t handle it—even if you train thrice as hard. Alphas are built differently, Cap. Don’t be stupid."

​I didn’t respond to the command. I just sat there, staring into space. The frantic, chaotic energy of the afternoon had thoroughly drained away, leaving something surprisingly grounded in its place.

​I looked up, locking my eyes with his flushed face.

​"You know," I said, a faint, wry smile tugging at the corner of my lips, "if you had acted even half as considerate as you are right now from the very beginning... I don’t think I’d be annoyed by your ass this much."

Reid did not answer, and I couldn’t help but think that, in the end, he was really just a hot-headed kid.

For all his massive size on the ice and his terrifying dominance in the bedroom, his emotional logic right now was completely unrefined, driven entirely by raw, reactive instinct.

​Without even thinking about it, my captain’s habits kicked in. I instinctively reached across the table, my hand extending toward his face, and lightly patted the top of his head.

I ruffled the soft, damp locks of his blonde hair, a gentle, comforting gesture meant to coax him out of his heavy sulk and cheer him up.

​Reid’s entire body went rigidly still. His smoky grey eyes widened slightly in absolute shock before his brow furrowed into a deep, defensive frown.

​"What are you doing?" he growled, though his voice lacked any real bite. He didn’t swat my hand away, but his jaw clenched hard as he stared at me. "I’m not a kid, Cap."