What We Left Unsaid

“It wont be a big deal?!”

Flinching, the blonde looked away from the angry glare of the speaking man, instead fixing her own irritated gaze on the wall. Her hands gripped the table beside her, putting as much force as physically possible into her grip without doing any real damage to the newly replaced item. She needed something to focus her own anger and irritation on.

“He probably won’t hear of it?!”

Setting her jaw, she could do no more than continue to glare at the wall and dig her hands into that tabletop, her entire body stiff as she listened to the continued shouting. She could feel the gazes of every one of her new packmates burning into her, and the combination of that paired with the stress from the entire day’s events were making it very difficult for her to remain human, and even more difficult to remain in the room.

“It’ll be far enough down the road that he won’t care?!”

“Does this conversation need to be so fucking public?” She regretted it the moment she let it slip through her lips, but after it was done, there was nothing she could do to take it back. So, finally turning her gaze away from the wall and looking back up at her alpha, she tried to pull back the amber she knew must have been in her eyes.

But the hazel-eyed man did not look as if he agreed with her question, for he immediately crossed his arms over his chest and gave his head a harsh tilt to the side, eyes narrowing considerably. “Who, here, do you think doesn’t deserve to know the details of why their life is now in danger?”

“Matt--”

“Shut the fuck up, Johnny! I’m waiting for an answer.”

She had to grit her teeth as she stared straight back at her alpha, fighting to keep her face expressionless. “He didn’t threaten them, and as long as no one goes out of their way to piss him off, they should be fine! He was just reprimanded by the Council, so he shouldn’t be--”

“Stop bullshitting me! Every one of us is just as much in the line of fire as you and Zacky are, because we’re your pack, Ava!”

“I know!” she snapped, finally tearing her hands away from the table and slamming one fist right back onto it in frustration. “I fucking know, okay?” Then, once again realizing her mistake, the woman pinched her eyes shut tightly and balled her hands into fists at her sides. When she opened her eyes again, there were no traces of amber within them, and her voice was considerably calmer. “I know, Matt,” she repeated carefully, her tone much more respectful this time, “but I also know my brother. He will not hesitate to take out anyone who gets in his way, but he really doesn’t give a damn about the rest of you, one way or another... except maybe you, Brian, because you seem to have lost your ability to fake diplomacy.”

“That’s what you call diplomacy?” interrupted the one man she had been hoping would just keep his big mouth shut. “You were sucking up to that son of a bitch and telling him you would have loved to leave this pack in the dust! They welcome you in with open arms and you slap them in the face for it! That’s loyalty to you? That’s friendship to you?”

Spinning around, the blonde sent a heated glare at the man that was leaning up against the counters, arms crossed before him and smoldering green eyes glaring furiously up at her. ”No!” she loudly objected, “that’s what I call keeping my fucking mouth shut and trying to protect my friends! The complete opposite of what you did!”

“I don’t sell out my friends, Rinaldi!”

“No,” Ava conceded, her voice suddenly much softer and much colder as her icy blue eyes bit into his, “just your mate.”

Her words hung in the air for a long moment, one of the men standing behind her muttering an “ah, shit,” of discomfort, undoubtedly aimed at the tension that had suddenly filled the room. And even as her alpha raised a hand to slap over his forehead and run through his hair, she didn’t look away from those harsh green eyes that were staring right back at her. His face passed through several different expressions, some of which she was able to identify and some of which wasn’t, before it finally settled on one of utter contempt.

“And what a mate she is,” he drawled, “an elitist bitch whose only friends are those that left her ten years ago and have barely seen her since, and who had to mate with the mutt because no one else ever would have actually wanted her.”

”Woah!” the alpha suddenly interjected before anyone had an opportunity to react to the insult. “That’s enough of that! You two can finish your little bitch fight later, but right now we’ve got more important things to talk about. So, please, Ava, why don’t you go ahead and explain what the fuck you were doing taking money out of an account Drake monitors?”

From where she stood still glaring at that mate of hers in silent fury, Ava froze. Stealing a glance at the burly man, she flinched, not at all enjoying the look on his face. But even more, she didn’t enjoy the topic of the conversation and she didn’t enjoy once again being scrutinized under the spotlight. “It was my account,” she stressed slowly, carefully. “I didn’t touch any of the family accounts, just one of my own!”

“And you thought Drake would give a damn about that technicality?”

“There was no reason for him to have checked it in the first place,” she explained exasperatedly. “I haven’t touched that account once in my entire life! And I hadn’t used any of my other ones in years! There’s no reason for him to be checking it now. He must have done it only after he heard about your need for a beta pair.”

Her alpha didn’t look convinced. “How much did you take, Ava?”

Muscles stiffer than ever, she forced herself to snap her eyes shut, turn, and take a few steps away from the alpha, hoping to burn off a little bit of the tension. But in a kitchen filled with pack members, there was no room for her to pace, and she was forced to just turn right back around and look back up at him and that no-nonsense face of his. “It’s not important,” she tried to suggest, shifting uncomfortably at the feeling of multiple pairs of eyes on her.

“I think it is, Ava. How much did you take?”

She sent a very pointed look at him in response, gaze flickering for a moment around the room before setting right back on him. “It’s a withdrawal I made from one of my accounts, Matt! This does not concern the pack.”

“It sure as hell does when it pisses off your brother and gives him another reason to come after us! Just tell me what we’re dealing with here, please!”

The blonde gritted her teeth, but didn’t try to argue her point any more. “I barely left a dent, I swear!” she told him. “It wasn’t enough to piss him off!”

“And just how much is ‘barely leaving a dent’?”

“Practically nothing!”

“Tell me how much you withdrew!” he finally roared, apparently having reached his tolerance level for evasive answering.

After a long sigh, she gave her head a slow shake and looked away from her alpha to glare down at the ground instead. He should have just left it alone! “A couple million, okay?” she bitterly answered.

“A couple million!?” he echoed, leaning forward with disbelief written all across his face. This time, he shook his head, lifting a palm to rub over his face and just remaining completely silent for a moment. “A couple million is ‘practically nothing’? What exactly is a couple, then?”

“Not much at--”

”Ava!”

“Fifty, alright? Fucking fifty!”

”Fifty million dollars!?” the vocalist practically shouted in repetition, his head shaking as he looked straight at the woman with a look she really couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Ava! You stole fifty million dollars from your brother before you came here?”

“I didn’t steal anything! It was my money, and I left that bastard everything else! For fuck’s sake, it’s less than the amount the account has earned through interest since you guys left the pack!” When she took a quick glance around the room, Brian appeared to be the only one that wasn’t surprised to hear that particular fact, but even he looked surprised that she had chosen to withdraw that much. Her shoulder muscles strained once again as she flexed her fists angrily.

Matt looked as if he was about to comment on her account details, but instead only snapped his mouth shut and shook his head, sighing loudly. When he next spoke, his tone was much more contained. “What do you even need fifty million dollars for?”

But his softer tone did not relax Ava even the slightest bit. Instead, she froze once again, one hand tensely flexing and closing in obvious agitation. It took a lot from her to keep her tone the cold warning that it was and not let it get any more dangerous. “I have my reasons, alright? Now drop it.”

There was a growl that answered the little command she had dared to give. “And what are your reasons, then?”

The further probing finally had her snapping again, one of her hands flying out and slamming right back down onto the counter beside her. “You know what, Matthew? You take the goddamn money! I have it in an offshore account that’s completely untraceable, and I can very easily have it wired directly into your pack account. We can go to the bank bright and early tomorrow morning and--”

“Goddamn it, Ava, it’s not about who has the money, it’s--”

“It’s obviously completely about that! You clearly don’t trust my judgement on how to spend it, so let me get rid of all of those suspicions and just let you handle it!”

“That’s not going--”

“Fuck you, Matt! This is--”

”I am your alpha!” The fury behind his words was nothing compared to the enraged, amber-eyed expression he wore, nor the loud crack that echoed when he slammed a hand down on the counter behind him, breaking the stone with very little effort. Everyone in the room visibly flinched, including the redheaded woman who was still at his side. When she went to reach for her mate, he only shrugged out of her grip, moving forward and standing so that he was face to face with the outspoken blonde. “You do not talk to me like that!”

Ava had to force herself to fight the immediate urge she had felt to sprint away from the furious man, instead choosing to take a step closer to him, her head tilting back so that she could look right into his eyes with her own equally-amber ones. “You are my alpha,” she repeated, tone full of ice as she held her ground, “but I will not sit here and bow down to you while you act like them. I did not leave my pack just to walk right into the same old shit, Matthew; I came here because I thought you were a better alpha than that! You want to yell and scream and blame me for everything? Fucking fine! But I will not stand here and let you wave my personal business around in front of everyone! Find someone else to humiliate!”

And, with that, the blonde spun around and stormed out of the room, barely even glancing in the direction of the rest of the pack, all of whom were standing on the edges of the room, heads dipped down and arms crossed awkwardly in front of them.

“Dude,” she could hear Johnny say after she had left the room. ”Not. Cool.”

As she made a bee-line straight for her room, she purposefully ignored the harsh whispering that she probably wouldn’t have been able to make out even had she tried, but it wasn’t possible to ignore the sound of yet another fist slamming down onto the countertop. ”Fuck!” she heard her alpha shout. “Ava, wait! Come back!”

When she stopped in her tracks and spun around, she had half a mind to tell him to fuck off, but after taking one look at the torn expression on his face, she bit back her anger and slowly walked back down the long hallway and into the room. She had her hands on her hips and her head tilted at a harsh angle as she waited for him to speak.

“You’re right,” he finally told her, hazel eyes conveying his sincerity as he allowed his head to dip a bit. “Thank you for the reality check, Ava. I clearly needed it, and I’m sorry. Everyone, clear out; Zacky, Ava, Kat and I need to talk. And yes, Brian, that means you need to leave, too.”

As the other four headed out of the room, each of them giving her a pat on the shoulder on their way out, Ava finally relaxed her stance into one that was a little bit less bitchy. Arms at sides again, she inhaled deeply and drew all of the amber out of her gaze. “Thank you.”

Matt gave a nod of acknowledgement, but said no more on the matter, choosing to launch right into business. “We’re pushing Kat’s dinner to tomorrow night, because the councilman wanted to meet with the four of us tonight. I need you two to please behave while he’s here. That doesn’t mean you have to pretend to like each other, but it’s going to be hard for him to believe you’re mates if you’re trying to fucking kill each other, so just... tolerate each other, alright?”

“You sure you don’t want Brian to stand in?”

“For fuck’s sake, Baker!” the blonde snapped as she turned her head in the direction of the clearly-still-bitter man. “I was trying to avoid an all out war! If the Councilman hadn’t been there or if Drake had chosen not to come alone, everyone could have been dead after that stupid fucking stunt you pulled tonight!”

“That doesn’t count as tolerating each other!” the alpha interrupted, his an expression showing a mixture of exasperation, irritation, and, at the same time, amusement. “Jesus!” he exclaimed, running a hand through his hair before jabbing a finger in the other male’s direction. “She’s right, Zacky, so stop being a little bitch about it! What you did back there was incredibly fucking stupid, and I can’t believe you could be so completely reckless; I am the alpha and I managed to resist provoking him. But more importantly, I told you to shut your goddamn mouth, and you ignored a direct order. So how about you listen to this one: get your ass up to your room, calm the fuck down, prepare to spend two fucking hours of your life without starting a fight with Ava, and then be back down here in a clean shirt before the councilman gets here at nine. Alright?”

For only a second, the other beta looked as if he was about to argue his point, but after having come to some of his senses, he gave a curt nod and made a quick exit, not bothering to say a word on his way out. Ava was thankful for that.

“Kitten,” Matt started to say after the broody man had left, his body turning so he could look in his mate’s eyes, “would you mind giving me a moment with Ava, here? You were right, and I owe her an apology.”

At that admission, the pureblood could only arch her eyebrows, wondering if she had actually heard that correctly, and the alpha female had actually told her mate that he needed to apologize. When the redhead simply gave her mate a smile and a brief peck before obediently disappearing, though, Ava knew she hadn’t been imagining it. She had all of two seconds to process that before she was engulfed in a very large, very Matt teddy-bear-like hug.

“I’m sorry, Kid!” he told the younger girl as he kept her pinned against him. “I’m so fucking sorry for interrogating you like that, and especially in front of everyone. I should have been more sensitive to that and listened the second you called me out on making that conversation too public. I was just... I...”

“You were scared,” the woman finished for him, a half-hearted shrug bringing one shoulder up and then down lazily. “Your mate was put in danger today, and she hasn’t ever had to deal with the likes of my brother. I get it, Matt.”

“I can’t plan another packmate’s funeral, Ava,” he told her then, and she was almost brought to tears by the level of emotion in his voice. As he held her so desperately close, all she could do was wrap her arms back around him as tight as she could and curl her face comfortably into his shoulder, the same as she had done the day she had arrived after Jimmy’s death. “I’m fucking terrified that I’ll have to, but I can’t do it again. And it sure as hell can’t be my mate.”

“I know,” she said after a long, emotional moment, her own voice cracking a bit as she spoke. “I know, Matt. It’s okay. I promise we can keep her out of this, okay? She won’t get hurt; we won’t let her. And if we play this smart, none of us will, because we know what Drake wants, and we know what he’s not willing to risk. We have the advantage; it’ll be okay.”

“It has to be,” was all he said in response.

“Now,” the blonde started, amusement starting to seep back into her voice when she decided they needed a lighter mood, “are we over this whole you-totally-could-have-predicted-this bullshit?”

Though his responding chuckle was clearly lacking in sincerity, the hazel-eyed man still smiled, a hand rubbing up and down his friend’s back. “I know this isn’t your fault, Ava. It’s Drake’s, through and through, and I know you couldn’t have possibly expected what happened today to have happened. I’m sorry I attacked you. I was just scared and I needed someone to yell at for a moment.”

“Yeah, well, you should have yelled at Baker; he’s the one that started this war, and you know it,” she grumbled as she finally pulled away from her alpha. There was a small smirk on her face as she took a step back from him and looked him right in the eyes, glad to be shifting the conversation away from all of the death and funeral talk.

“No, Ava. Drake did. We’re not blaming his actions on Zacky, just like no one’s blaming them on you.”

“Well obviously Drake’s responsible for his own actions, but you and I both know today could have gone down a lot better had that idiot kept his damn mouth shut!”

“Ava, I know; I played along because I understood that. I tried to shut Zacky up, too, but, I mean, can you blame the man?”

“Oh I very easily can,” she informed Matt, clearly not providing the desired answer, given the fact that his expression immediately dropped the joking smile it had boasted. “I get that he hates Drake and all and wants to piss him off, but fucking so do I! Difference is, I’m not a complete and utter moron!”

“Ava,” he told her slowly, “you told your brother Brian was your mate.”

”No,” she quickly objected, “he assumed that, and I didn’t correct him. We had a chance to get that clean break, Matt! Drake would’ve been pissed that we refused his offer, and most certainly would’ve scratched my name off of the tree officially, but he would have left us alone! It was too soon for him to just walk away from the fact that Zacky and I are mates now, especially when he had made the wrong assumption and had actually come to offer a second chance to Brian.”

“Like I said, Ava, I know why you played along, but I also know why Zacky didn’t. You gave a speech about standing by your mate right in front of him, all while pretending Brian was your mate and calling your actual mate the M word.”

“But he doesn’t get to be territorial, because we’re not actually mates. Well... we’re actually mates, but we’re not... you fucking know what I mean, damn it! He should get the fuck over the whole Brian thing. And I only gave that little speech because it was exactly what Drake would want to hear, and exactly the way to make a clean break without inciting war. You think I want to stand around smiling at Drake, calling him my brother, and fucking being polite to that son of a bitch?”

The larger man sighed one last time, blinking his eyes closed for a minute and taking a deep, calming breath. “I know you don’t, and I know you only said what you needed to, but... I’m just saying, Ava, yeah, he fucked up -- and we’ll totally beat his ass for that -- but give him a break, alright? He was pissed, vengeful, and competitive, and I’m sure his jaw was almost literally killing him. Which apparently you know more about than me -- why am I not surprised? -- so I guess I don’t need to explain how much that might have played a role.” There was a very pointed look that the alpha sent the woman after that statement, but when she only stared heatedly back at him, he lifted his hands in surrender. “Hey, whatever. It’s between you and him; I’ll back off. Just let me hug you again, damn it, because I never want to remind you of them.”

Smiling softly, Ava stepped closer to her friend once again and let him engulf her in a huge hug, her cheek resting against his shoulder as he swayed back and forth a little bit. “You’re not anything like them, Matt, and you never will be. You’re a true alpha.”