My Alpha Boss Gave Me Triplets – Episode 07
The man nearest Evie released her uniform and tried to laugh. “Why so serious? We’re only having a little fun with her.” He gestured toward the table as though demanding that an employee strip were a harmless part of the game.
His companion joined in. “What’s the big deal? Why are you protecting this human anyway?” The question voiced the assumption shared by nearly everyone in the room. An Alpha might punish someone for disrespecting his property, but few expected Leopold to care about the dignity of a human employee.
Leopold stepped between them and Evie. He did not raise his voice, but the controlled anger in it carried across the club. “You think I care about two buildings? I’ll earn that back in my sleep.”
Relief loosened the knot in Evie’s chest. The loss that had seemed large enough to destroy her barely mattered to him. She had been terrified of his reaction, expecting him to add the debt to every favor he believed she owed. Yet Leopold did not even look at the scattered chips. His attention remained fixed on the men who had cornered her, as though the insult to her mattered more than the property.
“Taking advantage of one of my employees is a different story,” he continued. With a single command, he summoned security. The men’s bravado collapsed as guards surrounded the table.
“What the hell, Leo?” one protested while security seized his arms. He appealed to Leopold as an equal, apparently expecting status to excuse what he had done. Leopold’s expression did not change.
The offenders were dragged away despite their threats and complaints. Leopold did not soften when they invoked friendships or business relationships, making it clear that neither wealth nor rank excused their conduct. Conversations slowly resumed around the club, but the excitement in the room had altered. Guests watched Evie with new interest, trying to understand why the Alpha had intervened personally. Everyone had witnessed him defend a human employee as fiercely as he might defend a member of his own pack.
Evie looked down at the chips across the floor. Leopold had protected her, but she had still failed the task he gave her. Gratitude could not erase the knowledge that his careless command had placed her at a table where everyone understood the stakes except her. She crouched and began gathering the chips, hoping to recover something from the wreckage and prove she was not waiting for him to solve every problem.
Leopold caught her wrist and pulled her upright. “Get your hands off the floor.” Seeing her kneel among the men’s discarded chips awakened an anger he could not name. She had already been made to feel powerless, and her instinct was still to clean up damage that had never been her fault.
She winced as his fingers pressed near the burned skin beneath her bandage. Leopold immediately loosened his hold, feeling an answering sting in his own hand. The strange echo of her pain only increased his agitation.
“I was trying to help,” Evie said. “Those were your chips.” She could not understand how the man who had just defended her could sound angry with her for trying to repair the damage.
Leopold saw her reaching for the symbols of his wealth and remembered the request she had made after their night together. He had begun to question his judgment when he found her working despite the money he sent, but suspicion was safer than admitting he might have wronged her. Every time he tried to understand why she affected him, wealth seemed to appear between them again. He seized on it because the alternative was accepting a bond capable of controlling even an Alpha.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. His frustration was aimed as much at the invisible bond as at her. He did not know why her pain reached inside his body, why her danger drove him into a rage, or why he could not leave her alone after ordering her out of his life.
Evie mistook that confusion for contempt. “I’m cleaning up the mess you left me with.” She pulled her wrist free. “You don’t have to make everything sound like a crime.” She wished he could understand that responsibility, not greed, had kept her at the table and brought her to her knees afterward. Instead, every attempt to help seemed to become another reason for him to judge her.
Leopold should have apologized. Instead, pride reached his mouth first. “Is there anything on your mind besides money?”
The accusation erased the gratitude Evie had felt only moments earlier. He had ordered her into the game, abandoned her without instructions, and returned in time to save her from men who wanted to humiliate her. She could not keep adjusting her feelings every time he shifted from protector to persecutor. None of his help gave him the right to humiliate her himself, and no amount of wealth made his assumptions true.
She straightened slowly, meeting his gaze despite the difference in their power. “You really don’t know anything about me.”
Leopold watched hurt replace fear in her expression and felt an answering pressure inside his chest, subtler than the pain from her hands but no less disturbing. He had rescued her from the men at the table, only to wound her with the same assumption that had separated them from the beginning.