The Alpha King Call Boy: Chap 47-128

Fiona

I was alone in my office preparing some final notes right before the morning meeting when I received another text from my fiancé.

Alexander: How are things going over there so far?

You have an idea yet of what time I should expect you back tonight?

I hesitated, thinking over my options.

If I let myself, I could work here all day and all night.

There was always more to do. But I had to resist the workaholism and take care of myself at some point.

Before I could stop myself, I texted back and said I’d try to leave by five, so he and I could have dinner together.

I badly needed an evening off. I simply could not be in this office for fifteen-plus hours, two days in a row.

Not in the shape I was in right now.

And I was sort of the boss here for the time being. I did not have to do all this work on my own. There was a different approach that I could try.

I asked Gerald, Tavis, and Emmie to stay behind after the meeting was done. These were my three colleagues who had helped me get started on triage yesterday when we first learned about the problems with the project.

“I can’t thank you enough,” I told them once the rest of the group was out the door. “I couldn’t have gotten

back to the client so quickly without your help last night. Thank you for staying so late here with me.”

They all shrugged it off, but I knew that was just professional courtesy.

“Now, I want to talk to you about something before we jump right back into working on the project. The thing is, I am going to continue needing extra help with this, at least until Conrad gets back. I can’t do it on my own. The three of you are all qualified to work directly with this client, you’re all in the know about the project already, and I trust each one of you to make good decisions.”

I saw that I had my colleagues’ rapt attention. I could tell they were pleased with the specific compliments I was paying them.

Hopefully that was enough to butter them up for what

was coming next.

“I need to ask you to stay late again tonight. I understand you have families, and personal lives, and this is a last-minute request. But if you agree to do a few hours of overtime tonight, and each night for the rest of this week, I will make sure that you are compensated for the extra time and effort.”

Gerald was interested immediately. “I’m up for it,” he said. To my surprise, he also added, “Does this mean you, yourself, will do a little less overtime? Because you are here way too much, Fiona.”

“I agree,” Emmie said loudly, totally serious in her tone. “You work too much. Go home on time tonight, please. If we’re staying, you don’t need to.” Tavis bobbed his head up and down.

“That is the idea, yes.” I smiled at the bunch of them.

It was a strange feeling, thinking about my coworkers being concerned about my well-being. I hadn’t really realized that they cared.

The four of us worked together in the conference room for the next three hours. The front desk secretary found us there and took our lunch orders.

The catering cart arrived, it seemed, mere seconds later.

In theory, a working lunch with four people at a big conference table should work just fine. There was plenty of space for us all to work on our laptops and keep our takeout containers tidy and separate. But this day I found the situation absolutely deplorable.

The smells of all the different hot foods came together into a sickening mixture. Emmie was eating a bowl of chili-spiced noodles, Gerald was slicing into a lemon-scented chicken breast that was plated with several

miscellaneous side dishes, and Tavis had a hot sandwich piled high with pickles and onions. Add to that the slightly fishy smell of my own salmon salad, a dish I ate for lunch almost every day and usually loved, and I was clean out of appetite or any desire to ever put food in my mouth again.

My coworkers were all happy to be eating. I envied their appetites. They continued to talk strategy amongst themselves, sharing information and asking questions and collaborating, in between sometimes-sloppy bites of their lunches. I had to quietly excuse myself.

I walked to the ladies’ room at a casual pace. I never wanted to arouse attention around this kind of thing. I made sure all the stalls were empty first, then locked the main door. And then hurried over to a toilet just in the nick of time.

I threw up as quietly as I could, hoping against hope that no one happened to be standing right outside the door while I heaved. When I was sure I was empty I cleaned myself up and made a beeline for my office.

My hands were shaking as I twisted the cap off the prescription bottle. Vomiting sure could make you feel dead tired on a dime. I shuffled out one pill and downed it with some water. And then rested in my desk chair for one minute only, before I forced myself to stand and walk back down the hall and into the smelly conference room, where I simply had to get back to work.

Alexander

“We’re ruck marching today,” I told the pack. I’d met them in the gym instead of the field.

I felt the energy of their reactions. Most of the men

were excited. A ruck march was a good challenge, one that had a tendency to make you feel weightless and powerful by the time you were done.

But it was a punishing and painful activity. I caught a couple guys fighting a grimace as I paced back and forth at the front of the group, scanning their faces, reading their reactions. Maybe those soldiers had woken up in rough shape and weren’t ready for such a grueling workout today.

Those were the ones that needed this the most.

They’d probably be sick a few hours in. They’d remember this morning later and wouldn’t want to duplicate it in the future.

We stretched first, then loaded up and strapped ourselves into our rucksacks. They were full of weights and water. At least fifty pounds on each man’s back. We headed off across the length of the

training field in the yellow sun of morning, all the way out into the damp shade of the pine forest.

The feeling of all the weight pulling on my body, trying to drag me down into the earth, daring me not to give way underneath it—that was a good feeling for me. I loved it. I thrived under pressure, and this was as literal and direct pressure as you can get. A hundred pounds of pressure that I had to fight with full awareness with every single step I took over the rough terrain of the forest.

Yes, my own rucksack was a lot heavier than those all the others were carrying. That was to accommodate for my larger mass and greater lifting strength, so that we were all feeling a pretty equal challenge as we marched on through the woods laden with desperately heavy packs on our shoulders.

We marched through the thickest, densest part of the

forest, uphill most of the way, for three hours.

We took only one short break. The men rehydrated with water from their packs. I had them replace the lost weight with stones collected from the forest floor.

Once we were back in the training field, I called the King Pack to a halt.

They moved quickly into formation, expecting an address.

“Caldwell. And Jacob. Stay behind. Everyone else, you’re dismissed.”

Those were the two men with whom I needed to intervene. The ones that supposedly wound up beating each other in public a couple weeks ago.

Caldwell was a strong soldier who had served with

me and Kayden for eight years. He was a Gamma warrior, one of the lieutenants I trusted to assist with training new recruits. Kayden and I had both been quite surprised to learn that he’d been involved in the incident.

The other man, Jacob, was a young warrior who had joined the pack only the year prior. One of the two men I had interviewed months ago regarding that letter from Fiona’s father that he and another soldier delivered to me, after allegedly stumbling upon it on the palace grounds.

“You two are going back out,” I told the pair. “Refill your water and then get your packs back on. March that same trail we all just walked together one more time, just the two of you. Head out now. We’ll talk when you get back.”