Becoming Alpha

Chapter 11

Stefanie was waiting for her when she exited the classroom block after her last class. The car was in the car park area still running. She hadn’t even bothered to park and turn off the engine.

Kelly braced herself and headed for the car. She silently prayed and hoped that Callum would do as she had asked and stay out of sight until she was gone. She wasn’t in the mood for Stefanie’s twisted lectures today, much less her exaggerated twisted reports to her father.

To her surprise Stefanie appeared to be in a good mood. The woman did look around obviously expecting to see Callum or some other guy around but quickly returned her eyes to Kelly and actually gave her a smile.

Kelly was so caught off guard her mouth gaped before she quickly recovered and snapped it shut. Her eyes narrowed as she considered the woman suspiciously.

Stefanie either ignored Kelly’s suspicious gaze or she was too happy to notice it. She drove the car out of the school grounds without saying a word.

It took a few minutes but finally Kelly couldn’t take the curiosity anymore. “You are in a really good mood today,” she commented softly.

Stefanie looked her way and gave her another smile. “I received the best surprise today,” she woman explained happily.

That made sense, Stefanie was always happiest when she got a new gift. It made Kelly wonder what kind of gift her father had given his wife for her to be so happy. It must have been something very expensive.

“Dad bought you a diamond neckless?” she asked only half joking.

“What?”

“The surprise? By any chance was it something expensive and shiny?” All the humor was gone from her tone when she spoke this time and by the frown that showed up on her step mother’s face, the woman had gotten exactly what she meant and didn’t like it.

“If you must know…I am happy because my son is on his way here for a visit.”

Kelly’s mouth gaped again in surprise. Stefanie had been married to her father for nearly three years now and she had never heard that the woman had a son. In fact, she had come to believe that the woman held no interest in children, much less ever having any of her own.

This information was unexpected and shocking. “You have a child?”

The old Stefanie was back in a blink of an eye. She snapped. “You don’t have to sound so shocked about it.”

“I just…I didn’t know you had a kid.”

The woman chuckled like Kelly had said the most hilarious thing. “Tristan is definitely not a kid, he just turned eighteen. Anyway…your father knew about him.”

Kelly frowned; her father had never bothered to mention it. That made her very uneasy about the whole thing but she kept her view to herself.

They reached home and Stefanie joyously removed several shopping bags from the car. It seemed she had been emptying the shelves in the super market and mall before collecting Kelly from school.

Kelly tactfully excused herself and escaped to her room. Stefanie’s good mood was unsettling to witness and the whole affair with her son was even more strange. Kelly preferred to stay out of the way and just observe from afar.

When she got to her room her phone vibrated. She stared at the unknown number a moment before finally answering the call.

“Hello?”

“Kelly? It’s Callum.”

“Oh.” She remembered she had given him her number after he persistently asked for it during their class together that afternoon.

“I just wanted to know you are ok,” Callum said softly.

A smile crept onto her face and she forgot Stefanie and her son for a moment. “I’m fine. Just got home.”

Callum could hear the smile in her voice and he relaxed a bit. “Great. Want to do our homework together?”

Kelly frowned, she thought she had made it quite clear to Callum she wouldn’t be able to go out any time soon. “Hmm…you know I can’t go out, Callum.”

“I meant on the phone,” he explained calmly.

“Pardon?”

Callum chuckled. “We can discuss and do the work over the phone.”

Kelly sat down on her bed and began to remove her clothes. “Callum, there are twenty questions.”

“I don’t get your point.”

She rolled her eyes, of course he didn’t get the point. “We can’t possibly stay on the phone and discuss twenty questions, we will be on the phone for hours,” she clarified.

Callum chuckled again. “I have enough credit to talk all night.” And he wasn’t joking about it either. He had made sure to have more than enough before he made the call. If he couldn’t spend time with his mate, then the least he could do was talk to her over the phone. He was determined to talk to her till she fell asleep.

“You are serious?” Kelly asked a bit in shock as she realized that Callum wasn’t joking.

“Of course.”

Kelly shook her head in wonder. “Ok, give me a moment to settle down then we can get started. You can call back in…let’s say twenty minutes?”

“Or…I could stay on the line and you can tell me whatever or just do your thing and I will wait.”

She paused on her way to her wardrobe to retrieve some comfortable clothes. “You can’t be serious…”

“Extremely serious,” Callum responded with ease. Oscar who was on the other side of the room but could unfortunately still hear the conversation frowned and looked his way.

In a very low voice he whispered, “A little on the extreme indeed, Alpha.” It was a warning that he should calm down and not push her.

But Callum was already fighting with his wolf due to the distance he was forced to keep from his mate. Asking him to calm down and give her some space was a little beyond his abilities currently.

He needed to have some form of contact with her and for now all he had was the phone, he wasn’t going to hung up.

“Callum, you can just cut the call and call me back in a few minutes,” Kelly tried to reason with him.

Callum shook his head even though she could not see him. “Place the phone on the bed and pick it up when you are ready, I will not cut the call.”

“You know I could just end the call on my side,” she told him.

He immediately got agitated. “I would rather you didn’t. In fact, I strongly advise against it,” he responded firmly.

Kelly thought about it a moment. The tone of Callum’s voice suggested he was very determined and for some unknown reason it made her happy. “Ok, fine. You can stay on the line.”

She connected the Bluetooth headset so she could talk while she dressed and settled down. It would have felt too weird to just put the phone down and let Callum listen to nothing.

She could hear that he too was doing something has they spoke. She laughed and asked him about it.

“Grabbing some snacks and getting ready to start the homework,” he answered.

Discussing the homework over the phone was both a great idea and a terrible one. The good part was they found the answers together. The disadvantage was they spent more time teasing and commenting on other things than actually discussing the work which made a one-hour task turn into two and they were at risk was going into a third hour.

Kelly groaned when Callum yet again asked a question that had nothing to do with the homework. “We will never finish this work like this,” she complained.

“It’s not a problem. It’s not due till Friday, I will call tomorrow and we can continue,” Callum responded.

She was about to ask if he was joking but realized the guy was very likely very serious. She shook her head and laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“What if we have homework tomorrow?” she asked.

Callum didn’t miss a beat. “We will discuss it too. Two heads are better than one, remember?”

Yes, she did remember the saying, though she wasn’t sure it applied in this scenario. She opened her mouth to respond when her bedroom door suddenly opened.

Stefanie stood at the door with a very smug look on her face. On her left was her husband. Kelly wondered what was going on but before she could ask the two stepped aside to reveal a young man.

From his resemblance to Stefanie, Kelly knew she was looking at Tristan, her son. The boy was tall and lean with curly short black hair. In whole, he was good looking but his gray eyes looked just as mischievous as his mother’s. Kelly had a feeling the apple hadn’t fallen very far from the tree.

Stefanie stepped forward. “We just came to introduce you to Tristan.” She turned to her son. “Tristan, this is Kelly…Daniel’s daughter.” Then she turned and faced Kelly and proudly stated, “This handsome young man is my son, Tristan.”

Before Kelly could say anything, another voice spoke in her ear. She had forgotten she was still on a call with Callum and the headset was still in her ear. He suddenly sounded very angry and cold. “What handsome young man?” Callum demanded.