Page 109 of Curvy Quirky Omega

“He didn’t tell me why, pumpkin, but I could take a guess.”

Did I want his guess?

It was my turn to sigh. “What is it?”

“This case was all over the news. The trial took six months to reach a verdict and even after that it took a year for things to die down. If I got him off…do you really think he could have kept you safe?”

“Then…did he ask you to adopt me?”

“No, but he did ask me to take care of you if anything ever happened to him a few years before all that happened,” Francisco admitted. “He knew what I could do as a legacy alpha and hired me to write up his living will.”

“When he was arrested and then tried, I did everything I could to make sure he didn’t get the death sentence. Then I helped Frankie erase your existence as Daphne Thomas and created a fake persona for myself to make sure he had money and protection on the inside…but I’ve never sent him anything about you once we changed your name. I didn’t want to risk it.”

I wiped the tears from my face and some of those conflicted feelings settled. “Thank you for doing what he couldn’t.”

My father…had a lot of trauma. I knew that. I could see it with my own two eyes even as a child. I endured his pain when my mother was gone even if he refused to show it to me.

I trained with him every single day to make sure that I could protect myself if I needed to, even as an omega.

He took me to work and taught me how to read blood patterns – how to look for the bigger picture even when it looked like it might be complete. Then he taught me how to find the missing pieces even when they were all the same color and perfectly camouflaged.

My father tried to make our city safer for me and other omegas, but it was the betrayal of the person he loved most that broke him. Not long after my mother died, he was caught and I had to believe the grief of her betrayal made him sloppy.

After all, he’d broken his own bond with her. Felt her die in his arms. Saw her love someone else, ignoring him when he needed her most because he couldn’t give her what she wanted.

I don’t know if she wanted another child, especially when Ophelia’s death was so…weird. Blood thinners during a pregnancy? That didn’t make sense, but it was a long time ago. I didn’t think I could look into the shooting to see if my mother had anything to do with it, and I really didn’t think it mattered at this point.

The blood thinners would have caused a miscarriage eventually, if not death. The shooting could have just been an unfortunate coincidence. They did happen occasionally.

If I found out Liam or Cas was fucking someone else instead of me, constantly leaving to spend time with another omega…

That sickness had to be genetic because I would have done so much worse than giving them a peaceful suicide.

My father…he was crazy, but he wasn’t stupid.

After what happened with my mother, he probably knew he couldn’t raise me the way he should, so he made sure I would have a new life. One where I would be safe.

But he still abandoned me.

Understanding why didn’t change that.

CHAPTER 39

Lucy

“What does his will say?” I sounded calmer than I thought I would, given how upset I was.

“Well, all his assets are yours when he dies, but he’s still alive so I’ve been paying for the taxes on his townhome so the state wouldn’t seize it. I’m also the person listed to become your legal guardian in the event of his death.”

Francisco cleared his throat, sounding nervous, of all things. “But I would like to make sure you know that’s not the reason I would like to officially adopt you. I just want to give you a family…a pack. You have your own now, of course, but there’s more to a family than your bonded alphas, Lucy.

“I want you to have somewhere to go if you ever get mad at either of them, and need a night to cool off. I want you to know that if anything happens, you can always call me. I’m prepared to protect and defend all three of you. For anything. I don’t care what they do as long as it doesn’t hurt you and as such, I’ll make sure you never lose them the way you lost your father.”

I rubbed my thumb over my finger again and again to soothe myself. I may not have been able to accept it back then, but I’d lost my father…and then gained another one. “Do you still want to legally adopt me?”

“Of course.”

I smiled at that. Francisco sounded like he was desperately trying not to make his excitement obvious.

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