Page 98 of Captive Omega

Back to when I was Resa, the new real estate assistant, and Henry was the experienced realtor who caught the new hire cursing and kicking the photocopier.

He suggested checking the manual for instructions.

“This is more fun.” I’d grinned. “Want to kick it with me?”

He’d looked confused. I could understand why. He was serious and nice. A beta, and I liked those.

I’d perfumed three years before and knew to stay away from alphas, not wanting any to take over my life. I liked my independence, so I didn’t go to Haven Academy. Instead, I stuck with betas and did everything I could to dodge alphas.

Haven Academy, the finishing school for omegas, came with the opportunity to learn any instrument, a luxury gym, dance classes, small classrooms with a personalized teaching experience, meals prepared by gourmet chefs, and the biggest prize of all: leaving at the end of those four years matched with a handsome, wealthy alpha.

I spent hours poring over the glossy brochure Mom gave me. It hadn’t taken long for one thing to stick out as I took in the boarding school with the black metal gates: for a building so pretty, why did it feel like I’d be stepping into a cage?

I liked my independence too much to give it up. What if I got to Haven and decided I didn’t like it? Could I leave? The glossy brochure was frustratingly vague about that part.

There was no Haven Academy when Mom perfumed. Just free heat clinics, and she briefly went to one until she met Dad.

Mom thought Haven Academy would give me an opportunity to have the wealth that she never did. When you become a parent, you want better for your child than you had for yourself, she and Dad would tell me.

But when my parents gently pushed for me to go, I pushed back. “No. That’s not the future I want.”

I wanted to choose my own.

They loved me enough not to push me to do something I didn’t want.

Now I wonder.

If I’d gone to Haven, I wouldn’t have needed to visit my regular free heat clinic. I wouldn’t have found it full and desperately hunted out another.

And I wouldn’t have been in that suite when the door opened and…

My hand tightens around the phone and my breathing turns shallow as my throat closes up.

A tear splashes onto my cheek and I swipe it away, lifting my head to stare up at the ceiling as I will the rest away. I could cry an ocean of tears and nothing would change. It would still hurt. I would still be stuck trying to meld together the broken pieces of my life.

And those people who hurt me, every single one of them, will pay for it.

I turn off the phone to preserve the charging battery and I get up since I’ve lost yet another battle with sleep tonight.

Sleep, as always, promises nightmares and dried tears on my cheeks.

I have no wish for either, so I put it off to head downstairs to the computer room for another fruitless search for the elusive Dexter Pieter.

At the bottom of the staircase, I hesitate. The same light is on, warning me I’m not the only one with difficulties sleeping.

I look the other direction. The way to the computer room where I can spend the next couple of hours digging up whatever I can about Dexter Pieter’s assistants in the hope they’ll lead me to the man himself.

But I don’t walk toward the computer room.

He’s in the same position as he was before, hunched over a table, his elbow resting on his thigh, and the suit-style jacket he was wearing earlier tossed over the back of his chair. The cream armchair I bled on is missing in action. One, matching Garrison’s, sits opposite.

“I could do with a little help,” he calls out, without lifting his head.

I should have guessed he would know I was there.

I’ve taken two steps toward him before I remember something important. Something I cannot believe I left behind.

My knife.

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