Page 3 of Glass Omega

Now that he was closer, I got a better look at him. Where the other man seemed to ooze danger, this one seemed much colder, and more calculated. It was like he could look at me and see any number of outcomes from our little interaction, like he could calculate the chances of me selling him out with just a glance.

“Edison, come on,” Dr. Stedmeyer said, his expression shifting as he nervously stepped in between us again. “She’s a cancer patient. Cut her some slack.”

I wanted to reassure the strange man that even if Iwantedto say something—which I didn’t—no one would ever believe me. That is, if they even came to visit in the first place.

The taller man hovered just behind his shoulder, a hand tucked inside his brown leather jacket, and I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t going to like whatever it was he was reaching for.

“Does the cancer make it so she can’t speak for herself?” Edison growled, his eyes still on my face.

Swallowing, I shook my head. “No,” I managed to croak, suddenly regretting leaving my room at all tonight.

There was a pause as the two men seemed to be sizing me up. “So tell me, little one, are you going to tell anyone what you saw here tonight?”

The strangest sensation of fear and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on filled me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head again, more fiercely this time. “I would have had to see something to say something.”

The golden-eyed man blinked with surprise before a rattling chuckle left him. “Smart girl.”

“All right, if you’re done bullying a teenage girl, I’ve got to get her back to bed before the charge nurse realizes she’s gone and kills us all.” Dr. Stedmeyer put a hand on my back and began to turn me away.

I blanched at his words. I’d forgotten Nurse Alcott was on shift tonight. She was the strictest person in the ward and wasn’t someone I wanted to piss off if I wanted anything other than porridge for breakfast this week.

The two men said nothing as Dr. Stedmeyer hurried us both away, and despite my brain telling me not to, I turned to look over my shoulder at them one more time.

They stood together in the dim hallway, the one who’d been shot pressing a hand to his chest while the other one continued to watch me until we turned a corner.

During my time at the hospital I only ever saw them once or twice more. Despite his protests, Dr. Stedmeyer always helped them with whatever wounds they came in with.

But never again did they speak to me, and then one day they stopped coming altogether and I never laid eyes on them again.

And then they crashed my wedding.

One

4 years later…

“Smile, Perrie, and at leastpretendlike you’re enjoying yourself today,” my mother hissed as she brushed a crisp curl away from my forehead. The hairdresser had just finished applying so much hairspray to my head that I was half-afraid that my hair was going to crack off and run away if I gave it the chance.

One look in the mirror told me that it was pretty enough, but also that not even a tornado could damage the perfectly coiffed updo with elegant, face-framing curls.

“I am trying, Mother,” I muttered, glaring at my gray-eyed twin who looked pretty but in all of the wrong ways. Every single bit of my appearance had been picked by someone other than me—just like everything else about this day. “But it’s not every day you get married to people you don’t even really like.”

Four years ago, if you’d told me that I would be sitting in a tiny little room on the second floor of the biggest cathedral in the city… in a wedding dress… then I would have laughed.

None of this was what I would have chosen to have on my wedding day. Not the venue, not the hair, and certainly not the dress. It was a poofy mass of itchy tulle that was definitely more to my mother’s taste than mine.

“And I didn’t really like your father, but look at us now,” my mother said as if her words were supposed to make me feel better as she fixed her cherry red lipstick in the mirror before turning to offer me an empty smile.

I scoffed inwardly at her words.

Look at her now? She could barely stand to be in the same room as him unless there were cameras present. No, as the youngest daughter of a very rich man she’d also been paired off to the highest bidder. Just like I was about to be.

I always wondered why she’d gone through with it. Some of my earliest memories were of her complaining about her marriage, and yet here she was doing the same to her only daughter.

As soon as Dr. Stedmeyer had given me a clean bill of health a year and a half ago, telling me my cancer wasfinallyin full remission and that it looked like my omega biology was still‘luckily’intact, my parents started paying attention to me again.

And just as soon as my omega hormones started to spike six months ago, signaling the road to my first ever heat? My parents wasted no time planning my wedding to Pack Ricci.

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