Page 22 of Glass Omega

I didn’t answer, the storm cloud that always seemed to form over my head at the mention of my mother was too thick for me to even form a response to his well-meaning question.

Perrie isn’t my mother,I had to remind myself as we drove back to the mansion.Not everyone is as breakable as she was.

Seven

Three days into my new life and I was practically climbing the walls of the Keane estate.

When I was in the hospital I’d read my fair share of mafia romance out of sheer boredom and so I figured that, living the life of a mobster’s wife would be full of gun fights, kidnappings, and a healthy dose of BDSM from the attractive mafia man with a heart of stone—not that I wanted the BDSM or anything like that.

But the actual reality of it all was wildly different.

Every day at the Keane estate was damn near idyllic, like something out of a regency era novel rather than dark, sexy romance.

The mansion was just outside of the city, but looking outside of the window one would think they’d been transported to theEnglish countryside. The expansive, well-manicured grounds were surrounded by a thick green forest that seemed to block out the view of everything except for the haze of high rise buildings in the distance.

My mornings always started with a long swim in the pool and me pushing myself until I was wheezing and shaky. I was determined to get some kind of stamina back—even if it killed me—and it was a good way to work out my worries about my impending second wedding.

After my swim I went to my omega classes where an ancient old omega, who’d long since stopped having heats, droned on about the intricacies of what she called ‘the fairer designation.’ She quite literally brought in an old school projector with pictures from the sixties, but I at least got the gist of it as she explained how to control pheromones and tamp down on emotions so they didn’t send every nearby alpha into a frenzy.

There were also some other things that sounded completely outdated like always submitting to your alpha and not going against your alpha’s orders—both things that I took with a grain of salt as I doodled in my notebook.

From there, I would go to my first meal of the day with Edison Keane, and by extension Rhodes McCreary. The first real thing I learned about my husband-to-be was that his second was always nearby.

While we were negotiating our contract, I figured that the two meals would feel like pulling teeth with the alpha when it came to conversation. After all, that first day by the pool Edison seemed reluctant to share any information about himself and his grumpy second-in-command had been forced to chime in.

But I was pleasantly surprised that Edison was actually a pretty good conversationalist. There was rarely a moment where we weren’t talking aboutsomething.

The first few days were about me. What did I like to do, what did I like to eat, what were my thoughts about XYZ… all things he probably could have read in my file but still asked as if he was curious to know.

Then, slowly, he started to tell me about himself. His time in college which he viewed as one of the best times in his life because he was free from the constraints of the Keane family, how he liked old black and white movies, and even if he didn’t outright state it, his affection for Rhodes.

“Rhodes was a menace from age fifteen to twenty-five,” Edison joked as we sat around the long, shiny dining room table, gesturing at Rhodes who he made sit and eat with us every day.

The man still hadn’t warmed to me any, his sharp features always remaining neutral whenever I was around, but whenever Edison looked at him, I was sure that his dark eyes warmed by a few degrees.

“Never met a rule he couldn’t break—I thought our RA was going to have a stroke by the time we moved out,” Edison finished, popping a grape into his mouth with a self-satisfied smile.

I laughed, trying to focus on the chicken on my own plate. It was getting increasingly harder to keep myself aloof from the man even though I kept telling myself that this was just a business arrangement.

“You seem put off by my talk of our university days.”

I shook my head, pushing a bit of pasta with my fork as I tried to figure out the most diplomatic way to say what I wanted to say. “I’m not—I’ve just never gotten to go because I was sick so it’s hard to relate.”

Silence hung awkwardly at the table and I could feel two pairs of eyes practically drilling a hole into the top of my head as I stared down at my plate. We almost never mentioned my timein the hospital and they had certainly never outright asked about my leukemia.

“What would you want to do if you had gone to college?” Rhodes’ question surprised me. He’d never actually asked me anything during mealtimes, leaving that completely to Edison.

My eyes shot up to meet his. I was half-tempted to ignore his question out of a petty sense of righteousness. He’d been basically ignoring me for the past three days, after all, so it would be fair of me not to talk to him either.

But my lips still opened and formed words. “Photography. I was supposed to go before I got sick and I never got the chance to go after because… well.”

I gestured around to the room. There wasn’t much time for me to attend college when my father was looking for a husband—or husbands—for me. I didn’t need a college degree to be sold off.

When Edison had offered to get me whatever I wanted, I’d insisted on getting my camera back from my parent’s house. Oona had offered to order the same model completely new, but it felt wrong to abandon the camera that had been my prized possession since it had been given to me as an off-handed gift when I was eleven years old.

Both of the men at the table seemed to be lost in thought for a moment before Edison finally spoke again. “Then you’ll go to college.”

He said it so decisively that Rhodes’ head snapped around so he could look at the other alpha, his expression incredulous. “How is she supposed to go to college? The Italians are just waiting for the perfect moment to snatch her back up.”

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