Page 4 of Glass Omega

They were the youngest pack in an old school Italian family, and while no one would outright say it, they were clearly mafia. My father had been involved with them for years and I was pretty sure that his place as the city mayor was thanks to them.Which effectively made him their bitch, and me their bitch’s daughter.

My father had been mumbling about a run for governor next year, which meant that he needed some serious financial power backing him. What better way to gain that than by selling me off? And he now had bonus points because all signs were pointing to me being a very healthy, very useful omega.

It didn’t seem to matter that every time I was in the room with my intended pack that I nearly gagged on the scent of rotten wood, curdled coffee, sour citrus, and overripe apples. Even the idea of allowing one of the four alphas into a nest I built made me want to scream.

But there was a half a million dollars in medical bills that my father threatened to make me pay back on my own if I didn’t do as he asked. I’d barely graduated high school and never worked a normal job in my life. I was pretty sure I was only qualified to work at one of the local fast food places… and minimum wage wasn’t paying those medical debts any time soon.

Before my leukemia, I’d been a star student and athlete on my way to the local omega university to study photography. But now? I was unemployed and at the mercy of parents who saw me as a bargaining chip rather than an actual human being.

“Well I think she looks hideous in that dress,” Romey piped up from where he was lounging on one of the benches that was pushed up against the far wall of the little room that the church gave all of its brides on their wedding day to get ready in.

At nineteen years old, Romey was a foot and a half taller than me now and twice as wide. The gangly teenager with a cracked voice had all but disappeared when he awakened as an alpha last year. His boredom and irritation with the entire situation we found ourselves in was obvious as he shot us a baleful stare.

“Hush,” our mother told him as she straightened and put her lipstick away in the tiny clutch she carried. “She looks bridal.”

“She looks like a cupcake,” Romey countered, finally sitting up. “And why does she even have to get married anyway? She hasn’t even been healthy for that long and you’re already kicking her out of the house.”

Romey didn’t yet understand the intricacies of my impending nuptials. He just thought the Amante family were a group of very powerful donors because everyone in the household protected him from the truth. He would have to learn it eventually—he was the perfect son that my parents had always wanted—but for now we all treated him with kid gloves.

He was the one attending his second year of university this fall and he was the one studying political science so he could follow in our father’s footsteps. He was the one getting to live life the way he wanted to simply because he had been born a boy… and I was the item to be traded and bartered.

It should have made me hate him, but truthfully, Romey was the only one in our family that I actually loved.

He’d been my baby that I struggled to carry around in tiny four-year-old arms as I waved off the nanny so that I could feed him.

And he’d been the only person to continue to visit me in the hospital when the doctors weren’t sure if I would survive.

Reaching out I gave his foot a whack. “Feet off the furniture,” I scolded primly, waiting until he sat up on the bench properly again before continuing. “And you know that I need to be married before my first heat.”

My doctors had all discussed it in what I’m sure they thought were hushed whispers just outside of my hospital door though I’d been able to hear every single word.

I’d never gone into heat, my leukemia taking over my body before it could develop enough to go through a first estrus and the doctors were concerned that an ‘unserviced’ heat would be too much for me.

Which had given my parents the green light to marry me off as soon as possible to their best possible benefit.

“Couldn’t you just go to one of the clinics or whatever all of the other unpacked omegas do?” Romey groused, swatting our mother’s hands away as she tried to smooth the cowlick that his hair, which was the same red color as mine, perpetually had.

I could have done that and probably would have if I went to college like I was supposed to do.

But that life had long since passed me by and I was going to have to make peace with what lay before me.

I opened my mouth to answer him, but a knock on the door cut me off.

“Is everyone decent?” My father’s congenial politician’s voice came from the other side, telling me that he wasn’t alone.

My mother, seeming to recognize that he was putting on a show, straightened and her bored expression smoothed out into her usual bland socialite’s smile. “We are, dear,” she sang and Romey and I exchanged twin grimaces.

I almost preferred it when they were their usual horrible selves.

The door opened and my father stepped inside, dressed in his tailored tuxedo. He looked every inch the stereotypical proud father of the bride, but my eyes quickly caught on the American flag pinned to his lapel which told me that he was completely in electioneering mode. Putting on a good show for the people downstairs to garner their votes and their capital.

“Wow, Peregrine,” he gasped with enough vigor that I had to force myself not to roll my eyes. “Aren’t you just the prettiest bride I’ve ever seen?”

The man even whipped out a handkerchief to dab at dry eyes. I was half-surprised he hadn’t stuck eyedrops in his eyes to really sell the picture that he was a distraught father upset about giving his only daughter away.

But when I saw who had come in with him, I understood his sudden theatrics.

Alessandro Amante was the patriarch of the Amante clan and one of the scariest men I’d ever met. He presented himself like a cheerful fatherly type, but every time I saw him a sense of dread pooled low in my stomach. Alessandro was the kind of man that, when you were in his good graces, he showered you with affection. But if you stepped a toe out of line? Then you would pay for it dearly.

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