Page 80 of This Fate That Guides Us
“Fuck Omen, and fuck Bea too. They both knew who she was and hid it from us. They can go to hell for all I care. I won’t have anything to do with those conniving omegas ever again.” My fist slams into the back of the couch. Hitting the soft material doesn’t alleviate my anger, it only incites it further. “How dare she keep something like this a secret!? I never would have agreed to the label hiring her if I knew who she is. I’m going to make sure she can never blindside anyone else ever again. Expose her lies for the world to see.”
I shove away from Cal and stomp across the room to grab my phone. “NO!” Nexus slams into me, knocking the device from my hand and sending it skidding across the floor. I watch him with wide eyes as he uses his weight to pin me to the wall. My matehas never used his bark before. On anyone, but especially not on his mates.
“You need to get your head on straight, Neb. Right now, what you were about to do, goes against everything we believe in. Bea is right. This shit right here-” He motions to my phone. “It makes you no better than every other asshole out there. Are you really going to unmask an omega you know is on the run from what is rumored to be one of the most malicious anti-designation families in the country?”
Anger vibrates in every cell of my body. I push him away, towering over him with a sneer on my face. “She lied to us! She’s one of them!”
“She ran from them!” Nexus roars. His breathing is ragged. “Probably for good reason! We all know what happens to omegas discovered in New Hampshire. Imagine how much worse it would be to present as an omega in the Montgomery family!”
I’m barely holding myself back from starting a physical altercation to release the feelings crashing through me. The last thing I want to do is hurt one of my mates.
“Are you willing to sign Omen’s death warrant? Because that is what exposing her identity will do. The Montgomerys will use every connection they have to track her down. There is no way she will get to walk away from whatever punishment they decide upon for her.”
“Shit,” Titan growls from behind us. He’s running a hand through his long brown hair as he watches. “He’s right, Nebula. She’s still an omega, even if she’s also a Montgomery.”
“Fine,” I bite out, deflating slightly when Nexus takes several steps backward. “You’re right. I won’t be the one to tell her family where she is. That doesn’t mean she’s welcome here. She isn’t our omega and she never will be.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
NOW PLAYING: LIKEThat- Sleep Token
My alpha rallies to protest Nebula’s rejection of Omen, but I quickly dim what they can feel from me in our bond. None of them will agree with me. Especially not Nebula. He can’t see past his hatred of the Montgomery family. Callisto only wants to support his mates. To comfort their aching hearts and avoid any further conflict. Tee… well I don’t know what is going on inside of my giant alpha’s head. He’s unreadable, and trying to sort out his emotions in the bond is too complicated of a task when my mind is a swirling, chaotic mess.
For the first time since we met ten years ago, I’m going to lie to my pack. “Take him to the hotel’s gym, Titan. Let him wear out this aggression before he gets lost in his anger and hurts someone.” I need everyone to clear out long enough for me to slip away unnoticed.
“That’s a good idea,” Cal whispers. He glances at me, worry filling his dual tone-eyes, but I shake my head and nod to Nebula. With a furrow in his brow and a reluctant sigh, he leads our alpha into his bedroom to get dressed in athletic wear.
I shift from foot to foot waiting for Tee to go get ready too. Instead, he steps closer. Chest to chest, he stares down at me. “You’re gonna go to her?” My breath freezes in my chest as I try to find some believable alternative truth to tell him, but when he smiles softly, I find myself nodding. “Good. Take care of our Firefly, Nex. I’ll keep these two distracted until you get back.”
“You aren’t mad?” I ask.
“I don’t know how I feel about everything Bea told us yet. I do know I’ve seen the fallout of someone’s life being torn apart by a secret they were forced to keep once before, and I don’t want to experience it again.”
That makes sense. Omen’s current situation reminds him of his aunt. The one person in his family to ever truly love him. Hope builds in my chest thinking Titan may be able to help me make Nebula realize how wrong this decision is.
“Be careful,” he adds.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Tee. Focus on them.”
“I’ll always worry about you, brat.” His lips gently brush mine once, twice before he walks away.
Grabbing everything I’ll need to last the next several days, I slip out the front door and hurry to the elevator. I can feel my mates’ anger and hurt in our bonds. I get it. Finding out exactly how much of herself Omen hid from us… My heart aches knowing she didn’t feel she could rely on us to keep her secrets. To protect her from the family who forced her into hiding.
Mentally, I’m stuck between the black hole of never feeling befitting of my designation and the raging, monstrous instincts choosing today to rear their head. How I can feel like an utter failure of an alpha and a savage beast at once I can’t explain.
Omen is our omega. The Fated connection we discovered a year ago. When she would have turned twenty-one. Back then she said she wasn’t ready. She didn’t know if she would ever be ready. She ran from us without having even met us.
Even after we met, she didn’t stop running.
I can’t muster any anger after hearing her fears about what could happen to all of us if her family were to discover our connection. I don’t know what Omen’s life was like growing up, no one outside of the Montgomery household does, but I can imagine it wasn’t pleasant. Even before Elizabeth had met Benjamin, rumors had run rampant about the Pastor’s tyrannical approach to designations within the state of New Hampshire.
Even though the beta isn’t directly involved in the state's politics, he has every single government official in his pocket. Male alphas were discouraged from forming packs with arranged monogamous marriages being the most common practice. Female alphas, male omegas, and female omegas were forced to flee to escape the awful torture they’d undergo as punishment for their designations. Those who hadn’t made it out before being discovered told horror stories about the abuse they suffered. Beatings, starvation, being restrained and forced to suffer alone and unmedicated through their heats.
Even more horrific was the mandatory ‘surgery’ every omega caught within the state had to undergo. Mutilation was a much more appropriate term for what happened to those poor omegas.
The mere thought of Omen enduring even the lightest of those punishments simply for being an omega makes me vibrate with fury. A growl rattles from my chest and I blink repeatedly as I stare down at myself. I’ve never sounded so remarkably alpha.
Through the bond, I can feel my mates' confusion and worry. I send flows of reassurance their way before slowly dimming theconnection. I can’t risk them trying to track me down. Not until after I’ve saved our omega.
