Page 97 of Iris
But I do force myself to speak.
“I didn’t taunt. They followed me and assaulted me.”
Her eyes narrow. “I wasn’t talking about idiotic gossip. I was talking about the fact you humiliated a suitor who called on you. That didn’t make the gossip Stitches, but it reached my ears. And assaulted? Who?”
“Are you going to do anything about it?” I ask.
“Watch that tongue. I don’t like attacks, Miss Gardener.”
Now she gets up and walks around me like I’m a horse she can’t decide whether is a prize or glue factory fodder.
“If I can speak freely, I don’t like being forced to find a mate.”
“You’re an Omega. It’s your role.”
“We’re more than animal instinct.”
“I never mentioned animal anything,” she says. “I’m just stating you have a role in society. We all do.”
“So, with respect, is it under the guise of societal rules that everyone must stick to narrow confines.”
She sighs, sits once more, a hand on each arm of her chair as she crosses her legs. “You’re clearly very bright, and very unlike your sister, Violet.”
“But isn’t that good? That we’re different?”
“It makes no difference.”
“It should,” I say.
“Why? And where does it end? People doing what they want, mating with the wrong person or the same sex—which if things weren’t in need of more numbers in regards to Omegas, I’m not against—resulting in fewer children, fewer Omegas being born.”
“That’s not true, not entirely. People are happier having babies if they mate for love, and what about packs?”
“Those?” Her eyes narrow as her mouth thins. “Outmoded and barbaric, one woman with a host of men. Fewer babies. Fewer Omegas. Let me ask you something, Iris?—”
She stops as an alert on her workpad starts to beep. She picks it up, and as she reads, the heat of her fury scorches my skin.
“You’re her, aren’t you? The Queen Bee? Someone’s just suggested it and it makes total sense. I should strip your family of their standing and throw you in a prison on the mainland.”
I stare at her. Gawp. I can feel myself actually gawping.
Somehow, I get my mouth to shut and my voice to work, even as my entire body turns numb. “I’m the what?”
“Don’t play dumb. I’m not in the mood,” she says.
“I’m not. I meant, how could you think that?”
Her tone turns icy. “Easily.”
“I’m not. I swear I’m not.” I ball my hands at my sides.
“Let me see, you’re a troublemaker, you do what you want when you want, and you have to be the scourge of your poor mother’s existence. Of course you are.” She glares.
My body burns as a heavy weight crushes me down. “I’m not.”
“Prove it.”
“Excuse me?” I ask. Not sure I’m hearing her. I want to scream, argue, but while my mission’s gone south, if I fight with her, then I’ll never get a chance to say my piece, to try to convince her to speak to the rebels. “I wouldn’t do something like that.”
