Page 39 of Omega's Dream (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 4)

“Like a dog at the feet of its master? Yes. His aggression must be tamed.”

“He is not aggressive!” I snapped. Puck, who had sat himself on the far side of the table, grinned into his glass but it was Jude’s pleading, hopeful eyes that caused my stomach to churn with anger. “Damn you all. I will not be party to this farce. Do you seek to break down some perceived defences by humiliating my former lover? Or perhaps by exposure to your alpha scents, you hope to force my heat?” My scent burnt my nose. Had I ever spoken an alpha in such a manner? Other omegas, betas yes. But I had never raised my voice or spoke with such feeling even to my hated mother. Now they watched me as if I was a wounded predator, the more dangerous for the bleeding gash to my side. I wanted, more than ever, to lose myself to that place where I did not live in the world as it was but as I chose to make it. But mortal that I was, I inhabited a reality ruled by alphas.

“You speak with great feeling.” Oberon indicated I a take the last remaining chair. My lip curled in a snarl to let him know precisely what I thought of his gallantry. “Do you hate alphas so much, little bird?”

“You could not understand my loathing for your dynamic without feeling repulsed by your own natures.” Some strange energy shifted in this small room. Some scent of air before a storm built and the world around me wavered. I clutched to that haze and breathed it in, hoping it would overtake me and I’d be freed from this personal hell. “Damn you thrice for this world!” I snapped. As if the goddess had ever listened to me. As if she cared for one omega, born into wealth and more besides. Yet I’d never felt her absence more. “Damn you all for the provocation of your existence.”

“Who hurt you?” Puck’s question cut through my outburst. He rose and with a strength and grace I envied, vaulted over the table with ease. “Which alpha? Give me his name.”

“Oh, must it one? Must it be a ‘he’?”

“Then give me all their names,” he growled. I held firm as he prowled towards me. He looked prepared to kill and, goddess, he was the very vision of an avenging angel, beautiful and deadly. If I prayed more sincerely for a saviour, it would look like him. “Who?” He barked the word.

I opened my mouth to explain but shut it again. How could alphas understand what horrors omegas faced from their dynamic? They would take to violence against a single alpha. But what of their dynamic more broadly? No. They’d not perceive themselves part of the hellish reality we omegas must accept with good grace because they considered us too weak.

A rap of three quick knocks on the door had me jumping like a novice.

“We shall return to this subject at another time,” Oberon said as he raised a hand. “No rational conversation can happen on an empty stomach, my dears. Enter!”

The same boy who’d brought us dinner the first night came in a frown on his face. “Tod hasn’t returned,” he complained as he put the dishes down. “It’s been days now and none have seen him.”

I muffled a growl at the reminder that Tod had been missing and they had made no effort to find him. Never once asking me to ask my people to look for him. Prog’s coded message told me the boy had settled in after a fashion. And despite the opportunity, hadn’t run away. I knew he was safe, but these alphas, to whose care I had left him when he had been a babe, did not know that. Instead, they played games with me and with Jude.

“He’ll be back.” Oberon spoke with such breezy confidence that consequences be damned I would punish his carelessness. “He wouldn’t miss his birthday for the world. When he gets home—”

“He won’t be coming home tonight or any other,” I revealed. How could they be so cavalier about the child? “Tod is safely tucked in bed.”

Oberon froze. For a moment I thought he would dismiss me for a liar. But the hot fury that followed made my knees weak.

“Bitch. Have you taken him?” His hands curled into the arms of the chair until they lost all colour and a distinct crack led me to believe he had broken the elaborately carved carver. Goddess, he did feel something. “Emilio! Go. Send everyone out. Hippolyta’s rooms—”

“Are you gone deaf in your old age? He is safe. No need to send your people out.” My heart raced in my chest. The exhilaration, something I should not entertain at a time like this, making me as bold and daring as when I held up an alpha on the king’s highway and robbed him blind. And more than that. A rightness settled around me. A correctness I could not piece out in the heat of the moment but which made me smile at him and say with a purring confidence. “Rest yourself. He is safe, Oberon. Protected from you and your kind.”

“My kind? You mean alphas. You arrogant bitch. What have you done with my kin?”

“Yes, alphas! Did you think—”

“Enough!” Puck’s bark ripped through the air and I stepped back at the suddenness of it. “Where is he?”

“Safe.”

“You’ve said that, and I believe you.” The alpha put his hands up to ward off my aggression. “But that is not telling me where my nephew is.”

Nephew. I wanted to throw that word back in his face.

“Now you know how I feel. My sister was taken by scum. Scum who conspired with others to abduct omegas and sell them to the highest bidder! And you knew. You knew it might happen and did nothing because you hoped to line your pockets.”

“And you take a child in revenge?”

“I rescued a child running around London unattended. On the Heath no less and witness to my sister’s abduction! One who might be an omega.”

Oberon rose and came close to Puck. “No. He’s barely ten. You cannot know for sure when we have only suspected.”

“He does not have an omega’s scent, but that doesn’t mean I can’t tell. I know.” I pounded my chest where my heart ached. “I am an apex omega. I know.”

“Puck and I have been expecting it.” Oberon stepped back, the frigid stillness returning as if emotion was some foreign concept. “Remember, that boy has been running free for years. It is only in the last six months we’ve kept him close because we suspected.” His laugh was something ugly. A sound I recognised for I’d made it not too long ago. “And you think I would hurt him? The only thing I have left of my sister? You’re a high-handed bitch.”

“Better a bitch than watch him live such a precarious life! Running around town? Spying as Jude and Beatrice are assaulted!”

---