Page 5 of Omega's Dream (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 4)

“My freakish curse?” I teased. Curse. She meant how my eyes turned mirrored gold like an alpha’s. She meant how I was an apex omega. One who turned feral, like channelling an alpha’s aggression or how I could bark.

“Your power.” She sounded awed. “When I went back, I was going to kill him. Clarity. I felt clarity.”

Him. She meant the alpha who had tried to kill her.

But her way of describing my curse didn’t match my own experience. “I’ve never thought of it as clarity, but I suppose clarity works. For me the world slows and only I move.”

“All the time?” she asked.

“Goddess, no! That would be exhausting. Only when my emotions are strong. When everything moves at once I feel dislocated.” I suppressed the urge to scratch my arms as if I could crawl out of my skin and reveal something more real. Then I used the old trick of changing the subject to distract from the inherent wrongness of my existence. “I’ve asked Jude to take you home. He is my most trusted guard.”

“Your lover.”

“One of my lovers.” I reminded her.

“Have you loved any of them?”

“Love! Sister, of course. I’ve loved and lost and loved again. But who wants an apex omega? Even betas find me disconcerting. The thought of an alpha touching me makes my skin crawl…” I suppressed the shudder at the thought of giving alphas the submission they demanded. Something I could not give them. “I’ll not take a mate who won’t follow my lead. What alpha wants to defer on any point?” Especially an omega, but that didn’t need to be said.

“You’ve got it wrong, Polly. There is give and take with a mate.”

“Says the omega who dared to storm the Royal Academy and called alphas pigs? Where is that Beatrice?” I tested her.

“She learnt…” She added sugar to the cup of tea she poured herself. It would be cold but that never mattered to her. “I learnt to compromise. It just might not be so obvious.”

“Snort! Snort! Bea! Come. You’ve been seduced by a pair of knots. I don’t blame you—”

“Enough,” she snapped. “I’ll not have you talk like that. One day, you will understand what the…never mind. I’m sorry. I’ve not been sleeping well.”

“You’re not…”

“Pregnant? No.”

“Do you want children?” I asked the question I needed an answer to. There were other plans that depended on her answer.

“You’ve not asked before—”

“I remember that day.” I confessed. We’d never talked about the son she’d never gotten to hold. “They wanted to protect you and I wanted to protect you. He wanted me to take care of you.”

“Polly, you shouldn’t have had to carry that burden.” She didn’t sound pained in the way she had before. Her alphas had healed some part of her…or they’d drawn a curtain over that part of her life.

“It was not a burden, sister.” I assured her. “You are not a burden. No omega is a burden.”

“Polly.” She looked ready to touch me. I froze. I had a complicated relationship to touch that only my sisters understood. A casual brush, scenting by betas, or a lover I could accept because it had purpose. But affection caused the opposite reaction.

“You are to go back to your mates. Can’t you be happy? Must you harass me?” My words waspish and aggressive with a swirl of emotions. At the centre, my intrinsic otherness. I was not a good omega like my sister. “Jude will be here at eight.”

“Polly!” She pleaded with me.

“I have letters to write. When it is eight, the carriage will be at the gate.”

Dismissed, she left, no doubt to go somewhere with a clock. And I threw myself into my work planning the next exploit of the infamous omega highway woman: Polly, Queen of the High Toby. Society didn’t know that robbing wealthy alphas and redistributing the wealth was more often a front to rescuing omegas from abusive households. The next run was for a showy splash of stealing the strong box from a merchant recently returned from Bermuda, the only island in the Americas still under British rule now that the West Indies had won their Independence War thirty-some years ago. I’d already chosen the charity that would receive an anonymous donation. Their mission was supporting men and women from the West Indies who’d made it to these shores.

When the clock chimed eight, I sat back to wait for the hour to pass. Beatrice wouldn’t expect me to say goodbye. I was no good at them and our old nurse’s superstition about travelling on Tuesdays made it safer to act like nothing was happening.

Then there was Jude. It would be good to remind him I did not rush to his side at every available opportunity. He shared my bed every night I did not stay at Omega House, but he was not my mate even if he might act more alpha than any beta I’d met.

Unthinkingly my fingers skated over the rough patch on the table. Perhaps I should let him go. The attachment was five years long, though he’d only been my lover for three of them. Keeping him close put a target on his back and he was a weakness I could ill afford in the coming months. Better to let him go before the board became too crowded. My heart kicked painfully at the thought. I rubbed my hand over my chest.

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