“Mum!”
“What? Some boy comes into my office, describing exactly what had happened to my daughter, pointed out my security weaknesses, and then described my opponent’s Baroque plans, complete with documentation to support his assertions. I needed to work out how he came by this information.”
“And did you?” I tried to keep my voice even and calm, but failed.
She smiled, a twist of a thing, and shook her head. “We found his IQ tests, done in both primary and high school, and that’s all we could glean. It was a little slap on the face, a reminder of what he is. He’s terribly smart, so very, very smart. I knew a few people like that at university. They seemed to operate on a rarefied plane, like they weren’t quite human. And lonely.” Her head shook. “But he appeared to have your best interests at heart, so I trusted him stupidly.”
“And what was the plan?” I asked, my voice sounding hollow and distorted in my ears.
“As Orion’s mate, he’d stop you from forming an alliance with the Ratcliffe boy, foiling Benson’s plan and forcing him to consider more desperate measures, eventually declaring his hand when that didn’t work.”
Much had been made of Mum’s determination to stay in our house. It was a nice sized suburban home, certainly more than enough room for the two of us, but it was old, dated, and didn’t really reflect Mum’s newfound social status. I considered it now, seeing it with what I hoped were the eyes of a security expert. In my mind, the large windows, the open plan interior, the lack of a fence, and the fact our block backed out onto the forest turned what I’d always liked about this place into a laundry list of mortal risks.
“Mum…” I stared at her, wide-eyed, trying to store every damn thing about her in my mind, unsure how much longer I’d be able to. “Mum?”
I didn’t want to be an adult, wanted to shove that genie right back into its bottle, return to Strict Mother and Compliant but Miserable Omega Daughter right now. She could lecture me about fibre intake and filtering my water and—
Knock, knock, knock.
We both jumped at the sound coming from the door, each looking at the other.
“Are we expecting anyone?” I asked, the fear turning my voice into a whine.
“Stay here,” Mum said, moving over to one of the shelves and unlocking a box with a goddamn gun in it. I watched her load the bullets with a growing sense of unreality, like all of a sudden, Mummy had transmuted into Linda Hamilton in Terminator, the ultimate alpha babe.
She moved like her too, slinking up to the garage door, looking around it, gun held aloft, then finally disappeared into the house.
Leaving me alone, wondering what in The Twilight Zone this shit was.
Knock, knock, knock.
Chapter 27
I crept out into the house when I heard Mum’s voice, hoping it was those really annoying Jehovah’s Witness dudes who wouldn’t take no for an answer, not Orion’s dad, who was likewise, but about selling Mum’s invention to him so he could mothball it. What I didn’t expect to see was a tearful Brendan’s mum on our doorstep.
“Mrs Slattery, I understand your concerns, but Cyn—”
“Cyn what?” I asked, walking over to the door. “Mum, you’ve gotta let me make these calls. Hi, Charlene. Did you want to come in for some tea?”
Mum shot me a dark look over her head as Charlene nodded, wiping her nose with a pretty but ineffectual lace fringed handkerchief. Lady’s ones seemed to have room for like, one nose blow and that was it.
“That would be lovely,” she replied. “Milk with one.”
“Mum?” I asked as I moved around the kitchen, making the tea.
“No, thank you. If you’re OK on your own…” I shot her a look, her hands going up. “I apologise, Mrs Slattery, but I need to get on with some work. I’ll leave you in my daughter’s capable hands.” Mum silently communicated ‘come and get me if this gets too much’ with her steady gaze and then exited stage left.
“Are you…?” I said, walking over with the teas and a packet of biscuits tucked under my arm. “Of course you’re not OK.” My omega senses had been slow to come back online, being almost bruised by the process of mating Rhys. I pushed his name to one side, not wanting my feelings to get in the way of this. Charlene might be Brendan’s mum, but she had been nice to me. “Um…you know I can’t help with the boys? We…split up.”
And then she did something that shocked me. Her hand slid across the table, taking mine and giving it a squeeze. Such a mumsy thing to do, even though my mum rarely did.
“I know, love. Are you OK? Those boys… If they hurt you…” Her voice turned into a low growl that made me smile.
I took a long breath in and out, then sipped my tea, finally bringing my focus up, meeting her eyes. I found that easier to do recently, with all the practise Kai and I had been doing. It made me realise why omegas don’t. Eyes communicated emotion so well, and hers were brimming with tears, red-rimmed from doing so often, her peaches and cream complexion splotchy. I could see and feel her misery.
“Emotions are contagious for a reason,” the new therapist had said. “How can we experience sympathy and empathy, if they aren’t? We’d be locked up in our own heads, stewing in our own feelings, looking out into a world that recognised none of them. That would be incredibly lonely. The wellness gurus today tend to treat negative emotions like a pathology, like a disease. There is no life without anger, sadness, or pain. Our fear comes from how easily our own emotional states can be derailed by someone else, and this is doubly so for omegas.” She smiled gently. “You are the emotional sponges of our world, but you can choose what you soak up. I’ll show you some strategies for dealing with this.”
And so I imagined a clear wall between Charlene and me. I could still see her, perceive her pain, and empathise with it, but it wasn’t mine. This was just a simple visualisation to remind me that I didn’t need to take stuff on.