“They did,” I replied, then frowned. That was blunt, but I needed to be. I couldn’t prop her up with false hope. “I thought we were building something, that they wanted me to be a part of their pack. That they cared about me, wanted me there for me. I’ve been…”
My voice trailed away as I remembered that night at the first Omega Ball. I’d started having nightmares about that again. I’d thought it would be about them, Rhys and his pack, but the closer I got to the ball, the more shitty dreams I had. Over and over, that dark room, that belt buckle, that hand on my shoulder, pushing me down. My new therapist thought maybe it was me focussing on the core of my fear of alphas, not the most recent bad example.
“People have tried to use me and hurt me before. I deliberately avoided alphas, the ball, everything to do with the mating process. I just hung out here, reading and training with Kai. If I went out, it was always with betas, not alphas. If I thought an alpha would be at a place, I wouldn’t go.”
Charlene’s fingers tightened around mine, the tears welling further, one falling free, wiped away by her hankie.
“This was my year to be brave, to face my fears and find a mate. I thought I did, but…”
“So that’s what happened?” Her jaw tensed and she looked angry, but she patted my arm to make sure I knew I wasn’t the focus of that. “Those bloody boys… I always worried for Bren. The others, they don’t seem to treat him quite right—but you don’t need to hear about that,” she corrected herself. “Bren’s gone off the rails, Cyn. That’s why I came. My hubby will kill me when he finds out, but I can’t see my boy go downhill like this and not step in. This isn’t your problem. If he did the dirty on you, then maybe he deserves it.”
She shook her head sharply.
“He’s been drinking, fighting, getting himself constantly into trouble. We forced him to come around and have dinner with the family, and he was a mess. He told us he couldn’t, but…” She shook her head. “He was drunk when he arrived and just got drunker. Ended up fighting with his brother, giving him a black eye. The kids, we shielded them as much as possible, but…”
Her hands trembled as she wiped her eyes furiously.
“If you could just tell me what happened, I promise never to darken your door again. I tried to talk to every one of those boys, and none will answer my calls. I went to that bloody club of theirs and got denied entry. I k
now that my boy is falling apart, and I don’t even know why. That’s why I came. It’s not right, I shouldn’t be pestering you. You’re hurting.”
Her face creased up at that, the clear wall I’d envisaged in my mind starting to wobble, but I just let out a breath. It didn’t matter, I could do this. I’d talked so much about what had gone down, it was as if it had happened to someone else now. So I patted her arm, took a deep breath in, and then told her.
“They…? He…?”
Charlene hadn’t gotten what she’d hoped for, or more than she’d expected. Her tears had dried for a moment as she just stared, trying to process. I thought we would be done now. I felt hollow, like I did every time I talked about this, but the super hot, super intense feelings I used to experience had dulled down. I’d wear scars from this forever. All of them had left their marks on me, since the first time I saw them, and I’d come to accept that, but scars weren’t necessarily a bad thing. My therapist had helped me see that they were monuments to who I was, who I’d become. So I got to my feet, bending to grab the empty cups, when Charlene jerked up from her seat and wrapped her arms around me.
Mum was not an especially demonstrative person. She wasn’t cold per se, but just…reserved. Everything seemed to sit under the surface, never to rise up. So Charlene felt like a cyclone of intensity and she’d swallowed me up, but as I fought to catch my breath, the waves of her emotions hitting me hard, I found myself in the eye.
She was upset for me, Brendan’s mum. Angry at her son, frustrated that no one would talk to her about it, and then desperate to see if there was a way to put the broken pieces together.
I knew that feeling. God, did I know that feeling. My teeth ground down when I felt it in her because it awakened the sleeping beast inside me again. Pain had dulled, so had anger and fear, but this… A fucking yearning rose up, so damn ready to put all the parts of what had happened on the table to see if they could be rearranged, tweaked in some way to create a different outcome, one where I didn’t stare out the window, searching for a sign of them, jonesing for just a glimpse of him.
I’d asked them to stop coming around, and Mum had threatened legal action when they didn’t respect that. The other homeowners on our street supported her threats enthusiastically, but there was something that I didn’t much like to admit. A part of me died inside every day they didn’t camp out on my lawn, despite everything I did to try and haul myself out of this pit. That was what heartbreak was, I realised. Nowhere near as poetic as they made it sound in songs, it was the slow, painful death of hope.
“I am so, so sorry, Cyn. If I ever… If I’d known… You’re so sweet, and he…” Her babbling stopped, and something hard rose instead. “I’m going to go down to that club and give that boy a piece of my mind. This is not how I raised him. You look after yourself, love. Don’t you pay those silly boys any mind. Find yourself a good alpha, one who will treat you right. I…”
I saw it, the moment the all too familiar hopelessness rose and swallowed her whole.
“I thought that they would do the right thing by you. That this would be the start of something beautiful.” She rubbed her hands up and down my arms, trying to soothe me or her, I couldn’t tell, but she stepped away, visibly pulling herself together. “Thank you for taking the time to tell me. I should go. His father will be ropeable.”
The house seemed emptier, colder somehow after she left, but I could still feel the warmth of her touch long after she’d pulled away. I just stood there, staring at the windows, seeing every blade of grass, it felt like, unable to do anything else. To move was to act, and that need, to have my mate, to have them here beside me, to replace Charlene’s warmth with theirs, was so acute, I could barely breathe. But breathe I did, in little sharp pants, until the urge to stride out that door, catch an Uber, and end up out the front of their club with Charlene started to fade.
Things had settled down for a while. I’d caught my breath, thought I was back on track again, but really, this had been just a pit stop. Wheels were in motion, and they began to turn again, rolling towards their inevitable conclusion.
Chapter 28
He contacted me, Brendan, a day later. I was on my computer going through emails, sorting out stuff for the ball, making sure my registration was submitted. It was right as I was tackling the mated or unmated section of the form when my phone rang. I froze, saw the unknown number, and just watched my screen until the call ended, going to voicemail. My heart pounded. Sometimes weirdos got my number, sending me heavy breathing messages or weird sprawling fantasies about what they wanted to do to an omega, and then I’d have to change it again. I waited, waited, and then sure enough, a voicemail notification popped up.
My finger hovered over the voicemail, a tiny executioner’s axe, ready to kill this communication or spare it. I should’ve deleted it unseen or got Mum to listen to it first. It was what we’d discussed doing when I spoke to my therapist. But in the silence and solitude of my room, there was only me, the voicemail, and that fucking gnawing need for them. I clicked on it.
“Cyn, love.” His voice was almost unrecognisable, gone from pleasantly husky to positively gravelly. “Mum came and saw me yesterday. Damn near kicked my arse. It was well and truly needed, but… She told me about your conversation. She shouldn’t have, I told her that, but she was too bloody angry to keep your confidence. It came out in a big garbled mess, like it does with Mum. Just a big screed of accusations and then…I sat her down at the bar and got it out of her. The truth.” A long, ragged sigh.
“It probably wouldn’t shock you to know that that was the first time I heard about most of it. I knew where I fit in the hierarchy here, I thought, but… They haven’t spoken to me about it once, not since that day. Not since you…” A low growl, the sound of a man teetering on an edge. “I watched you leave in so much pain, knowing somehow we were the cause of it, and just wanted to sweep in and make it all better. But we couldn’t. We were only hurting you more.”
A few rough gasps, the words coming out in a rush now.
“I saw that, when you came out of the house and shouted at us. I saw how fucking wrecked you looked. You were so thin, your skin so pale, but your eyes… Fuck, Cyn, they told us all about how careful you need to be with omegas at school during sex ed, made us look at case studies of how badly handled matings can affect you, but I’d always told myself I’d never be that fucking guy. That I’d treasure any omega I was lucky enough to get close to and then…”