“Are you doing that OnlyFans thing? A friend of Georgia’s said her cousin’s daughter started doing that, and she’s making an obscene amount of money, despite being a plump girl, but there’s no future in it, I tell you.”
“Mum.” My voice was crisp and clear. “Stop.”
“What?” Before, she was babbling out a hasty monologue, full of Mum’s internalised misogyny and body issues, but now she flipped. There were less words, but exponentially more menace. It’d frightened the hell out of me as a kid, but now? I sucked in a breath, then another, preparing myself for what I was about to say.
I’d walked downstairs, not wanting Max to see or hear this. I didn’t want her poison leaching out and touching him. So I stood in the very brightly lit kitchen, watched the way the tree’s shadows played across the walls, and then I told her how it was.
“I’m an omega, Mum.” Silence, deadly silence. “The Lockwood pack are my mates.”
My fingers went up tentatively to the bite that throbbed so delightfully, reminding me of him, of how he felt. The ghost of it shifted inside me, making me feel just what it would be like when I went back to bed and met him there, naked.
“Is that what they told you?” Could a mother feel such scorn for her own child? Should she express it if she did feel that way? Mum had seemingly never had those thoughts. Her mouth always engaged before her brain did, saying exactly what she thought.
In her mind, there was never a need to pull her punches.
A therapist had helped me see that this same viciousness was directed at herself first, then me second. It was why she was always so controlling about what she ate and when, ruling like a petty tyrant over the kitchen and the shopping list. I was fairly sure Dad would’ve just liked a nice steak and three veg every now and again, but that rarely fitted with her diet plan of the week. He either got lashings of steak and no potatoes when she was on keto, or dry boiled potatoes and no butter or sour scream when she was vegan—anything to keep her body under control.
And by extension, mine, because that’s all I was—an extension of her. I didn’t exist separately to her, so when I did things like this—
“So that’s how they sucked you in? Honestly, Sage, I thought you were smarter than this. An omega.” She spluttered out her disbelief. “They wanted to make you feel special enough to let your guard down, so they convinced you that you’re an omega, and their true mate! Sage, you revealed as a beta when you were a teenager, the same as everyone else, so why the hell you’d think this was true, I have no idea. They’re using you—that’s plain to see. What on earth would make you think men like that would want a girl like you?”
When I heard the door lock beep, when I heard it pop open, I felt a rush of hope. One of my mates was entering the house, I told myself, hopefully Tobias. I could give him the phone, knowing his firm tone would stop my fucking mother in her tracks, quelling those damn questions, ones I couldn’t answer without her tearing the fragile thing we’d built between us to pieces. So I half listened to her tirade as I watched it open, feeling like the cavalry was arriving, even as I hated that I needed someone to ride to my rescue.
So imagine my surprise to see a very beautiful woman walking in the door. She walked up the entranceway like she owned the place, an expensive bag hanging from her arms, oversized designer sunglasses masking her identity, until she saw me. I heard the clip clop of her heels on the marble floor, feeling like they echoed all the way through my head, driving Mum’s drivel out.
“I have to call you back,” I told Mum and then clicked on end call, switching my phone to silent as I turned to face the stranger.
Except she wasn’t, not really. She smiled that tight little smile pretty women seem to master, pulling off her glasses with a toss of her head, all the better to inspect me thoroughly. Those big, blue eyes that I’d seen gazing back at the camera when I looked at her Insta feed met mine, and then a perfectly shaped brow raised.
Chloe.
“Hi, I’m Chloe,” she said, offering me a slender hand, but I just stared at it like she was offering me a bucket full of spiders. “And you must be…Paige.”
“Sage,” I corrected, barely able to feel my face right now.
If you were going to meet your current boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, doing so with bed hair, without having brushed your teeth, and wearing an old T-shirt and trackie dacks with no bra was not the power move I would’ve liked to make. Though by her slow inspection of me, I had a feeling head to toe couture and a fresh haircut weren’t going to cut it either.
“Amanda told me all about you.” Her smile widened. “I thought she was exaggerating, but…” She shook her head slowly. “Well, they’ve got what they wanted—I’m here. Where are my mates?”
I recovered far quickerthan I would have ever anticipated.
“What?” I snapped out, my voice more wolf than human.
She paid that little mind, peering at me with exaggerated concern, then spoke in the patronising terms a bitch like her would to a child.
“Beau and…Tobias.” The last name came out in a purr, and it was right then I could see how she was the perfect little omega. Her voice was all low and throaty, and balanced on those heels, she was a tiny little thing, ready to be swept up and smothered by four burly alphas. They’d delight in opening her up, all of them stunned when she finally took their knots, and—
I shook my head sharply.
“I’m not sure—” I replied.
“Never mind. I’ll find them.” Her reply was airy as she set her bag down on the kitchen bench like she owned the place.
Although, maybe she did.
She looked around her, as if seeing the house for the first time.
“God, they haven’t changed a thing. I chose the wood for the benches myself, and those tiles. A friend of mine is this amazing ceramic artist. He made and glazed each one by hand for me. The curtains are this delicious washed linen I had flown in from…”