Page 31 of Brave New Omega, Part 2

Chapter 31

KATIE

W e are seated with Max on one side of me and Callum on the other. Loren is across from me, which is entirely too far away for my liking. But at least the poison pixie is several seats away. Next to Loren is a man who looks to be about sixty, with an impressive handlebar mustache and a red bowtie. On his other side is the woman we met when we first arrived – Matilda.

“Your mother sends her regards,” Matilda says as a shallow bowl of milky looking soup is placed in front of her. I sniff it tentatively – something earthy, like mushrooms. Loren stays unaffected, but I notice the slight tightening of his jaw.

“Thank you. How is she?”

“About the same, about the same. The fevers burned through her mind, poor dear. But the sea air helps calm her.”

Before I can ask, Max leans in and whispers, “His mother, Claudia, caught the Omega sickness. She caught it late in life – after Loren had left home. But it still ravaged her body, leaving her mentally incapacitated. She doesn't even recognize her own children.”

I stiffen. The Omega sickness. The reason Omegas are such treasures.

I blink back the sudden overwhelm of tears. Cancer burned through my own mom. Cancer that brought her in and out of delirium. In the end she barely recognized us. I mechanically sip from my soup spoon. It’s a simple soup but full of rich cream.

“Then I am glad father continues to keep her at Bell Shore Cottage. It must be hard to be in the city so often without him.”

Matilda only raises a single eyebrow as she sips her soup. “Indeed, but I have learned to cope.”

Callum snorts a laugh but turns it into a cough as Matilda turns a white-hot glare toward him.

“It’s wonderful that you boys have finally found an Omega for your Pack. Everyone was beginning to worry over you. So much potential, so little direction.”

I set my spoon down. “I am sure you worry over their wellbeing often.” I do everything I can to look sincere. Matilda offers me a half smile.

“Family always does, dear. I hope you’ll be a good influence over them. They need a good strong hand.”

“Oh, don’t worry – I have strong hands.”

Max chokes on his soup, Callum laughs into his cloth napkin, and Loren grins at me. The man to his right, looks over at us and Matilda’s shocked face.

“What’s going on over here? Have you ruffians been coarse with Tilly?”

I flutter my eyelashes like I’d seen Tilly herself do, then smile coyly.

“No sir, she was simply reminding me to be firm with my Alphas.” I squeeze Max’s knee under the table. “Which is advice I intend to take.”

The man looks from me to Tilly, clearly not getting it, then returns to his soup.

“You seem to be up to the match of a Bellrose Pack,” Matilda says with the tiniest whisper of a nod. I immediately frown. This is Pack Murphy, not a Bellrose Pack. But she barges ahead before I can respond.

“Wherever did they dig you up? They’ve been in the system with the Omega Conservatory for years.”

“Ah, well, I perfumed late,” I say, parroting Aurelia’s talking points.

“Did you? Where do you come from? You sound like you could be coastal, but not quite. Not northern, surely.”

“I moved around quite a bit,” I say. It was true – and the best way to lie is to tell as much truth as you can.

A server appears out of nowhere at my left elbow and smoothly whisks away my soup bowl and replaces it with a tiny glass plate of what looks like pickled vegetables.

“I bet your family was thrilled to have an Omega.” She looks me over again, spearing a pickled carrot and biting into it with gusto. Talking around her food, she continues. “I know you aren’t a society girl. I’ve met all of the ones who’ve presented over the last several years.”

“There are thousands of Omegas that aren’t society girls,” Max says next to me, his posture tensing.

“Of course, dear. I’m sure you know many good girls from one of the ethnic neighborhoods.” Matilda’s voice drips condescension even as she crunches a mouthful of pickled cauliflower.

I squeeze his knee again, not to heat him up but to hold him down.

I can fight this fight .

“My family is truly blessed – all five of us sisters are Omegas.”

Matilda gapes at me, her mouth speckled with bits of half chewed vegetable. It’s disgusting.

“Five Omegas?” She repeats, several other heads turning to look at us.

A murmur races up the table. I hear the chorus “ Five Omegas.”

I can see the wheels of calculations turning behind Matilda’s painted face. Five Omegas in a family. Five Omegas when just one is considered a prize. If that fertility is passed down through the family, then I would be a catch, society girl or not.

“Your mother must be… quite proud,” Matilda says.

“My mother is dead.”

Callum’s arm shoots up from his side to wrap around my shoulders, and Max laces his fingers through the hand I’ve kept under the table. Loren’s face is as transparent as glass.

They didn’t know. Of course they didn’t

“She died of … the sickness. Last year.”

Max nuzzles against me. I should roll him away. I have carried this weight for years without his help. I have carried the weight of her illness, of managing all the finances and doctors visits, and making sure all my sisters were provided for all without any of these Alphas.

But Callum presses a feather-light kiss to the tender spot just below my ear, and Max rubs his calloused thumb over my knuckles. Loren leans forward and grasps my hand across the table for a brief moment.

Damn, it feels good to not have to hold all the pain alone.

“I’m sorry, dear. That is a tragedy indeed.”

I blink away another flood of tears that wants to overtake me. Goddamn my emotions! I want to be alone with my Alphas, letting them cuddle me while I let all these hard and bitter things inside leak out of my eyes. Why is this woman interrupting me and my Pack?

I shrug mechanically. “Life’s a bitch.”

And just like that, the tender moment implodes.

Before anyone can jump in to ask a question or scold my coarse language, the waiters return to exchange one plate for another –this one a tiny hen, sitting in a pool of red liquid, four perfect spheres of what might be mashed potato marking each of the cardinal directions.

People murmur and I catch an unfamiliar voice say “yes, she said five . In one family.”

“You’re going to be popular,” Max says, picking up a fork. “Your sisters are going to be a hot topic in the society column.”

Shit . I was trying to protect them, not throw them to the hungry wolves.

“Don’t mind them,” Callum says, deftly cutting several pieces of meat for me before I can protest. “They’re all hoping to secure fertile Omegas for their own sons’ Packs. They’re all jealous as fuck that you are with us and not with one of their boys.”

“Even if I’m not society?”

“They’d make an exception, I’m sure,” Callum says.

“Except for the Bellrose Pack?”

Callum sets his knife down with a sigh. Loren frowns at his wine glass, not looking at me. It cracks my heart to see him so closed up. My professor has open, gentle features, not these locked up walls.

Callum lifts a fork full of meat and holds it up for me.

“I can feed myself.” I try to grab the fork from him.

“Of course you can, that’s why it’s special when you let me.”

He pops the forkful into my open mouth. It’s perfectly tender, with a hint of lemon and pepper – simple yet so good. I let out a little moan of contentment.

“Woman, you are going to ruin me.” Callum leans back, and Max holds up his own forkful, this time a bit of meat and potatoes.

“Really, I am not a child, I can feed myself.” I manage to pry the fork from Max’s grasp and eat myself.

“Be careful,Katie,” a voice says from behind me. Genevieve hovers behind my chair, the fabric of her elaborate dress rustling around her. “They love to indulge themselves like good little Alphas, until you no longer suit their plans. Then they will say and do anything to ruin a girl.”

I shiver, but not from cold. I want to rip out her pretty little throat. Anger and a need to teach this woman to respect my territory rises in me. It’s weird, I’m not a jealous person, not really. I’ve had to share just about everything in my life –my room, my clothes, my parents’ attention. But I do not want this woman sharing airspace with my Alphas.

Without realizing I’m doing it, I bare my teeth and growl.

Holy shit.

Genevieve blinks, her face a shade paler than before, then flounces away. Callum and Max both have bared teeth, and Loren is standing on the other side of the table. In the commotion I might have missed the tiny tinkle of silverware against crystal. But the cheery note cuts through my brain fog and I realize that a lovely young woman that looks startlingly like Loren is standing at the opposite end of the table. Celeste . His little sister.

“Now that we are onto dessert,” she says, and I look down to realize that my plate of chicken has been traded for a plate of tiny perfectly square cakes in different shades of black, white, and lavender.

“I’m so grateful each of you has come to enjoy a dinner with our family and closest friends. It has been far too long since I have seen many of you.” Her look lingers for a moment on Loren.

“As many of you know, I have been courting Pack Messina. It is my great joy to announce here among my closest friends that I have accepted their courtship and will be joining their Pack!”

People clap politely all around me.

“Fuck,” Callum sighs. Max offers a half hearted clap. Loren is frozen, watching his sister as she blushes and accepts many congratulations.

“While we know it’s customary to wait a full moon cycle between the announcement and the ceremony of vows, we just can’t wait! Our wedding ceremony will be in two weeks, and our Toast will be this Friday!”

Several women gasp. I guess this is quite a quick turnaround. Multiple of the dinner guests shoot unveiled glances at Celeste’s rather flat midsection.

“We want to invite everyone here to join us in celebrating this special occasion. Especially our family.” Her gaze flits back to Loren, whose expression is carefully arranged to be politely neutral.

Oh, my sweet professor! I read the slight tensing of his jaw, and the throb of a blood vessel at the corner of his forehead.

I reach out to him across the table, letting my fingertips brush against the sleeve of his shirt.

He looks startled by the touch. Then, realizing it is me, his expression softens.

Before I can move to grab his hand, Genevieve bursts through a door at the back of the dining room. She breezes forward, holding one of the clear-pane tablets out in front of a man who keeps pace beside her.

“That’s what I’m telling you,” she says, glancing quickly around the room, and pausing dramatically to ensure maximum attention. “There are no records of five Omegas being born to a single Pack in the last fifty years.” She points at me, eyes dancing with manic light. “She’s a lair.”