Page 13 of Happy Halloween, Omega

“She’s not my mother.” I utter the words as if saying them out loud will help me wrap my mind around the concept.

“No.” He’s staring at me with disbelief and awe. His eyes, the same hazel color as mine, dart over my features like he’s trying to imprint them in his memory.

“She was a friend of your wife?”

“Yes.”

“And she took me.”

It’s not a question, it’s reality. It all abruptly makes sense. The reason I’ve had to hide as a Beta. It’s not because she wanted a better life for me away from an oppressive Alpha, rather to keep from caught when the authorities arrived to take me to The Omega Academy. My documents wouldn’t match. Hell, did I even have documents? She’s kept me in a cage with my wings cut for her own selfish reasons.

I know I should ask more questions, to ask to see my birth mother, but I’m already overwhelmed and the words don’t want to come.

Our tense silence is broken by a hammering on the front door. The sound reverberates around the foyer and makes the glass windows shiver.

I look at the Alpha, my father, with alarm, and he frowns. The moment he opens the door, the last person I expect storms into the room as if she’s possessed.

My mother. Or, at least, the woman who has pretended to be.

“Celeste!” she screeches, her eyes wild and bulging. “What are you doing here?”

I simply stare at her, looking at her face and seeing her for what feels like the first time. Her features are elegantly cut, while mine are round and soft. Her mouth wide, while mine is a small pout. In the stark light of the truth, I can finally see what has always been in front of me. We’re not related. She’s not my blood.

I step backwards and out of range of her reaching hand.

“No.”

“No? Come, let’s get you home. We can forget whatever this lapse in judgement is.”

My face is pulled into a sneer of disgust. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

She blinks in shock.

“Celeste, I’ve called the police,” my father says to me through gritted teeth before turning to stare at my mother with true hatred. “Tonight we’re finally going to get justice for what you did. You’re going to rot in jail.”

Wait, rot in jail? Sure, she did something unforgivable, but… she’s still the woman who raised me. The person who loves me more than anything in the world. I’ve never doubted for a second that she cares about me.

She looks imploringly at me, speaking in a rushed tone. “Honey, come. We have to go. I’m not mad, just… come home with me.”

“Celeste, you need to know something else.”

“Conor, don’t. Please. I… I’ll wait for the police. I’ll comply with anything, just don’t tell her.”

“Tell me what?”

My father looks at my mother with tears welling in his eyes. “You don’t deserve to have her love.”

“Please…” she whispers.

He looks back at me, and I can see the pain shimmering in his eyes. A pain so deep, so mournful, it almost hurts to maintain eye contact.

“Do you know what happens to an Omega when their child is taken from them?”

I shake my head. I know little about Omegas, my mother never wanted me to know.

“They mourn, they cry, they wither, and then they go insane. Not only did I lose my baby girl, the light of my fucking life, but I lost my mate. She died a horrible, lengthy death from a broken heart.”

My mother, I’m not even sure who she is to me now, looks pleadingly at me. Her beautiful face is contorted by desperation and terror. “I didn’t kill her.”