Page 14 of Happy Halloween, Omega

“You might as well have.”

“No. No, listen to me, baby girl.” She reaches out again, and this time I let her stroke my hair and wipe the tears slowly tracking down my pale cheeks. I don’t flinch or move. I’m not sure if I’m even really listening to her attempts to explain herself.

“I was mated to an Alpha selected by The Omega Academy as my perfect match, but he wasn’t a good Alpha to me. He made my life hell. He denied me the one thing I was told my whole life I was built for – making babies. I just wanted to be complete. To have a child. And when I visited my best-friend Melanie and I saw her perfect house, with her perfect Alpha who doted on her and gave her everything she dreamed of, I was jealous. It wasn’t until you came inside from playing that I knew what I was going to do. I wanted to start again and have the life I was owed.”

“So you took someone else’s life.”

“Please, Celeste. You feel it too, don’t you? The Omega inside you isn’t gone, she’s just asleep. The yearning formore. You have to understand. You have to forgive me. I’m your mother.”

I stare at the woman who I’ve always considered otherworldly beautiful and see her for the ugly creature she is.

“You’re not my mother and I’ll never forgive you.”

It’s like a switch is flicked, and the pleading stops. Her face twists into a snarl of rage, and with venom I’ve never heard in her voice, she screeches at the Alpha. “You did this! You took her from me!”

It happens so fast. I blink once and she’s launched herself across the room, throwing her petite body at the Alpha with unexpected strength.

They stumble and I catch the first glimpse of red.

A deep bellow roars from the Alpha, his large hands fumbling over the small frame of his attacker, trying to tear her off him.

She pulls her fist back, revealing the metallic glint of a knife. I’ve never seen her be violent. I certainly didn’t expect her to have a knife.

The blood doesn’t have time to drip from the blade before she viciously plunges it back into my father’s chest.

He wrestles with her, but she’s too quick and his hands are slippery from the blood he’s tried to stop pouring from his wounds. She keeps stabbing. Again and again until the gray fabric of his shirt turns red.

It takes far longer than it should for my brain to understand what is happening. She’s killing him. Stabbing him to death before my very eyes.

I react.

I jump into the fray and try to push myself between them to stop her, but in her haze of crazed rage, her knife connects with my chest and I scream in pain.

As fast as she started her attack, she stops. She stares at the cut in my trench coat with a horrified expression. Her pause is long enough for the Alpha to finally get the knife out of her blood-soaked hands, and he doesn’t hesitate to jam the knife into her throat to the hilt.

She screams and he twists the blade, burrowing the blade deeper with a snarling shout, “Die, you fucking bitch.”

I remember little from that moment on. I lay on the ground beside the woman who’d been everything to me, a mother, a friend, a confidant, a protector, and watch her struggle for her last breath. Blue and red lights flash across her face as she watches me back with wide, sad eyes.

She can’t speak, blood bubbling up and trickling out of her gasping mouth.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

I hold her close once she’s still, and scream bloody murder whenever someone tries to take me from her. She’s mine. She’s all I have, and they won’t take her from me.

Strong arms scoop me up, and I fight with all my might to stay with her.

“Stop, Omega.”

He says the word and I freeze in his embrace. How? How does he know my secret?

I tilt my tear-stained face up to look at my captor and gasp at the intense, knowing face of an Alpha.

“You’re safe now. I’m Detective Romulus Fox, and I’m going to look after you.”

9

EveryHalloween,Igeta fright. It’s still not Halloween yet, but I’m shaken to my core.