I glance at my pack, confusion filling me. What story? Devlin moves to the side, sloshing whiskey into glasses and handing one to each of us. I take a big swig from mine, welcoming the heat of it as it slides down my throat, and nudge Gabe to do the same when he stares into his glass forlornly.
Pa clears his throat.
“I haven’t shared this with anyone for many years. You’ll forgive an old man for collecting his thoughts.” He raises his eyes to me. “And I hope you’ll forgive me, son, for not sharing this sooner.”
ChapterThirty-Four
Devlin
My thoughts stay with Harper upstairs as I settle back into my seat, sensing that Ezra is sharing something important with us. I hate to think of her lying there alone. We should be with her. I shift restlessly and Rogue gives me a look.
Ezra rests his head back against the armchair, his eyes unseeing as he thinks over his words.
“Fifty years ago, I met Ivy in a bar in downtown Chicago.”
Ace jerks, his eyes now fixed firmly on his grandfather. Ezra has always been tight-lipped about Ace’s grandmother and the rest of their family.
“I walked in and there she was, dancing around with her friends. It was an Irish bar, and they had a band playing.”
Ezra hums a bar of a song before he trails off.
“She was everything I never knew I wanted. I fancied myself a bit of a man around town then. I used to get myself into trouble pretty much every night. Playing the big alpha. But it all stopped, the night I met her. One look and I just knew. And she felt the same way.”
“We married quick, after a few weeks. Her folks were furious – they had this beta doctor all lined up for her, but all we wanted was each other.”
His lip twitches up at the corners.
“We were happy. We moved upstate and used everything we had to buy this little house with a porch. It was falling down around us, but Ivy just tied up her hair and we got to work. I managed to get on the medicine program at the college and we made friends in the neighborhood.”
“It was around that time that the birth rates started dropping. Every day at the hospital we were seeing women losing their babies. Some days there’d even be queues of them outside because we didn’t have space to hold them all. The grief was… indescribable. And then we discovered that it was all beta women.”
Ezra takes a sip of his drink. The room is silent as we all listen.
“Public mood began to shift, looking for someone to blame. At first, it was just fringe conspiracy theorists. They whispered that the omegas were doing something to stop betas from carrying to term. It was ridiculous, of course. Omega biology doesn’t work like that. They were just different. Different biologies, different hormones. The issues with the betas didn’t affect them.”
“But whatever the reason for the beta problems, after a year or so, it became obvious that omega pregnancies were going without a hitch. People started protesting outside the hospital, and even the staff started turning on them. Then people started sneaking in, trying to snatch the children. I saw two babies go missing. It was like anarchy. It got to the point where omegas stopped coming to the hospital for treatment, giving birth in back-alley rooms because they didn’t trust their children not to disappear.”
“That’s horrific,” Gabe mutters next to me.
Nausea swirls in my stomach at the thought. This is a side of the omega war that we’ve never heard first-hand. These are the origins of my own life. The beginnings of the adoption program I was placed into when my parents died.
“It was,” Ezra agrees grimly. He’s a little pale, and Ace gets up to refill his glass.
Clearing his throat, Ezra continues.
“It only got worse from there. People we thought were friends turned their backs on us. I was still trying to keep up my work at the hospital, and Ivy started staying home. She didn’t want to go out without me. It escalated. A brick through the window, groups watching our house. We decided to leave, to go into hiding like so many others had.”
“A few days before we planned to leave, the government asked omegas to come forward for tests, to see if they could work out what the birth issue was by comparing them to betas. Very few came forward. By that point, they were too scared.”
He swallows, looking down. “I encouraged Ivy to go. I thought it might prove that omegas had nothing to do with the birth problems. I saw it as a possible solution. And they had to stay in for the tests for a couple of weeks, so I thought she’d be safe, and we could make a decision when she came out. But she never came home.”
His face is twisted in agony, and Ace lets out a whine of distress as Gabe leans against his shoulder, anchoring him with pack touch.
“What happened?” Rogue breaks the grim silence.
“The Government announced that all omegas would be placed into a mandatory protective program, effective immediately,” Ezra says grimly. “If any omegas tried to hide, government lackeys hunted them down like dogs.”
Snarls echo in unison, all of us unable to hold in our anger. There’s a swoosh in my stomach, something telling me that this is important. I can’t help but think of my mom and dad. Was this before or after the night they died?
