If I was looking for sympathy from my own mother, I was going to be wildly disappointed. She sounded like she was tearing her hair out.
“Why?” she shrieked. “What did you do, Felix?”
I bristled with anger. “I didn’tdoanything, mom! He was the one who kicked me out!”
“Please don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, Felix. I know an alpha wouldn’t just kick an omega off into the street without a reason, especially not an alpha of Larry’s standing.”
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe my own mother was taking his side when she didn’t even know what happened.
“Fine,” I said quietly. “I’ll tell you why he kicked me out, mom. Do you really want to know?”
“Felix--”
I heard the fumble of sound that indicated the call was routed to speakerphone, but right now I was too heated to care if anyone else was listening.
“It’s because I’m infertile, okay?” I snapped. “Do you know what that means? It means I can’t have kids! It means I wasn’t good enough for Larry and he decided to cut his losses and just get rid of me instead of trying to make it work! He didn’twantme!”
The silence that followed almost made me think my parents had hung up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t so lucky.
“How is that possible?” my father asked. “No one in our family has ever been infertile, especially not an omega.”
His clueless question made me want to cry, but I was too angry.
“My body just doesn’t work, I guess,” I said bitterly.
I didn’t like falling victim to my old thoughts and doubts, especially when Elijah wasn’t here to dispel them and tell me how stupid I was acting, but my parents had brought it out of me like a poison.
Unlike my mother, my father at least sounded concerned. “Did you do fertility testing?”
“No,” I muttered. “Why would it even matter? I couldn’t get pregnant naturally so what’s the use in a doctor telling me that it’s official except to make me feel worse?”
My father hummed like it was a disappointing reality he’d just have to learn to live with. “Well, that’s okay, Felix. You and Larry can still work things out.”
“How?” my mother’s shrill voice interjected. “We promised the Bisleys a child!”
“Calm down, Evelyn. They can adopt, or--”
“Oh, Dennis, you’re being ridiculous,” she snapped. “Alphas, especially ones like the Bisleys, want children related by blood.”
I winced at her insinuation that most alphas wanted biological children. My mind wandered to Elijah and how desperately he wanted a family, and I couldn’t give it to him. At least not the way he really wanted.
“Felix, are you still there?” my father asked.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, though the cowardly part of me wanted to hang up the phone.
“Can you go back and talk to him? Maybe Larry had too much to drink that night, or just wasn’t thinking straight…”
My stomach churned with disgust. “No. I’m never going back to him.”
“Felix!” my mom cried with a gasp.
“I’mnot. And you can’t force me back there.”
“Was he hitting you or something, son?” my father asked. “Is that why you’re so adamant?”
“No, he didn’t hit me, but--”
“You’re being selfish, you know that, Felix?” my mother exclaimed. “We worked so hard to find an arrangement for you, so you would be happy and well-off in life, and then you go and do this.”
