“You’re kidding.” It doesn’t feel like he is, but if he used to … “Wait. You had that drawer full of designer black shirts, and you only wore them when our parents weren’t home. Those were stolen?”
He shrugs. “Can you imagine if that bitch saw me now? She’d die of embarrassment. I don’t look like her preppy little pet Omega anymore. I’m never wearing tan slacks and powder-blue sweaters again, that’s for sure.”
“I think she would have died of embarrassment if you’d gotten caught shoplifting.”
“Why do you think I only did it when I was with her?” he smirks.
“You must have been pretty good at it.”
“Nah,” he says. “I think she was just buying so fucking much that no one really cared if her kid was walking around taking shit at the same time. I swear, one time a shop assistant actually winked at me when he caught me stuffing a shirt down my pants.”
Owen snorts. “I had no idea you were such a delinquent.”
“It was a different time.”
“It really was,” I agree.
Our parents tried to raise us to be like them, and we rebelled against that in our own ways.
I would listen to whatever lesson they were teaching, like our brothers, but, unlike our brothers, I never let one word of those lessons sink in. I came to my own conclusions, rejecting their ideas without saying anything.
It surprised them when Shadow left home.
They weren’t pleased, but it didn’t take them too long to start acting like our Omega brother never existed in the first place. They never looked for him. They knew they’d have to drag him home kicking and screaming if they found him.
It would be embarrassing. My mother would never live it down.
She didn’t worry about him, and neither did our father.
It should have shocked me. But in truth, deep down, I knew they didn’t care.
Suddenly, I didn’t know what I was waiting for. If I left, all they’d do was disown me.
I’d stop belonging to a family I felt no connection to, and I’d be free to start my own life.
That’s when I knew I would leave.
And I did it the same way I’d ignored their instructions for years.
I made them think I was listening to what they wanted, before making my own choice in private, and quietly taking the opportunity to walk away.
That’s the night I was supposed to come to Goldcrest.
To start the process of finding a suitable Omega to marry.
I didn’t tell them I wasn’t going to do that, I just walked out of the house that night and never looked back, knowing they wouldn’t care once they realized I wasn’t coming back.
If neither of us wanted to do what they expected, they wouldn’t miss us one little bit.
“How did we come from them?” Shadow asks, shaking his head.
“That’s a good question. Let me know if you ever figure it out.”
“Sure,” he says, with a grin. “I’ll call you with my theories.”
“Uh oh,” Owen murmurs. “You’re in for it now. If he’s up after midnight, he’s thinking about conspiracies.”
“I’m in for some late-night calls then, I guess.”
