Steve was pretty sure that when his mother said she came right back, what she really meant was that she’d attended the gallery opening, then the afterparty, and then come right home rather than linger in Anchorage like she’d usually do.
“Dad thought you were home,” Steve said, teasing her. “I went to your apartment yesterday to see you, but you weren’t there.”
“You could have called me at any time, Steve,” his mother said. “I would have told you where I was.”
The fact that she hadn’t called him either wasn’t something he was going to point out.
“I wanted to,” he said, not wanting to start a fight.
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I’m sorry. Come, let’s go get a cup of coffee and you can fill me in on everything.” She froze, grabbing his chin and tilting his head. “Is that amatingbite?”
Steve laughed. “It is. I’ll tell you all about them.”
“Them, as in gender nonconforming, or them as in multiple people?”
Steve tilted his head the other way, showing off August’s mark, too. His mother gasped.
“Congratulations. Let’s forget the coffee, I have a bottle of brandy I’ve been saving for a special occasion. We’ll crack it open, have some cookies, and you can tell me everything I’ve missed.”
* * *
“You know, your father and I had an omega.”
Of all the things Steve expected his mother to say after he’d filled her in, that was the last of them.
“What?”
His mother nodded, looking out the window and taking a sip of her brandy. “It’s how we got married. His name was Corey. He was this absolute hunk of a man who worked as a logger out of Ketchikan. People always thought he was a werewolf, because he was six-foot-five and built like a tank, and it always made him so bashful when he had to explain that he was just a regular human.”
Steve swallowed, wondering how his parents could have had an omega that no one had ever told him about.
Did Marcus know about this?
“What happened to him?” Steve asked.
“He killed himself.”
Steve looked at his mom. She was staring out the window, her posture stiff and unhappy.
“Why?” Steve almost didn’t want to ask the question, but he needed to know. If there was some way he could mess up that would make Dylan want to do… something like that, then he needed to know.
“Your father had this idea that withholding sex was a good way to train Corey to be more obedient. Corey was a human, so he didn’t always obey the way your father expected him to. It used to drive your father up the wall when he’d order Corey to do something and he’d just shake his head no and move on with his day. Then, after he started withholding sex every time Corey acted up, things were better for a while.” His mother snapped her jaw shut and shook her head. “No, they weren’t better. Corey was miserable, and I was trying to make your dad see sense, and it was awful. Your dad was the only one who was happy. Then one day, Corey simply had enough and walked outside, went to sleep in the snow, and your dad found him in the morning. We got divorced a few days later.”
Steve swallowed, wondering how he could have gone his whole life without knowing this about his parents.
He thought back to the morning that Ryker had realized that Dylan was an omega, remembering the look on Dylan’s face as he desperately agreed to drink down piss despite how much the thought revolted him, and tried to imagine using that desperation against him to make him more obedient.
To break him.
He couldn’t imagine it.
“Obviously, no one is allowed to talk about Corey,” his mother said, taking a shuddering breath and downing the rest of her brandy. “He didn’t have to rip out more than a few throats before everyone got the message.”
“Did you love him?” Steve asked.
“Who?” his mother asked, sucking in her cheeks and making a face. “Corey, or your father?”
“Corey.”
