“Brush it, and quickly, I don’t have time for anything more than that,” I told her as I spritzed some perfume into the crook of my neck and wrists to cover up my lemony omega scent. The heavy scent of jasmine filled my nose and I sneezed as Dorothea finished running a brush through my hair.
“It’s not perfect,” she said with a frown, her fingers twitching to fully style my hair. Hair was her favorite part of dressing me every day, and she was really talented at it.
“It’ll have to do, my mother is waiting for me.” We exchanged a commiserating look. I left her in my room to pick up my wet walking dress and take it down to the mansion’s laundress.
My mother’s favorite sitting room was at the front of the house and it was called the Pink Room. It was full of blush and cream colored furnishings. Every surface had a vase of pink roses with eucalyptus on it, providing a cheery look to the backdrop of the storm that was still crashing against the large picture windows.
This was where my mother saw most of her visitors and spent most of her day. Even now, she was settled onto her favorite pink settee which had been pulled close to the roaring fire to ward off the chill from the rain. Her attention was on the handkerchief that she was currently embroidering, but I knew that she had heard me come in.
I glanced up at the large gold mirror above the fireplace. It had always hung there, ever since I was a small child. As I stared at the smooth glass, I noted with a wince that my cheeks were still flushed from my adventure outside. To make matters worse my hair, despite Dorothea’s valiant efforts, still looked wild and unkempt. I surreptitiously ran my hand down some of the more erroneous curls to try and flatten them.
My mother glanced up from her work, finally acknowledging my presence by putting the hoop to the side and giving me her full attention.
Despite being in her late fifties, Elizabeth Wilde was still beautiful. Her silver-streaked brown hair, normally curly, was tied back into a simple twist with not a hair out of place. When she was younger, she was described as one of the most beautiful women in Boston, and age hadn’t done anything to change that. The lines on her face were elegant and even her current frown looked meticulous as she fixed her green eyes onto me, taking in my disheveled appearance.
“It’s been nearly fifty minutes since I sent Timothy to find you,” she finally said, reproach over my tardiness clear in her voice.
“I’m sorry I was…” I combed through my brain trying to come up with an excuse.
“Out where you weren’t supposed to be and without a chaperone? As you usually are on a Tuesday morning?” my mother supplied, her gaze cooling as she watched me flinch.
I thought that I was being careful when I snuck out of the house, but apparently that wasn’t the case at all.
My mother sighed heavily. “Juneau, I do hope you realize that there is very little that goes on in this mansion that I do not know about. I have known about your little jaunts since the first time Maria caught you sneaking up the servant’s stairs.”
“Why didn’t you say anything then?” I asked, blushing like a child that had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“I wanted you to get it out of your system, the outside world is not the most interesting place and I assumed you would get bored with it sooner or later,” she said with a shrug before leveling a sardonic look in my direction. “I should have realized that you are just like your father.” I winced at her mention of my father and glanced at the photograph of him that she always kept nearby.
“Like Nicholas, you are adventurous, intelligent, and courageous,” my mother began, her eyes momentarily glassing over, her mind going far away as she talked about her husband. “But like him you are also brash, forgetful, and just a little bit selfish. All traits that are fine in an alpha man, but not in a young omega lady of good standing.”
I had to look away from her judgment and chose to stare down at my feet instead. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t care if I acted like a good little omega girl, that there had to be more to life than that. But I knew my words would fall on deaf ears. I knew my mother loved me more than life itself, but was also exasperated by how headstrong I was at all times.
“Daddy wouldn’t have scolded me,” I muttered petulantly, my inner thoughts leaking out through my lips.
“No, he wouldn’t have, in fact he probably would have gone out with you,” my mother mused affectionately before the smile melted off of her face and the disapproving frown was firmly back in place once again.
“But he is not here. I am. All I want to do is keep you safe, and I can’t do that if you continue to sneak out of the house without an escort of some kind. Any alpha on the street could snatch you up and take you away in the blink of an eye,” she finished with a shudder, her eyes haunted.
Guilt filled my stomach at that look because I knew exactly what she was referring to. When Timothy had just been born, my mother was out shopping and an alpha man tried to pull her into his carriage despite the fact that she was a bonded omegaandshe had an entire retinue of staff with her. The man only failed because one of our footmen had physically wrenched my mother away from him.
It was a cautionary tale that had been one of my bedtime stories for as long as I could remember. Omegas could not defend themselves as the fairer designation and they were so valued by society that even a bonded omega could fetch a high price. I had never felt unsafe on my morning walks, but my mother would never dare to leave the house with any less than three servants.
“I won’t go out of the house in the morning without Dorothea,” I promised, still feeling guilty for making my mother relive her trauma.
“You won’t go out of the house at all without my permission from now on, Juneau,” my mother said and before I could open my mouth to protest she cut me off. “Now, I did not bring you here this morning just to scold you. We need to discuss the upcoming Gala.”
Every year the Wilde family threw an annual Spring Gala that celebrated the founding of the Wilde corporation in America in 1765. This would be the hundred and fiftieth anniversary and anyone who my mother deemed worthy had received an invitation. I already knew what my mother was going to say next.
“Mother, I don’t want to choose a pack yet,” I began, hoping to wriggle my way out of yet another lecture about being a twenty-two year old unbonded omega.
“You have been saying that since your first heat at eighteen. It has been four social seasons since then and we have brought you some of the best matches on the East coast,” my mother reminded me. I grimaced, thinking of the “matches” that had been placed before me. They had all been foppish, boring single alphas or alpha packs. Not one had sparked any kind of emotion in me other than indifference, or in some cases, disgust.
Every alpha on the East coast wanted to try their hand at wooing the youngest daughter and only omega produced in the Wilde family for three generations. Along with my hand came my brother’s business backing and what I was sure was a more than generous dowry. I had met what felt like hundreds of alphas and none of them made mefeelwhat they were supposed to. Like what my mother felt for my father.
All of the romance novels that I kept secreted in my nest had talked about true fated mates like it was something magical and special. Regardless of designation or class. I wanted something like that for myself, but I wasn’t convinced that I was going to find it within the upper echelons of polite society.
“Yes, but none of them smelled right to me. Would you have me bond with a pack of alphas that my instincts don’t like?” My question was asked with more attitude than I’d intended. My mother’s expression was instantly reproachful and I felt myself wanting to apologize.
