I felt bad that, even at seventy-five, my grandfather was still having to ride in and save the day, but I knew he wouldn’t hear of me handling this on my own.
My mother said nothing for a moment before sighing. “Maybe you’re right. You know how much I appreciate you.”
“I know…” I trailed off as my gaze moved to the four men in the car with me. After getting dressed they had all turned back into a completely professional security team again.
Even Brooks, which hurt my feelings just a tiny bit after being teased for so long about my so-called flirting.
Other than that, the night ran smoothly with only a few questions about my comments at the omega center this morning which had been making their rounds on the evening news circuits today.
I’d been very careful to keep my words very general and I didn’t call anyone out specifically, but even still I’d known that the comment itself would be inflammatory and my mother seemed to feel the same way.
“Do you want to talk about this afternoon?” my mother asked as the sound of her brushing her teeth filled my ears, giving me a chance to plead my case.
I huffed a dry laugh as we were apparently back to business again. “Which part? The shuttle service or the call to your congress person comment?”
“Both, ideally,” she said around a mouthful of toothpaste. “I’m not saying the shuttle for omega centers is a bad idea, honey, but I just wish you and your grandparents had cleared it through me first.”
“It was an on-the-fly solution, mom,” I explained, remembering talking about something a lot like it with my grandma at Christmas. Once upon a time she’d been the omega at the omega center who didn’t feel safe to leave and go to vote.
I didn’t know what that felt like because I had the privilege of being surrounded by people protecting me since I was born—my right to vote and make it to a voting booth safely was secured, but many omegas were not afforded the same right.
My mother rinsed and spat on the other end of the line. “Okay and the other comments?”
That I had less of an excuse for.
Truthfully, I was angry. The more that Shirley Kirkland explained about the omega center the more I realized just how insulated these people had to become from the outside world.
Sure, they had everything they could ever want right inside of the omega center building right up to the rooftop garden… but that made it harder and harder for them to leave and live full lives unless they picked an alpha pack to protect them.
It was a choice being taken right out of their hands, and as someone who often had very few choices in life, I hated it.
Once this election was over I was supposed to gain more freedom. This was supposed to be my mother’s last election and I had no desire to ever run for office, so this would be it for theHolloway lineage. The end of a dynasty and finally the start of my own life.
I could travel, go back to school, take up weird hobbies that I didn’t have to worry about the optics of… or just simply choose to stay home in my pajamas without the need for a daily schedule set by anyone but myself.
My mother had promised me this and after the events of the day I was hellbent on getting it.
Whichmayhave led to me making more reckless comments than I normally would have this afternoon.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said with a sigh. “They were said without me thinking about them first. I just wish people would hold their representatives accountable—especially when they aren’t doing anything to help them!”
“Sweetheart, you are preaching to the choir here,” my mother said, her tone amused. “But I don’t want you to—”
Her words were cut off by the sound of metal crunching.
A sick, twisting sense ofdéjà vuenveloped me as the armored SUV we were riding in began to spin.
“Lennon!” someone in the cab bellowed as my head hit the window and everything went black.
“Medical is five minutes out,” someone was saying when I came to again, my head pounding.
“Damn it, what the hell is going on?”
“We don’t know but the ground team is on it, we just have to stay put until they update us.”
It was all too familiar. Just like that night.
Fingers prodded at my forehead and I hissed with pain as I shot up into a sitting position.
