"The angles were from inside the house. The kitchen shot was from the second-floor landing. Who else has access to that vantage point at night, Mom?"
"I did what I had to do. You left me no choice when you decided to have a relationship with those two instead of..."
"Instead of letting Richard claim me?" I turn from the suitcase. "Instead of lying still while your chosen Alpha bit into my neck for your financial gain?"
"You think those two are any different?" Her composure holds but something shifts in her eyes, the cold recalculation I've watched her perform a thousand times. "You think they bonded you out of love? Mattaniah, they were using you from the beginning. It was a scheme."
My hands stop moving as the shirt I'm holding crumples in my grip.
"You're lying."
"Ask them." She pushes off the door frame and steps into the room. "Ask them what they discussed the day after you arrived. Ask Amos about the strategic value of getting you into their bed. Ask Dominic why an Alpha who has never looked twice at an Omega suddenly couldn't keep his hands off you. You moved into his father's house the same month they started plotting against their father."
The bond marks pulse on both sides of my neck.
"They approached me to protect me from Richard." The words come out through the tightness in my chest. "They told me that. They said they intervened on purpose."
"Intervened." My mother's laugh comes off humorless. "Is that what they called it? They positioned you as a destabilizing element in Richard's household. Your presence created exactly the kind of chaos they needed to accelerate their father's downfall. Every spike Richard responded to, every confrontation over your body, every escalation of his behavior was evidence they were collecting." She tilts her head. "You weren't the rescue, Mattaniah. You were the bait. Sound familiar?"
The word hits me in the center of my chest.
"You trained me to be a honey trap and called it survival." My voice climbs despite my effort to keep it level. "You were grooming me for Richard. For the man who puts his hands on me every day."
"I was securing our future!"
"You were selling me the way you always have." The suitcase is forgotten and I'm facing her with my fists at my sides and the bond marks throbbing on my neck. "Every mark you pointed me at, every time you told me to smile and be useful. And you called it protection."
"You ungrateful, naive..."
"You're a pimp." My mother's face goes white. "You pimped your own son to the highest bidder. When the bidder turned out to be a predator, you called it courtship."
Her hand moves and I flinch backward before I realize she's not going to hit me. It stops in mid-air, trembling. She's looking at the bond marks on my neck and for the first time in my life she has nothing to say.
"You'll regret this." She says through gritted teeth.
"Maybe." I pick up the suitcase and zip it shut. "But I'll regret it bonded to two Alphas who walked through glass for me. You'll regret it alone in a house that belongs to a man who's about to lose everything."
I lock myself in the room and sit on the bed with the suitcase beside me, phone in my hand. Through the bond I can feel Dominic pacing and Amos standing still beside the car.
My mother's words circle in my head: scheme, strategic value, bait.
They told me there were things I didn't know yet. Things that would make me angry.
They bonded me knowing that this conversation was coming.
The anger hits in waves that the bond carries to both of them, and through the connection I feel Dominic's response, a spike ofsomething that tastes like guilt. Amos' response follows with the same undertone.
They feel guilty because my mother is telling the truth.
I press my palms against my eyes and breathe through the nausea. The bond marks pulse on my neck. Through the connection I can feel them both, the love real even underneath the guilt.
My mother told me they were using me. My body tells me they love me. Both things might be true.
I pick up my phone and text Dominic:I'm ready.
The response is immediate:We’re here.
A heavy breath falls from my lips as I grab my suitcase and march down the stairs, not stopping until I’m out the door to wait for my Alphas. Whatever they did before the feelings were real, the feelings are real now.
