But…
“I don’t know if she can forgive this,” I say, uttering the words out loud for the first time.
Lizzie doesn’t ask who I mean. She knows. “You’ll never know the answer to that if you don’t ask the question, Sythe. Maybe she won’t. Maybe you’ve fucked up too bloody badly and Florence will never find it in her heart to forgive you. But wouldn’t it be better to know? Right now you’re living with the uncertainty hovering over you. The what ifs…”
God, the what ifs. They keep me up at night, swirling through my head a constant litany of what might have been. What could be. What if we picked her instead of Isadora? What if we flew to her? What if we begged for her forgiveness and she gave it? What if my grandmother found out and retaliated? What if Ginny got hurt? Or Florence? Or Moira?
Lizzie is right that the what ifs are driving me mad.
But would it really be better to know?
Would I be able to live with the knowledge that I broke the beautiful fragile thing growing between my pack and my omega far beyond repair? Me?
I swallow thickly and shake my head. “I’m not… I’m not ready for that. Even more though, I don’t want to put Florence through that. I don’t want to keep hurting her.”
My sister gives me another of those long looks, but this time there’s a tinge of disappointment in her eyes, so like mine. “I’m curious, Sythe,” she says at long last. “Who says you have to?”
Episode 6: Artists and Alphas and Laws… Oh, My!
Florence
“Have you seen these, Flo?” Gabby asks, holding out her phone. “Halcyon has released a new series of paintings.”
I don’t pause in my task of wiping down mats to take her phone. I’m not particularly interested in art I’ll never be able to afford. But all of the omegas in my class scurry over to her, peering down at the screen.
“Oh, it’s so pretty!”
“Different from their other ones, though.”
“Yeah, it almost seems… sad?”
I drape a mat over the bar on the edge of the room, letting it air dry before moving on to the next one. “If anyone wants to help, I wouldn’t be opposed.”
My students ignore me, staying huddled around Gabby, cooing over the new series of paintings.
Not too long ago I would have been right there with them. Although I could never afford the paintings, I do like them--dofind them beautiful--but now I just find it hard to find the joy in anything, the beauty.
That might be the worst thing about what the Ashbourne pack did to me, what the RMD did to me: I feel numb about things I used to enjoy. Every day, it’s a struggle to find the bright spot, the beauty, the reason to keep going.
Right now I’m pretty sure that reason is just pure stubbornness and because I don’t want to disappoint my family by giving up entirely.
And spite. Let’s not forget that.
So every day, I go through the motions. Design a dress, pick fabric, go over order forms and chat with manufacturers. There are moments when I feel a spark of joy, or excitement. But then I’ll get just a little too close to an alpha and I’ll have a wave of nausea, or I’ll move in the wrong way and my body will ache for hours, and that spark just fizzles.
“She looks a little like you,” Soph says, tilting her head.
This time I do look, moving over to the huddled omegas to peer at the screen. And she’s right. The blonde in the painting does look like me, even though her face isn’t fully visible, just the corner of her jaw, the point of her chin, the slope of her cheekbone.
“Oh, look! There’s one where she’s dancing!” The phone is thrust at me again, and I take it with numb fingers, staring down at the screen. “It must be you right? They must have been a fan of the show and fell in love with you through the screen.”
“It's so romantic.”
I shake my head and push the device back at her. “No, that can’t be it. More likely they’re hoping to cash in on the show’s popularity. I’m sure the next round of paintings from them will feature Isadora.” I nearly choke when I say her name.
The omegas around me hiss like angry cats. “Ren,” Helena gently chides me.
I arch a brow. “Yes?”
