Menollie left the damn basket outside when she retreated to the house. There was no wine in it anyway.
Chapter Six
Phee sat in the front room across from the big windows, watching the world outside. There wasn’t much out there to see. The panes faced a street few people dared to disturb by treading its manicured walkways. She didn’t know when the custom of having a perfectly maintained home front began, but the preoccupation was so consuming that the women on this street organized a neighborhood committee to care for its maintenance. Mother lost the first chair as director of that committee during a call she’d received shortly after Phee returned home.
Across from Phee in her favorite chair, Mother worked with her embroidery. She fluttered over it, murmuring to herself, a trapped bird in a net. Phee saw her start to say something, then stop.
Mother was not one to twitch about, but they had received word Naya would arrive today with her Administrator husband-mate, and Mother was beside herself. Mother’s favorite agency had sent four drones to help with the extra needs of guests. After an inspection, Mother sent two back and asked for three others. The house had been turned upside-down with mops and feather dusters, then put back together again, after which Mother sent the drones to the kitchen to make enough food for a siege.
Next to where she sat, Mother had a list she kept checking to make sure all was in order. Wrapped up in her worries, she had nothing to say to anyone but Oncca.
Her position in society was tenuous. Mother’s joy came from the envy-filled respect of others. Without it, she found herself lacking solid ground. Her anxiety over it ate at her constantly.
Without her ability to act as the queen of all the women on the street, a true omega among omegas, Mother had nothing. She had no lasting relationships, no special talent to draw attention and adoration, and no natural charm or personality. Mother’s life consisted of doing her duty with restraint and looking down at others who could not behave to her standard.
Mother’s life goals revolved around superior displays of manners and decorum, which included never publicly lowering herself to displays of passion or emotion. She had no connection with her sons, boys were an alpha’s responsibility. Phee knew that Mother lacked the gift for maternal nurturing, so others had raised her children, took their hugs, and eased their hurts. Her competitive, grasping nature made deeper friendships impossible. And having watched her parents’ interactions Phee knew Mother felt only the barest connection with her husband-mate, a male she’d shared a life with for over fifty years.
In service of her goal to live the perfect life, Mother taught both Phee and Naya to choose as weak an alpha as they could find—a male like hers, who did not admit to wanting the messy entanglements of a bond.
“Better he should sleep with a beta woman than leave his mark on you and control every aspect of your feelings,” Mother had instructed years ago.
And without a bond, alphas would stray. Swift offered lip service, agreeing they didn’t need to complicate their lives with the animal passions of a bond. Perhaps he’d thought he could go without a bond and feel nothing, only to realize later that his marriage contract did not fulfill his carnal needs. Perhaps he’d lied to himself about his needs, or just lied to Phee. Whatever his thinking, in retrospect, Grayson Swift had not been happy after their first coupling. She’d seen disappointment on his face, but had brushed it off as nothing.
They’d both brushed a lot of things off as nothing.
They’d agreed, in the contract, that she would not bite him. But in the throes of her very first heat, he’d asked for her bite.
During Phee’s second cycle, he’d broken down in tears and begged for it while his body knotted them together. Phee had been horrified. After her cycle, she couldn’t meet his eyes.
Two weeks later, he’d come home with the smell of another female on him. The scent had been familiar; Phee’s father smelled that way sometimes, like vinegar and feet. Like betas. After her encounter with those horrid nurses, Phee’s liking of betas had not improved.
But something had occurred to Phee. While working in the garden, she’d had time to think about how she’d come to be living at home again, yet nothing was the same.
This was Mother’s fault.
Phee made the connection that Father smelled like other women, and Mother had helped by pointing it out at every opportunity. In retrospect, it dawned on Phee that her mother smelled, always, like alpha. Alphas that were not her father, not her brothers, not related. That could only happen if she had been with another alpha, soaking in his scent. His ejaculate.
“You slept with him.” Phee blurted the churning, bitter accusation into the air.
Mother jumped as if Phee had struck her across the face, blood draining from everywhere but her lips. Painted, her lips were a bruised berry color that suited her silver-touched hair. The white-on-white embroidery fell from her hands to her lap, and she turned her head away.
“You slept withCorre,Crispin’s father, didn’t you?” Phee knew it; her mother’s reaction had proven it even before she specified whom she spoke of. The smell of her guilt filled the air like a mental acid as the ugly realization exploded between them.
A creature caught in the sights of truth, Mother didn’t move. Words flooded from Phee’s mouth unbidden. “He wasn’t the only one, was he? This was your happy life? This was how you manage your marriage, by sleeping with the husbands of other omegas? How often? Every cycle? In between cycles? Did you expect I would do this too?”
“I do not know what you are talking about, Phee. Honestly, you say nothing to me for days and days, and now you are accusing me of things that you know nothing about.”
“I don’t know anything, you are right. I don’t know who you are or who I am supposed to be. I don’t know how to be a person.”
“Phee, you are talking nonsense. What is wrong with you?”
“How many men did you sleep with that belong to other omegas?”
“I will not dignify that question with an answer. Don’t you know your sister will be here any moment? What am I going to say to her? What areyougoing to say? Naya is above us both now. Do you understand?”
“Above us now? Because of who she bonded? Because she’s pregnant? Because I never will be? And does it matter? I am not worried about Naya. You don’t know her at all, but she doesn’t really care about that. She never did. She was just doing what you wanted because there were no other choices. I was just doing what you wanted because that was how I thought I should be.” Phee waved her arms around the pale, monotone room.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
