Page 1 of Zodiac Beasts

Chapter 1

“Why are you still in your uniform? You have an appointment with the matchmaker in half an hour.” Mother scowled, as she walked into the backroom of Threads of the Magi, where I was still finishing up a long night of inventory, and absolutely not getting ready for the matchmaker. She was on me in a split second, trying to smooth out my hair as though I was a disobedient child. A quick finger comb would not be enough to make me presentable.

It was rare that she showed up at the shop on her days off. I’d been running the business just fine for years now, and if I’d never been forced to go back to school, I would be doing it full time so she and Father could go about their lives freely. But after skipping my appointment and turning down another match last week, I suppose she saw fit for an intervention.

By now, she should know that wasn’t going to change my feelings. I’d intentionally made no effort to get ready, yet she refused to acknowledge my small rebellion for anything more than a tantrum. I should have expected as much. Alphas never seemed to comprehend exactly how oppressive it felt to be born an Omega, and Evangeline Arya was as Alpha as they come. She was the picture of proper and respectable, with her thick black hair pulled tightly in her usual French braid, while her sharply drawn eyebrows really drove home her disapproval of my life choices.

“I was hoping to skip the matchmaker today.” Or forever, preferably. “I have a lot of work to catch up on.” I offered, my voice well trained not to shake, despite—or perhaps in spite of—my own nerves. While I’d been taught since I was a child that my Omega status meant I would be mated quickly, I’d never felt very enthusiastic about relationships. The obligation of it all ruined any drive I might have to seek out another person. Alphas too often left me feeling like more of a tool than a person.

I adjusted my shirt collar, assuring my enchanted necklace was fully hidden.

“I can handle the work load for you.” She shot down my excuse immediately.

So I fumbled for a different one. “I have somewhere else to be.” Like locked in my den with a book.

“Because you have a date?” She asked, making it clear there was only one correct answer to the question. Her expression betrayed neither delight, nor disapproval. Just skepticism.

“I’m seeing someone.” If I was vague enough, it was easier to claim I wasn’t lying. Besides, it wasn’t entirely untrue. I saw Lila near daily between Calculus and running the shop. The fact that my only female friend saw no romance in our relationship was irrelevant to my confession.

“A shifter?” Her eyes narrowed, and pure doubt dripped from her lips.

“Not human.” I waved a hand dismissively, as I shifted uncomfortably on my heels. “But I don’t feel it’s proper to reveal a lady’s species without her permission.” Good manners were the easiest way to dodge the questions I couldn’t answer. Mother would otherwise be prying for her Alpha, Beta, or Omega status, her shifter bloodline, her family’s lineage, the inherent value of her species, so on and so forth. If I didn’t know everything about Lila’s ancestry down to the original spawn or spell, then Mother would never approve of her. Not when it came to muddying the Arya family legacy.

Which was the ultimate irony, considering my mother was my father’s mistress, and not a chosen Arya bride at all. He had thought that since she was of a different species and an Alpha, he wouldn’t be able to get her pregnant, but what a beautifully rude awakening that must have been to discover that the nature of a shifter’s reshaping womb made hybrid species more than possible, so long as the fathering species was fertile. Alpha men weren’t making any abominations, but plenty of Alpha women had learned the hard way that they could.

It served them all right. Omegas had been treated as second class breeding slaves for much too long, and I had no pity for an Alpha who had to deal with the consequences of fertility.

Intention aside, the one thing I could appreciate was that Mother took the initiative to murder her way into the family. Not everyone could proudly say their Pisces Shifter mother drowned and decapitated a woman of the El Naddaha line. She’d presented the head of my father’s wife to him as an engagement present, securing her place among one of the most powerful species in the world.

“What’s her family name then?” She asked, eying me like she was tugging on the threads of my lie, demanding it unravel.

“She’s not from Graves.” I dodged the question again, while offering no more than that. “You won’t recognize it.”

“Is she the shifter you hired without telling me? I scented another Alpha in the back room the other day. You’ve been very secretive about this new hire.” She pressed again, too observant for my own good.

I should just tell her that Lila was, in fact, an Astrology Shifter. She would certainly approve of her then. The fact that there were shifters in the Arya lineage at all was currently a pox on our name, and Mother would jump for joy if I forced the normalization of our existence on the old guard. The comedy was that Ancient Ptolemaic bloodlines put such taboo on breeding outside their species, despite the fact that their ancestors nearly wiped themselves out of existence through inner familial heirs. Not to mention that our family was already a bastardization of both Greco Roman and Egyptian heritage to begin with.

But who was I to criticize hypocrisy? Arranged marriage and matchmaking was a completely reasonable solution to keeping the family pure-enough. All I had to do was exist behind the shop walls in silent, hidden shame forever, and it was fine.

“I already told you I’m not going to reveal her species without permission.” I was doing everything in my power to squash this inquiry, and yet I was completely at the mercy of her well-honed, overbearing interrogation.

Why she insisted that I needed to find a mate to produce an heir was beyond me. That should have been Omari’s problem, not mine.

Yet she was so insistent, I often wondered if she thought having her bastard beat my father’s legitimate son to marriage would give her a stronger claim. Either that, or she just wanted me to openly produce more shifters in our future generations, so she wouldn’t have to hide her species from the public eye anymore. Being a legacy family of Graves had its perks and its downfalls.

I seemed to get more of the downfalls.

Whatever the case, it was certainly not about my wants, desires, or interests that encouraged her to push me to find a mate day after day.

Mother turned to the racks, and started browsing through our selection of sport coats, clearly not sold just yet. She removed a pitch black suit jacket from the rack and held it against my chest.

“When am I going to meet her?” Another reasonable yet unappealing question.

“When my relationship is stable enough that the burden of being an Arya won’t scare her away for good.” I wanted to roll my eyes, maybe mention that any woman I chose for myself would likely be treated as another dirty little secret, so there was no point in introducing them. I even considered pointing out that I was happy to take over Threads of the Magi as a permanent bachelor, and I had no interest in the politics of family fortunes or political standings.

But I’d never do that in front of her.

I also chose to conveniently leave out the fact that Lila was already marked by multiple Alphas, and wasn’t on the table for me at all, but that information wouldn’t have mattered anyway. An Alpha using an Omega as a breeding conduit was still seen as acceptable, day-to-day sexual slavery to her generation. The only progressive bone in her body involved inner species relations. For everything after that, traditions and appearances were expected to be upheld at all times.