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“Like me,” she adds. “I was one of the things alphas could only get at Wally’s—an omega with super-perfume, walking around, delivering drinks, free for fondling or pictures…”
God, I can’t breathe. The slicing shame carving her insides to shreds has severed my airway. When I try to look her in the eye, she ducks her head and bites her lip harder.
“How did you end up there?” I force out. “Did you want to be a dancer?”
Dear God, please say yes. Please say this sweet omega wasn’t there against her will for God knows how?—
“No. No, I never wanted to be there.” She shakes her head, casting desperate looks at Jonah and Avery. Begging them to believe her.
As if this is somehow more acceptable because she didn’t want to do it.
Which makes me furious.
“Look at me.”
My bark flies out and her head snaps to the side instantly. Fear spikes hard in her belly, forcing out a whine.
As soon as her eyes land on mine, I lower my voice. “Do you think,” I rasp, “that we’d be angrier if you’d had a choice? That knowing you had to work somewhere—anywhere—against your will isn’t the most horrible thing any of us can imagine?”
Aside from death and assault. Although, what she’s describing would legally qualify as the latter. Especially since?—
“I never wanted to be there,” she repeats, shriller. “My—Wally made me start when my designation came through. He—he’d been planning it all along.”
A low buzz begins to hum through my ears. “All along?”
She nods, her wild desperation tearing at my gut. “He chose me because he thought I’d be an omega.”
Chose her.
The words spiral through my brain until Spencer puts it all together, his frozen voice clipping out, “He adopted you.”
It isn’t a question, but Serena nods anyway, darting a quick look to my brother before turning back to the floor. “He knew my mom, I guess. And she had the same strong perfume. He thought—he thought I would be like her. So when she decided to surrender me, he swooped in.”
Jonah looks sick. His russet skin has a faint grayish cast as he scrapes, “And you were—raised by him?”
Serena grimaces. “Nannies, really. Then, tutors and babysitters. For a long time, I had no idea anything was weird. I lived in a house, I went to school. I didn’t know that other kids' parents always spoke to them or spent time at home. I thought we were normal.
“But then, right around junior high—when I started to figure out that most kids didn’t sleep in their parents' basements or go months on end without seeing them—Wally pulled me out of school and got me virtual tutors. For a long time, that was the worst part; I really wanted to go to school, but I wasn’t allowed.”
Spencer speaks again; no doubt because his linear mind is the only one capable of thinking straight at the moment. “Did he say why?”
Serena sighs. “He told me that my designation bloodwork indicated I would be an omega and claimed keeping me in the house was the best way to protect me. Said a lot of people did it.”
Sadly, that really isn’t far from the truth. Many families pull their omega sons and daughters out of school when they designate. It’s one of the things I’m trying to change with my work—making it illegal to cut an omega’s education off before they’ve finished high school.
“Wally always told me how lucky I was that he adopted me in the first place,” Serena remembers, tracing her toe in circles on the floor. “Everyone else—teachers and neighbors and whatever—all said the same time thing, so I believed him. I felt grateful.
“At first, when he asked me to work at the club for him, I wanted to make him happy. When he made rules about how much I could eat or who I was allowed to talk to, I did my best to follow them. For years, I didn’t even notice all the locks on the doors and the windows because it never occurred to me to try to get out… Once I figured it out, I did everything I could to try to get away from him. Even when he would… punish me.”
Avery has been still and silent this whole time, but he finally moves. Standing without a sound, he takes five heavy steps around the table.
And drops to his knees.
His tattooed hands mold around her face. “I knew there was a fighter in here,” he says, rough and earnest. “There she is.”
Serena’s eyes fill as she stares back at him. “You’re not mad? You don’t want me to leave?”
“Manamea,” Jonah gasps, lurching to join Avery on the floor in front of her. “Never. None of us would ever want that.”
