Page 22 of The Rust in Her Hair

Calla is staring at me with the expression of a woman who has never been less surprised in her entire life.

"What?" I say again.

"Nothing." She sets her folders down on my desk and leans against it, crossing her arms. "He's very handsome, isn't he? Even with the scruffy beard and the glasses."

"He's married," I say pointedly.

"Mm." Calla tilts her head. "Although." She pauses, like she's considering something. "I did notice the new exhibit had some pieces in it that spoke pretty highly of pack life. Someone had to choose those." She raises an eyebrow. "Maybe he and his husband are open to⁠—"

My heart soars straight up into my throat, and I stomp it back down immediately.

"Do not finish that sentence," I say, dropping my voice even though the door is closed. "Do not even think it out loud in this house. My father would lose his entire mind if he heard the word pack within these walls." I gesture vaguely at the ceiling, toward the portraits down the hall, at the whole suffocating weight of four stories of Van Houten tradition pressing down on us. "He gave a forty-five minute speech at dinner last Christmas about how pack life was single-handedly responsible for the moral collapse of modern civilization. I had to sit through the whole thing with a fork in my hand, wondering if it would be rude to stab myself with it."

Calla presses her lips together very hard.

"It is not funny," I tell her.

"I know," she says, in a voice that suggests she finds it a little funny.

The bedroom door swings open so hard it bounces off the wall. I startle badly enough that I nearly slide off the bed.

My mother steps into the room, immaculate as ever, not a single platinum hair out of place, her pale green eyes sweeping the room once before landing on me with a brand of disappointment she reserves exclusively for my existence.

"It's about time you got home," she says. Then her gaze cuts to Calla like she's just noticed something unpleasant on the carpet. "That will be all."

Calla clutches the folders against her chest, then slips out of the room so fast she's practically a vapor trail.

My mother watches her go, then pulls the door halfway shut behind her.

"I called the club twice today," she says, turning back to me. "Twice. I told them you needed to come home immediately."

"I didn't receive any messages," I say, keeping my voice pleasant. "But you know, if I were allowed to have a cell phone⁠—"

"Omegas," my mother snaps, cutting me off, "do not need cell phones. They need a firm hand and clear expectations." Her eyes move over me. "Clearly you’ve had neither."

She shakes her head slowly, the way she does when she wants an audience for her own suffering. "I have clearly failed as a mother," she says. "But there's simply no helping it now." Her eyes lock onto mine, waiting.

When I was small, I used to rush to fill that silence. You haven't failed, Mama. You're a wonderful mother. I meant it then, or I thought I did. But I was too little to know better.

Now I keep my mouth shut.

The fact is, Lavinia is an awful mother. She has been for a long time. And I’m done playing her games.

"Lyra." Something hardens in my mother's expression. Her jaw tightens, the way it does when a room refuses to perform on cue. "Downstairs," she snaps. "Now."

"I need to shower and change," I say. "I've been at the club all day, I can't sit down to dinner⁠—"

She crosses the room in four steps, and her hand closes around my wrist.

"Come," she commands, and just like that, my body jerks to obey.

My feet move, my legs carrying me forward, every omega instinct I have answering to her alpha command whether I want it to or not.

I hate it.

I hate it so much my vision briefly goes white at the edges as Lavinia pulls me out of my bedroom and down the hall, my tennis skirt swishing against my thighs.

Lavinia drags me down the staircase and through the house, past the entrance to the temperature-controlled wine cellar, the wood-paneled library, and the long formal dining room where the table is already set for four, crystal glasses and white linen and candles that haven't been lit yet. My feet hit every step even though I’m screaming inside.