Page 48 of Knot What She Seems
Except then I glance over at my table mate, a freckled omega named Sarah. She’s included several marble statues in her “nest design” dream board.
Turning around, I check on the girls at the table behind me. Harper’s board has some chandeliers, and the girl next to her, whose name I haven’t learned yet, has an indoor fountain.
My own board has a plate of fresh, homemade chocolate chip cookies, a velvet blanket, and a mountain of pillows. I can’t really think of anything else I want.
It’s plain. Simple.
Very un-omega apparently.
Ugh.
I debate adding something ridiculous, like a birdcage full of doves or whatever, but why? If you have an intricate nest, it’s hard to move…and I remember what it was like when we were younger and had to pack up and abandon our summer palace.
There was a huge attack from Nóthos. Missiles hit the city of Paichnidi, near our country home, and intelligence said that they were likely to target us directly.
Leaving there is one of my more potent memories from childhood. I was able to take a suitcase—but one of my dogs, a pug named Porcupine, was out roaming the grounds and didn’t come when he was called.
We left him.
Someone delivered Porcupine to us a few days later, but the sick feeling of driving away from him still clings to my ribs. And I got my puppy back.
My father though?
Dad had the shakes for days after we left. His nest had to be completely abandoned. I never saw him cry…but, looking back, that might have happened behind closed doors.
An omega gets very, very attached to their nest. It’s an extension of themselves. A physical manifestation of home and comfort. My father’s nest had been a tower of mattresses inside that palace, so high that I used to think it touched the three-story ceiling of the room it was built in. I remember a swing in that room. Furs. Exotic trinkets.
I want something simple. Portable. Something I’m not in danger of losing.
Flipping through a magazine, I pretend to consider pictures for the next twenty minutes, but all I really do is run out the clock. I leave my bare bones collage for my nest exactly as it was before, because this exercise is futile.
My mother’s already gifted my life away. She won’t care that I have a scent match—a scent match with a group of assholes that I’ll never, ever in a million years mate with, but still. A scent match.
Why does fate delight in being so cruel?
Matching me at all when I don’t want mates is just wrong.
Harper deserves a scent match, not me.
The other omegas, the ones who want to find mates, deserve a group that’s well-off like Brock’s.
But my mother’s determined to make me politically useful at the worst possible time. Couldn’t she have waited a year? Or forever?
Of course, worrying about why she’s matched me right now—out of the blue—sends me spiraling into thoughts about the war and how it’s progressing. If my parents need allies that badly, it might not be a good sign. I could ask, but they’ll never answer. Not me. Maybe Teddie, but not me.
I hand in a bland, disappointing board that I’m aware will probably immediately be photographed and texted to Stirling and company, a sense of angry desolation sparking inside my veins as I turn in my pink kitten heels and flee from the room.
Harper hurries after me.
“Hey, Bry! Wait!” she calls out.
I half turn, forcing a smile for her sake because it’s not her fault that everything is falling apart around me. Waiting for her to catch up, I say in a low undertone that can’t be heard by those around us, “Can’t. Promised to go see my brother.”
“Oh, okay.” She wisely doesn’t comment on the fact that I’m clearly going to be leaving campus when I’m not allowed. “Maybe I’ll catch you at dinner?” she inquires hopefully.
I bite my lip. “Maybe. But, honestly, his omega is an amazing cook, so probably not.” Caranisan amazing cook, but I’m not going to be sampling his food tonight. Nope. I have back-to-back classes with Alpha Team X, which is basically going to be a nightmare come to life.
“Well, have fun.”
