Page 24 of The Alpha's Fake Mate
I might have made the best of my lack of choices if I hadn’t been so brutally awakened to the horror of it all. I might have gone on in a stupor like the others, happy to be given steak and extra dessert on Sundays, happy to get my rocks off with burly Alphas whose Burns gave off a spiced scent that made me slick and willing to fuck.
But that page had turned. My new life’s page was a misprint, a page of gray and black swirls where the language had smeared.
“It will get better,” Sen had said to me all too often. “Give it time.”
But the people who knew me would always look at me differently.
Orion could not know that the humiliation was even worse with him because he was Alpha, and because he held so much power over Zilly’s, over all the Omegas housed here. Over me.
I blinked hard but my eyes remained dry. I was stone. I had nothing to give anyone.
Dashing that email off to Orion felt good. As if I’d finished something too overwhelming to even begin.
I set my tablet in my lap, closed my eyes, and let the cool air fill me up with nothing.
Chapter Eight
Orion
Tight mouth. Fury in the eyes. Posture stiff, almost pained.
I remembered nothing from the tour but Holland. Every line of his face, the way his arms folded tense across his chest, how his mouth curved up and down at almost the same time like a grimace to the world and a flat out rejection of life itself.
That was not how Holland looked in the older vids and photos I now paged through on the computer from his files.
In one vid, he was sweet and smiling as he accepted his high school diploma one month before his attack, walking on a stage with a group his own age. Holland was first in line because he’d ranked highest in his class. His grades had been impeccable, but the subjects disappointed me. I had never realized they were so limited for Omegas. Home economics. Cooking. Sewing. Health and fitness. Health and sexuality. Reading. And there had been art where he’d learned how to make paper mache hats and masks. And he’d gotten A’s in diapering baby dolls and learning how to keep house.
The brightest. The prettiest. That was how others described Holland.
I looked into his files that applied to the mating hall.
Omegas were not allowed to know about or discuss the money they made at Zilly’s. But I had access to all.
He’d been put up for top dollar, one of the highest amounts ever, which also took into account his virginity. And the first man to ask for him and pay that fortune had been the one to ruin him.
It was wrong.
The Alpha in question was named Bosk and he had gone to jail for a couple weeks. He had supposedly been diagnosed with a treatable type of schizophrenia. He’d been given prescriptions, labeled dangerous, then allowed his freedom. It was a slap on the wrist and an insult to Holland.
If Bosk stood in front of me this very moment, I cannot say I wouldn’t try to kill him.
An urge in me to make sure Holland was safe surged through me like a strange, warm tide, settling just below my breastbone. It almost hurt.
But what could I do? He wouldn’t see me. He was trapped in his closed-in life at the farm and I had no power I could foresee to change that circumstance.
I sat down and composed several emails to him before settling on a final draft. I was not sure he would ever answer, but it seemed right that I still had to try to keep in contact with him, keep him talking.
Holland:
You ask truly hard questions, ones that I cannot give solace on, except maybe philosophically.
You seem to operate under the notion that Alphas and Omegas cannot be friends. You are not the only one. Most Alphas believe this. But I think it is a false belief.
We are people first and foremost. We can connect on levels other than our societal labels.
I know I hold all the cards here. I own Zilly’s. I own all within its walls, including you. That means I have the power to do whatever I want.
I could take you away from Zilly’s.
