Page 70 of The Omega's Secret Baby
For now, though… I glared at his dad. “Care to explain to me what happened?”
He exhaled, posture just a little stiff. “Things were fine at first. We were having a lot of fun sledding. Then I took him into the house to meet our lovely housekeeper and have some hot chocolate. I figured we wouldn’t run into family in the staff wing, but…well.”
“But what?” I’dtoldhim to be careful, goddammit.
“My sister had a bone to pick with me and put our mother on my trail.”
“And your mother called him…” I didn’t even want to repeat that word. Just thinking it made me so mad I wanted to punch something or someone, and I never usually felt that way. I didn’t even know how to handle that kind of emotion. I only knew that I had to protect my son from whoever was trying to hurt him.
Alphas weren’t the only ones with protective instincts. There was no wrath like the wrath of an omega whose baby had been put into jeopardy.
“My mother said a lot of mean things,” Matt admitted.
“A lotof mean things?” I demanded.
“Yeah, but you know she’s not all there.” Matt made a gesture with his hand as if to signal that his mother had gone cuckoo. “She’s been a bit off since my father passed away.”
“And you took our kid to see this mentally unstable…” I stopped short of saying bitch, but it was a close call.
“I honestly didn’t think it was going to be this bad.” He held his hands up.
How could henotthink that? How hadInot foreseen this? I sort of had, but I’d wanted to trust Matt. Give him a chance to prove to me that I was worrying too much.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I was so mad at myself it felt like something within me was about to explode, and I turned that on Matt. “You know what your problem is? You were always a privileged kid. A rich alpha on top of the food chain. You know on some level that your family isn’t super decent, and I give you credit for that, but you don’treallyknow. You don’t know what it feels like to face the kind of prejudice Jake and I have to deal with. You know one reason I didn’t tell you I was pregnant? Because I knew you weren’t equipped to deal with this kind of situation!”
Matt’s mouth dropped open but he didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “You had no right to judge whether or not I was equipped with any situation!” he finally got out.
“Maybe not,” I conceded, “but I’m starting to feel like I made the right call anyway.” I knew I was saying the wrong thing, going too far, the moment the words were out of my mouth, but then they hung in the air between us and I couldn’t take them back.
Matt only looked at me for a moment. And then he turned and left.
I didn’t even blame him.
* * *
After Matt had left, I went up to Jake’s room to do some damage repair. Honestly, I felt like most of my time as a parent was spent fixing one problem or another. At least I got a really sweet kid in exchange for all the trouble, though. I wouldn’t trade Jake for the world, even if worrying about him kept me up too many nights.
I knocked on his door and stuck my head into his room. Jake was on his bed with a coloring book. “Hey, kiddo,” I said, entering the room. “You okay?”
He sat up. “I’m okay,” he said cautiously, and I could tell by the look on his face that hehadn’tgone straight to his room, but he’d heard me and Matt fight. And I had no idea how he felt about that—or any of the things that had happened today.
I sat on the edge of his bed. “I think there’s some things we should talk about.”
“Yeah?” Jake put his coloring book aside. “Are you going to tell me what a bastard is?”
There was no getting around this, was there? “It’s… it’s a very mean word for a child whose parents weren’t married when he was born.”
“Oh. So Iama bastard.”
“No!” I hugged Jake to myself before the seven-year old could protest. “I don’t want you to say that again, ever, okay? People only use that word to hurt people they think are beneath them, and you’re not beneath anyone. That’s an outdated belief.”
“Matt’s mom said it.”
I shook my head. “Matt’s mom is not a very nice woman. And she has a lot of outdated beliefs. You can’t listen to her.”
“I don’t think I want to go back there.”
