Page 56 of The Dragon's Perfect Omega
I was so sick of it now.
In my pocket, I still carried the pregnancy test I'd taken earlier. Pulling it out, I approached my mom and slapped it into her hand. "Explain that to me."
Her eyebrows climbed up her forehead as she studied the stick. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and the object in her hand. "Is this...? Are you...?"
I shook my head. I'd wanted her to explain, not to ask questions. "Can I get pregnant, Mom?"
She swallowed, staring at the stick again. "We can still abort." It sounded like she was talking to herself rather than to me.
"We're not going to abort anything," I burst out, even though I hadn't actually given the idea any thought. I just knew that, whatever was growing inside of me, my mother wasn't going to have any say deciding its fate. She couldn't make me abort my baby. "Just tell me how this is possible," I demanded, pointing at the stick.
She sighed, a sound that seemed to come from deep in her soul. "It shouldn't be. We've always had you on drugs so you wouldn’t have to go through this kind of thing."
"Drugs?" I repeated, my disbelief shining through in my voice. Lowen laid a hand on my shoulder as if to calm me, but there was no calming me. My parents had been feeding me drugs without telling me.
"We told you it was vitamins. We thought they could suppress your hormones. Let you lead a normal life. You have to understand, your dad and I were devastated when you were born with this...condition."
"Condition? What condition?"
"You were the only child I could ever have." My mother's voice was shaking again, as if the memory pained her. "And then the doctor said you were omega. Your father and I couldn't accept it. And then we realized we didn't have to. We could give you a better life." She smiled at me, but there was something desperate about the expression. "We hid this from you and the world because we love you."
"No." I took a step back as the pieces of the puzzle that made up my life finally fell into place in my mind. I didn't like the picture they presented, but at least I understood now. Why I was so confused, why I could never be what my family wanted me to be. Right from the start, I never stood a chance. I could see that now. "You wouldn't have done this if you loved me. You would have accepted me as I am instead of trying to make me into something I'm not." Feeling a headache coming on, I pinched the bridge of my nose. I took another step back and walked straight into my dragon, who embraced me from behind.
"Want to get out of here?" he asked, his warm breath whispering across my ear.
I nodded. That was all I needed to do for Lowen to take charge of the situation.
"It's been very enlightening to meet you, Mrs. Falke," he said to my mother. "I think your son and I will be taking our leave now."
"Where are you going?" She was looking at me, as if unwilling to speak to Lowen. He took it in stride.
"We'll be staying at a hotel," he said. "I'm not going to give you the name or address, but Zim will call you if he wants to talk to you."
Finally she met Lowen's gaze. "You can't just take my son away from me."
"Your son is a grown man and I'm not taking him away from you. He's following me willingly and I'm very proud of him for untangling himself from your clutches." He pressed me closer to himself as he said this, and I could feel the truth in his words, warming me up inside. "If you want to see him again," he spoke on, "I strongly suggest you reconsider the way you communicate in this family."
I couldn't have agreed more with my dragon as he led me outside the house I'd grown up in. Part of me wished he were allowed to shift on human territory so he could just spread his wings and fly away with me. As it was, though, we had to wait for other means of transportation. But that was okay. It didn't matter if it was by bus or cab or plane or ship—I would go anywhere with Lowen.
Anywhere away from here.
28
Lowen
Zim looked exhaustedby the time we reached my hotel. I couldn't blame him. The trip had only taken us twenty minutes once we managed to get a cab, but it had been a long day—and a lot to process. Zim was pregnant, he was an omega, and his parents had lied to him his whole life. All things he'd learned in the span of two hours. Of course he was tired. As we entered the hotel room, his aura looked like a painting that someone had spilled a glass of water on—all the colors washed out and running together.
But he was going to be fine, eventually. I was going to make sure of that.
"I'm sorry," he said, sitting down on the bed and holding his head in his hands. "I should have known. There were so many clues."
"You have nothing to be sorry for." I sat down next to him, ignoring the tasteless floral print on the bedsheets. "There was no way for you to know that your parents made up such an elaborate lie for so many years." It was ludicrous, really. "You'd have to be super paranoid to expect something like that." I laid an arm around Zim's shoulder and he leaned in to me.
"I still can't believe any of this," he whispered, and my heart broke for him. How could his parents do this to him? Leave him so in the dark about who he was? It made no sense to me. Zim was right when he said that wasn't something you did to someone you loved.
"Everything is going to be all right," I promised, because I didn't know what else to say. I'd also learned things about myself that I didn't like, but never anything this huge.
Zim said nothing for so long that I almost thought he'd fallen asleep, but then he spoke up again, his words quiet but clear. "I don't want to get an abortion." He looked up at me. Neither of us had bothered to turn on the lights when we entered the room and the small window barely let in enough sunshine to show the details on my mate's face, but I could tell that he was serious by the set of his jaw.
