Chapter Eighteen #4
“Hold this for me,” Dylan bid, snapping me to awareness.
The basket was thrust into my hands before I could agree or disagree.
He crouched down, reaching almost full-bodied between the lower shelves, only retreating once he’d found what he was searching for.
A child’s cup with bugs on. “No idea how I spotted that, but Minnie will go nuts for it. It has spiders and centipedes on it.”
He stood, pointing the beasts out to me. I held up the basket for him to set it inside. “She will love it.”
He smiled at my confirmation, and I stared even as he glanced at another shelf.
How had I ever suspected ulterior motives in a man who derived so much joy from our daughter’s well-being?
His revelation in the car after learning Minseo’s designation, and later again in my study, had stuck with me.
I couldn’t shift the notion I’d been misguided on all fronts, that my entire existence was built on myth.
I would’ve shrugged it off, discredited it, but hearing his recollection of how he had suffered, incited fury in me.
I believed him. What could he have hoped to gain from lying?
The government funds and rules unmated omegas lived by were not considerations I’d made before—why would I?
I’d known mated omegas were restricted, specifically in high society.
They could only perform certain tasks with their Alpha’s permission, and they were expected to behave in a specific manner.
It was frowned upon for them to work in any capacity, but since it was their Alpha’s obligation to provide, they never had reason to.
More archaic principles.
I’d had no cause to reflect on the limitations of unmated omegas.
I rarely crossed paths with any who weren’t already in arrangements or awaiting their presentation.
They were paraded under the noses of the most eligible Alphas during or after their first heat, and that would be it: mated and never required to lift a finger again.
It wouldn’t have occurred to me that the reason for their desperation to find a mate was because there was no real alternative.
It was the only way they might claim even a sliver of independence, and it wasn’t relevant to me.
I never contemplated what life entailed for a pregnant and unmated omega, because to me, they didn’t exist. Evidently, that wasn’t the case, since there were provisions in place.
It had taken Dylan confessing his hardships for me to waver.
He’d known sickness because of those ridiculous conventions, and it had kindled a sense of guilt, a feeling I hadn’t recognised.
Over the last week—while countering the unsolicited advice surrounding my daughter’s claim to my empire—it dawned on me these were the conditions she’d grow up in.
Draconian. Limiting. Rigid. And I was part of the issue.
I didn’t agree with tradition, but I hadn’t attempted to eradicate it either.
Hadn’t troubled myself with learning how omegas were managed as they didn’t serve me or my interests.
A single incident had tainted my logic. A memory had warped my mind into generalising an entire gender, concluding they all deserved my unyielding repulsion.
Minseo shouldn’t be punished for my ignorance.
Dylan shouldn’t have suffered for it either.
I’d never envisioned having children, or a mate, but since they were now my reality, it was my intention to protect them.
That was the vow I’d made. The agreement I’d signed.
I was one man, but a powerful one, and if I had anything to do with it, Minseo would never endure the same oppression.
She wouldn’t be a bargaining chip or be seen as inferior. She was my successor.
She would have everything.
They would both have everything.
“Caine . . .” Dylan prodded, and I blinked out of my deliberation once more. He was staring up at me, concern shadowing his expression. His hand covered my tight fist. I let my fingers unfold. “Do you want to go home?”
Home. Why did that sound so natural coming out of his mouth? “I’m fine.”
“Wanna go somewhere that’s not as . . . public?”
I hesitated before nodding. “I know a place.”
He laughed, and it was airy. Genuine. “That’s a classic,” he said, setting the basket on the counter next to the till. “Did you study ‘dating pick-up lines’ before we came out?”
This isn’t a date, I thought to myself.
The words wouldn’t form.
“So, when did you plan this?”
I set my napkin on my plate and leaned back in my chair. “Is that relevant?”
“Very.”
I ground my teeth. “Three weeks ago.”
Dylan snorted.
It was arranged before his birthday slipped my mind in the fray of civil war.
We were on a private veranda, by the sea, finished with a three-course dinner—two, in my case.
It was late, the sky was black, starry, and the waves were crashing in the backdrop.
It was a simple evening engagement. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing special.
There just happened to be string lights woven around the wooden beams above us.
And a single red rose in an oblong vase on the table.
“My favourite food too,” he commented purposely.
“That part was organised this morning.”
He hummed, resting his spoon across his plate. He had one bite of lemon cheesecake left. “I’m so full.”
I scoffed lightly. “That part typically happens later.”
His eyebrows raised. “Holy shit, you made a joke.”
Ignoring the jibe, I brought my glass of whisky to my lips, taking a sip. “Are you warm enough?”
He nodded, shifting in his seat. “Yeah, those heaters are great. Would hardly know we were outside on a ten degree, British summer night.”
Omegas ran cold, so I’d instructed the staff to install radiators before our arrival.
They’d switched them on to warm up the space when Raegan called ahead to confirm we were on our way.
It was a forty minute drive from district forty-two to get to the coast. I had to remove my jacket and roll up my sleeves or I would’ve keeled over from the heat.
“Good,” I said simply.
Dylan angled his chair out from the table, presumably to watch the waves. He folded one of his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms loosely around it, before resting his chin on his knee. He was engrossed, seemingly at peace.
The landscape was of no fascination to me.
“Another year,” he sighed after a considerable stretch of silence, staring out at the coastline. A melancholy laugh chuffed from his throat, and he let another beat pass before adding, barely above a whisper, “I miss my family.”
I placed my glass gently on the table, keeping it in a loosened fist. I said nothing.
He chewed the inside of his lip, his eyes never straying from the water as it lapped at the shore.
“I wish they’d got to meet Minnie. They’d have adored her.
My grandma said it was Mum and Dad’s dream for me to have kids of my own one day, so I could know what it was like to love someone as fiercely as they loved me. ”
Love, an emotion I had little knowledge of. I’d never experienced it, never felt it, never seen it. Apart from today, the display in the baking shop. Or what I suspected it resembled.
But it was just the bond.
“Talk about them,” I said, keeping my tone neutral.
He hadn’t divulged anything intensive to me, until the night in my study when he’d given me glimpses, offering more than I presumed he’d planned to.
I’d reacted in kind, my barricade unstable from the hospital and the looming threat.
We had echoed off one another, projecting, but this was different.
I’d witnessed him with his walls torn down around him, broken because of our daughter.
I’d watched him shatter apart in more ways than one, flayed bare, but this was a deeper vulnerability. Significant. It was willing.
He was actively exposing his torment, peeking out of his containment in need of comfort, and I found myself opposed to the idea of him retreating again.
His smile turned wistful. “They met before their presentations, when they were in school. Mum said it was love at first sight for her, but Dad took a little longer. When he presented as an omega, Mum asked to court him, and I guess she succeeded. They came here on their honeymoon and it felt like home, so they packed up their lives, used all their savings, and settled in Ailemorth to have a family. I was born two years later.”
Not an arrangement.
“Have you ever visited?” I cleared my throat lightly. “Korea, I mean.”
He nodded. “I don’t remember it, really, but they took me on a trip over when I was six—to show me where they came from.
” He hugged his knee tighter. “But then the accident happened, and I was left in Grandma’s care until she died, and I’ve never bothered going back. I couldn’t have afforded it anyway.”
“Would you like to?”
He shrugged. “Maybe one day—to show Minnie where her grandparents were from, but . . . I don’t know if it would hurt too much.”
It was clearly a painful memory—the death of his parents. Though it seemed as if there was more to his grief than purely losing people he had affection for. It was complex. As if part of him longed for a specific element they’d taken with them. Whatever it was they represented.
“Can you speak Korean?” I asked, as a distraction before he started picking at his nails.
“A bit,” he said. “My parents made every effort to only speak English when I was younger, to prepare me for school and whatever, but they’d revert back from time to time.
My grandma would flit between the two, so I had to learn or I wouldn’t have had a clue what she was saying.
” He laughed, but it sounded mournful. “I don’t anymore, since I don’t have anyone to speak it with. ”
A nagging ache twisted in the centre of my chest. I ignored it. “I’ll admit, it’s not a language I considered learning, but I could. If you wished to feel a link to them again.”
His gaze shot to mine. “You’d learn Korean. For me?”