Chapter 87
Chapter Eighty-Seven
~Harlow~
I wished for this day for so long. To wake up from the nightmare where she no longer exists.
My other half.
A bond between sisters is sacred, but as twins, we are one and the same. Identical yet individual. We are more than blood. We are two halves of a whole.
For years, I thought she was dead; I grieved her, missed her, and wished more than anything to trade places with her, believing all this time that she was dead because I was too scared, too weak, to go with the pack that I was originally sold to.
She sacrificed herself for me, and that is a guilt no sibling wants to live with. I thought that I had lost the other half of my soul. That's what she is. But she was here all along.
“How are you here?” I murmur, unwilling to let her go just in case she vanishes, and I wake up in the Den to find this is all a dream—that my mind has finally broken and conjured all this just so I won’t be alone anymore.
Zara looks at Jake. “They knew I hadn’t bloomed, and they waited. Our scores were the same, Harlow,” she tells me when I hear a soft crying noise, making me look up at the ceiling.
“I will get him.”
“You already have a baby? I have a niece or nephew?” I ask her, watching the man move off the couch and toward the door.
“Yes, a nephew. His name is Mason. He is one year old,” she says, looking down at her belly. She lets go of my hands to protectively cradle her large bump.
“Would have had two by now, but our daughter was stillborn,” she murmurs, looking at Jake as if in apology.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“We all know it is,” she whispers, her eyes turning glassy. “I should have listened,” she murmurs, and he crouches next to her.
“I shouldn’t have told you; I knew you would have wanted to come with us,” he tells her before leaning down and pressing his lips to her belly. Confusion washes over me as I listen to them.
“She would be almost two; I named her after you,” Zara tells me, sniffling. I can hear the agony in her voice. “She was so beautiful. Perfect,” Zara says, and I swallow as she stares off into space. Now I understood why Jake didn’t want to mention anything to her when he saw me at Tal’s.
She is different from who I remember, broken in ways I can’t imagine.
I would have added to that torment had I not come back with him.
I wonder if I would have been the same had Thane managed to take my daughter from me.
It’s why so many Omegas on the rotation are a little unhinged.
It’s also why there are strict laws prohibiting Alphas from keeping mothers away from their children.
They have visitation rights and are allowed to remain with their child for the first year, kind of as a way to wean them off of them.
It’s also why there are limits on how long an Omega can remain in rotation, how many offspring an Omega can produce while in rotation, and why so many end up in psych wards or heavily medicated after leaving rotation.
It is also why so many turn into Omega feeders. They use the high from a vampire bite as a drug, a way of self-medicating. To think that would have probably been my future had I not escaped.
Hearing the door open behind me, the three men from the train station walk in. I turn to watch as they filter into the room, rushing over to her.
“What’s wrong, Love?” the tall, dark-haired one asks, cupping her face. She doesn’t react, just stares off vacantly as if she looking straight through him. He brushes his thumbs down her face, and she appears to snap out of whatever trance she is in. She shakes her head.
“Travis!” she breathes, patting his face, and he leans down, kissing her forehead.
“That’s right, love, I’m right here,” he tells her. My heart breaks for her. To see her so changed from the bubbly girl that was my sister.
“Sam’s got you something,” he tells her, and a blonde man behind me holds up a bag, watching her worriedly.
“Trifle?” she asks, her mood instantly lifting.
The man who left to tend to their son returns. “I got him back down. He wanted his plushie,” he tells her, climbing back on the oversized couch and laying behind her. He tugs her back to lean against him.
“I’ll go get you a bowl and spoon,” Jake tells her before he clears his throat.
I glance at him, and he motions for me to follow. With a quick nod, I tell my sister I will be back before following him through the massive house. Everything is ridiculously white. I thought Thane was a clean freak, yet he has nothing on my sister and her mates.
I follow him to a huge kitchen, Sam following behind me. He sets the bag on the island countertop and moves toward the cupboards, retrieving bowls and setting them down on the counter.
“My sister, she’s different,” I tell him. Sam stares at me, but Jake nods his head.
“Yes, she hasn’t been the same since the accident,” Jake tells me.
“What accident?” I ask him.
“We got a lead about six months after you went missing, just outside Thane’s territory. We went searching for you. Zara demanded to come.”
My brows furrow as I try to remember where I was. I had stayed in a town just outside the city for a few months to lay low. “Ryde?” I ask him, and he nods.
“Yes, anyway, we tracked you to the edge of town, but Zara was sure she could smell your scent by the river nearby. It was around the time there were all those storms. As she approached the river’s edge, the ground gave way, and she fell in.
She was washed down the rapids and got banged up pretty badly.
By the time we reached her, she had washed onto the bank.
She was full-term. She survived, but our daughter didn’t. ”
“And she blames herself for that?” I ask him.
“We asked her to wait here, told her we would search for you. She insisted on coming,” Sam tells me, dishing out the chocolate trifle into two bowls. He slides one across to me, making sure not to touch me in any way.
“It was an accident. After that, we didn’t tell her whenever we got a new lead. Zara also hasn’t left the house since. She has terrible anxiety and agoraphobia,” Jake tells me, and I chew my lip.
“She’s gotten worse, since falling pregnant with the twins, identical girls this time,” Jake tells me.
I follow my sister’s mates back to the living room, having already forgotten the way.
She holds out her hands for the bowl Sam brings her.
I sit on the floor as Jake and Sam climb on the lounge with everyone else.
She may be my sister, but I know better than to get too close to her mates or to make myself comfortable in another Omegas house.
We are territorial by nature, and even though she knows it’s me, I don’t want to cause her any distress.
Zara has so many questions, asking where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to.
What my mates are like. I can’t bring myself to tell her any of the bad things, instead giving her vague answers, not wanting to upset her in any way.
But her eyes trail over the cuts that still cover my skin, despite having almost fully healed.
She doesn’t push for more information, seeing I am uncomfortable answering.
After being here a few hours, though, and watching how her mates are with her, it makes my bond tug and yearn for my mates.
I ask where I can sleep, sadness bleeding into me that I will never have the same relationship she has with her mates.
I excuse myself and Jake shows me to a guest room on the opposite side of the house.
“I’m sorry, we have to put you over here.
She sleepwalks sometimes, and she isn’t lucid when she does.
If she picked up your scent, it might overwhelm her, and we don’t want her to attack you,” Jake tells me.
I nod my head in understanding. There is too much risk, given I am an Omega in another Omega’s house, but the stillness on this side of the house is even quieter than the Den back home.
I borrow some of Zara’s clothes and take a shower.
Staring down at my bump as I wash with the citrus-smelling soap, I feel lonelier now than I even did in the Den.
Especially after seeing how doting my sister’s mates are with her.
They treat her like a precious gem, showing her such love, while mine can barely look at me.
It stings. Climbing in the huge soft bed, I feel cold, and the scents are all wrong.
I struggle to fall asleep in this unfamiliar place.