Marigold (Omegas in Bloom #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

Marigold

“The QB has outdone herself this time.” Rue’s fingers fly over her phone as she lounges across my bed. “Her graphics are out of this world.”

Dahlia’s fingers stop moving in the air as she looks down at some sheet music spread out across my vanity’s cushioned stool. Kneeling beside it, she picks up a pencil and makes some kind of adjustment to her newest composition project.

“Why do you care, Rue?” she asks. “She got nasty last season. To us. We came dangerously close to disaster because of her.”

“I think she’s a bitch, but…” Rue flips her long hair over her narrow shoulders. “She’s got style. Even you can’t deny it. Look.”

She shoves the phone at Dahlia, who lets out a quiet sigh leaning toward exasperation. Gathering up her papers, Dahlia slides toward the door rather than answer.

“Sometimes she can be such a snob,” Rue whispers.

“And you’re a philistine,” Dahlia calls out from the hall before her bedroom door slams shut.

“A what?” Rue looks at me. “What the heck does that mean?”

I shrug.

“Look up the word in a dictionary, Rue! Learn something!” One last rare outburst from Dahlia before she shuts the door a final time.

Rue can be a lot sometimes, but her vibrancy is what lights up rooms and excites others. Her sparkling energy is firing on all cylinders right now, chaotic and untamed.

“It’s her changeling years” is what I’ve heard Mom say to my brother, Heath.

“It’s her demonic side showing. She’d better not be another damn Iris,” Heath had replied.

But if he ever bothered to ask me, I could tell him things.

Like how they thought my oldest sister Violet was always pure and seemingly delicate. In reality, she’s always been full of steel.

Iris, a year older than me, was never about to conform. She wanted love, even if she never knew it, and she wanted it on her own terms.

My younger sister Dahlia is a polymath. She’s gifted at everything. Her passion is music, and she’s quiet, good, shy. Or seemingly so. But her still waters are insanely deep, and her shyness is more secretive.

Then there’s the youngest of us, Rue, who doesn’t know what she wants, except a life that’s big and exciting. A movie in real life. She wants the season, the glamour. Love.

And Heath, head of the household now that Dad’s gone, has changed. He’s cold and authoritarian, but I remember a different Heath, one who wasn’t forced to grow up and pretend love wasn’t for him so he could take care of us all.

Mom is good and old-fashioned, but she feels unseen. I notice it from the corner of my eye. When she thinks no one is looking. And I think it’s because the love of her life is gone.

And me…

I scour through dress after dress in my room, my sisters’ old closets raided and scattered on the floor around me. It’s all in preparation for the first pre-season party.

Happening here.

Who am I? Well, that’s a good question.

Who is Marigold Gardener?

I’m the happy-go-lucky dreamer, an artist and…

Hmm…

I work my jaw. And I just want to be left alone.

The dress in my hand falls to the floor.

“I shouldn’t even bother.” Rue sniffs and stares at her phone’s screen “Dahlia is—” She stops.

I turn. “What?”

“Ugh.” Rue rolls off my bed and stands. “She called me uncultured!”

I smile. My fingers itch to draw this whole scene that just unfolded. Not the girls in perfect detail, though I can, but the essence of the mood. Them alive on the paper, in rough and living lines laid down by charcoal and chalk pastel, capturing the mood and who they are.

In my mind’s eye Dahlia is vivid. A burst of furious life. She can’t contain the music and its secrets living inside her. Or maybe her own secrets. And sparking with annoyance at Rue who yearns to be grown up, aware of how pretty she is but not sure what to do with it.

Rue is trapped between the cusp of child and woman and her exuberance comes out all over the place. The need to poke and prod others is something she’s always had, and here it clashes with the world. I can’t work out if her goal is to be a catch or to leave a blazing trail of chaos behind her.

I see it now. A series of sketches, movement in lines. A scene like this needs anonymity, shadows, eyes somewhere else.

“O.M.G., Mar! Have you seen this new Stitcher? VexAtion. Mmm.”

“Vex-who?” I ask, holding a dark pink monstrosity I found stuffed in the back of Iris’s closet up to my chest. “Definitely not.”

Rue eyes the dress and shudders. “Not that one, puh-lease.” She bounces over to the pile on the floor and paws through the clothes.

“Anyway, is this Vex like Queen Bee?” I ask.

“No. He’s a gamer,” she says like she’s shocked I don’t know these things. “Streams himself while he’s playing video games. Sometimes he’ll comment on current events but mostly it’s memes.”

“Sounds boring.”

She shrugs. “Not my thing, but his Lives always get a huge following. And he’s a cutie.” She shows me her phone.

The camera peers into a bedroom, framed on a high-backed computer chair and a draped black banner stamped with a V over an A. No cute VexAtion guy, as Rue said. Just an empty room. The viewer count surges by the hundreds, dollar signs bouncing across the screen.

I’m immediately intrigued. “What’s that about?” I ask, pointing to the chat.

“People sending money, hoping he’ll shout them out.”

“Money? Like, real money?”

“Isn’t it crazy? He must be a millionaire by now.” Rue sighs. “I wish Heath would let me do Lives.”

“You’re lucky he lets you on Stitch at all,” I remind her.

Rue’s phone chimes and before I can read the incoming message, she snatches the phone and gasps.

“It’s Neve! O.M.G., Sean waved to her! How did she not die right there on the spot?

I gotta call her! Wear this one.” She throws a dress at me right as the front door slams down below.

“Oh! That has to be Stephan and Violet!”

She races out of the room like a hurricane and leaves me reeling in her wake.

The dress is silk and lace, a mango-yellow blushed with red and covered with flowers in watercolor print.

I strip down and pull it on. The skirt swirls romantically, and the sleeves, neckline, and hem drip with lace.

It’s a totally Mari look.

Artsy, feminine, pretty in a dreamy way.

This is how I want people to see me.

In the mirror, the reflection smiles wide, then droops. Dragged down by the heaviness inside.

I’m not golden-hearted perfection like Violet, who did her duty and found true love with an Emporian movie star.

I’m not someone who rocks the boat with fierce determination like Iris, who ended up with two alphas and a perfect adopted daughter, plus a vision to change the world.

I’m me. Just me. Whatever that is. I’m still trying to figure it out.

Even as the laughter and happiness from downstairs fills the air in the house with that special magic, I’m numb. My heart hangs low, and in moments like this, I let a piece of the silent grief I’ve held inside swing forward.

If Dad was still here, the world would be complete again, and no one would be forced to take part in the Seasons. That was Dad; he liked a difference dance.

He could move between convention and rocking the boat with the kind of flair everyone let him get away with. He may have looked like Heath, with dark hair and a sharp jaw, but personality-wise? Mom used to say our spirits matched.

Fun. Brightly shining. The sun breaking through the clouds after the darkest of storms.

I clutch the edges of the dress hard enough to crush the fabric. Maybe I was all that…when he was alive.

But he’s dead, I tell myself, locking my grief away again as I toss hair the color of dark honey over one shoulder, letting it fall in a tousled mess as I practice my smile.

I’ve tried to cling onto that part of me. The only part of him I have left, but every day it feels like it’s slipping away.

He’s slipping away.

The laughter grows louder with the arrival of Iris, but instead of racing down the stairs, I cross and glance out the window. My heart lights up at seeing a familiar black-haired man pushing glasses up his nose in a familiar gesture.

Reece.

His worn vest, white shirt, and poorly-mended black pants are a stark, painful reminder of his place. In our home. In society.

A Delta.

A servant.

So it doesn’t matter, it can’t matter, how tall he is. How slender, his body made to run and swim. It doesn’t matter how his dark hair glints under the sun or his striking blue eyes come alive.

It certainly doesn’t matter how heat climbs under my skin.

He’s so much more than the hierarchy placement he was born into. He’s thoughtful, smart, funny, and real in a way that the Alpha boys my age aren’t. I wish others on this island saw it too.

In our side yard, Reece nods at something someone says, grabbing a strand of lights and climbing the ladder braced against our oldest tree.

A second dark-headed man joins Reece and my stomach instantly goes sour.

Reece’s brother Derrick is an asshole. There’s insolence under his cool politeness when he’s asked to do something he considers beneath him, or when girls flirt with him.

Arrogant. A brute.

Not as tall as his younger brother but wider at the shoulders, thicker in the arms. Derrick sticks to the heavy-lifting and dirty work of the household. Today, he’s in the garden digging a trench deep in the soil and sweat darkens his sage-green shirt.

I’d sketch him as an ogre if I had my sketch book. Something inflated and cruel.

Downstairs, a new voice lifts louder than the rest of the frenzy.

This evening is meant to be the last of the small get-togethers that the Monarch has been having as precursor to the Season’s official start.

Tonight is our turn as hosts.

With a sigh, I turn away from the window and gather my pastels, automatically grabbing for my latest sketchbook. It’s not here.

Guess I have to face everyone sooner rather than later.

With reluctance I can’t shed, I make my way down the back stairs and out the side door of the old service entrance. Now it’s used as a mudroom.

Luckily for me, the guests haven’t wandered outside yet. I slip toward the small shed nestled against the farthest fence in the farthest corner of the yard.

The overwhelming scents of fertilizer, gasoline, and grass clippings hit me the second I push open the door. It’s a combination strong enough to make my eyes burn, but still there’s something comforting about this place.

Beneath the small window, the old workbench—once cluttered with Heath’s sports gear from his teenage years—is now scattered with half-broken parts and strange reconfigurations, the kind of things only Reece seems to understand.

He’s always tinkering, salvaging scraps from trash cans and reshaping them into something useful, something better.

I wish I had his skills.

I find my sketchbook right where I left it, on the crooked camping chair I use whenever I come in here to escape the house and watch Reece work. Usually in silence. We don’t need words.

His presence is ease and comfort and company. I need it. Especially with it being my Mating Season this year.

Ugh.

I need another minute, so I sit on the creaky chair and draw, letting the pencil guide me.

Lines turn into curves and curves morph into basic shapes. Then more complicated ones. Swishes and ticks. Shading and outlines. It’s too easy to get completely lost in the motions, and when I finally focus on what I’m doing, I look down, unmoving.

Reece. I drew Reece.

Again.

His face with its complex angles, the glint of mischief in his eyes…

I sigh. This happens more times than I’d like to admit, and with reluctance I rip out the page to throw it away. Before anyone sees it.

I start to crumple it but then stop, smoothing my fingers over the sketch and smearing the black pencil lines. There’s something odd about the picture.

I didn’t capture Reece concerned or timid or pensive, like he normally is around the others.

No. I drew him intense. Focused. Like how he is when he’s concentrating on one of his projects. Lost in his own little world.

Maybe I won’t get rid of this one. Maybe I’ll keep it.

Tucking the sketch of Reece aside, I turn to the next page. It’s fresh, untouched, full of endless possibilities.

The way life should be every morning, but isn’t.

How depressing.

“Idiot,” I mutter, beginning to outline the gardens, a shade overgrown, at dusk.

Overgrown is the wrong word. More like it is controlled wildness. But I can’t seem to get the proportions, the emotions, right.

The door opens with enough force to send me lurching to my feet, clutching the book to my chest. Reece blinks behind black-rimmed glasses, his expression torn between shock, excitement, and confusion.

My mouth goes dry and my chest squeezes tight.

“Mari,” he says, a low warning scrape of sound. “You shouldn’t be in here.”