Chapter 15 #2
"Everyone around her belittled her worth," Dad continues. "Her strength. Her intelligence. They looked at her and saw an Omega, and they decided that meant she was less than them. Less capable. Less valuable. Less human."
My small face scrunches with indignation on behalf of a mother I can't imagine being treated that way.
"Even you?" I demand, pulling back to look at him with accusation in my mismatched eyes. "Did you belittle her?"
He pauses.
Considers.
I watch him weigh honesty against comfort, truth against protection—and choose truth.
"In honesty... in the beginning, yes. I despised her."
"DESPISED?!"
The word comes out as a shriek of disbelief.
I can't fathom it.
Can't wrap my small brain around the idea that my parents—who look at each other like the sun rises and sets in each other's eyes, who touch constantly, casually, like they can't bear to be apart—could have ever despised each other.
Dad chuckles.
The sound is warm, fond, colored by years of memories I'm not privy to.
"Yes, we couldn't stand each other. Me and my group of friends.
.." He trails off, that distant look in his eyes that adults get when they're remembering things from before you existed.
"Well, we were very different than now. Arrogant.
Certain we knew everything about everything.
And your mother…she made us realize we were underestimating her. "
His smile turns rueful.
Proud.
"We learned it the hard way."
I giggle, imagining my mother putting a group of arrogant Alphas in their place.
It's easy to imagine.
She does it all the time now—that sharp tongue, those sharper blades, the way she can silence a room just by walking into it.
"What did she do?" I ask eagerly. "Did she beat you up? Did she—"
"That's a story for when you're older," Dad interrupts, but he's smiling. "Much older. With appropriate context."
I pout.
He laughs.
Then his expression shifts—something sadder creeping in at the edges, something heavy that I don't understand yet but will learn intimately in the years to come.
"Life isn't going to be easy for you, Sera."
The words land differently.
Heavier.
More real.
I stop squirming, some instinct telling me that this is important. That I need to listen. That these words are being given to me as a gift I won't understand until much, much later.
"I don't know if Mommy and Daddy get the privilege of seeing you grow up," he continues, and his voice is steady but his eyes are bright. "Not with what we do. You know?"
I don't know.
Not really.
I know my parents do Important Work. Know they sometimes come home with blood on their clothes. Know there are Bad People who don't like us, who might try to hurt us, who are the reason we have guards and safe rooms and escape routes drilled into my memory like multiplication tables.
But I don't know.
"But you know—" Dad's hand comes up to pat my head, ruffling my pink hair in that way that always makes me squirm and giggle, "—whether near or far, we're proud of you, yes? We're watching over you."
His voice drops to a whisper.
Conspiratorial.
"And we know you'll be an amazing Omega for a group of Alphas who you may have to prove you're a badass to."
"DADDY!"
I clap my hands over his mouth this time, scandalized and delighted in equal measure.
"That's a BAD WORD! Shhh!"
He laughs behind my palms, the sound vibrating against my fingers, his eyes crinkling with the kind of pure joy that I'll spend years trying to recapture and never quite managing.
"Don't tell Mommy," he whispers when I finally release him. "Okay?"
"Okay," I whisper back, solemn as a vow.
Our shared secret.
Our small rebellion against the rules.
The door opens.
I spin on Dad's lap, already knowing who it is before I see her—because I can feel her, somehow. That bone-deep awareness of my mother's presence that I'll later learn is early scent bonding, the way children imprint on their parents before they even understand what it means.
She's beautiful.
Always beautiful.
But right now she's also sweaty, her dark hair escaping from its practical braid, her workout clothes clinging to muscles that most people don't expect an Omega to have.
Her dual swords are sliding into the sheaths at her back—that same practiced motion I'll spend years mastering, that same lethal grace I'll inherit along with her eyes and her stubbornness.
"Don't tell Mommy what, huh?"
Her voice is suspicious.
Amused.
She knows us too well to think we're innocent.
"MOMMY!"
I launch myself off Dad's lap with zero concern for his comfort, racing across the room toward her with arms already outstretched.
She groans.
"I'm sweaty, Sera—"
"Don't care!"
I crash into her legs, wrapping my arms around her thighs, pressing my face into her stomach despite the workout-damp fabric.
She smells like exertion and blade oil and something sweet underneath—cherry blossoms, I'll realize later. The same base note that will become my own scent, inherited like her eyes and her temper.
"Up!"
"Sera—"
"Up!"
She sighs—the put-upon sigh of a mother who knows she's already lost this battle—and bends to scoop me into her arms. I wrap myself around her like a koala, legs around her waist, arms around her neck, face pressed into the curve of her shoulder.
Safe.
So safe.
"Your father is corrupting you again," she accuses, but there's no heat in it. She's looking at Dad over my head, one eyebrow raised in that expression I'll learn to replicate perfectly. "What conspiracy are you two plotting now?"
"No conspiracy." Dad's voice is innocent. Too innocent. "Just telling Sera that she's going to be an amazing Omega one day. Just like a certain someone."
I feel Mom's body shift.
Her arms tighten around me slightly.
When I lean back to look at her face, her expression has changed—something softer there, something vulnerable that she usually hides behind sharpness and strength.
Her eyes lower.
Lock onto mine.
Blue meeting blue-and-green, a mirror and its reflection, the woman I'll become looking at the woman she was.
"That you will," she whispers, and her voice is fierce and tender and absolutely certain. "You'll be even better. And no Alphas are going to change that."
The words land in my chest and take root.
I don't understand their full weight yet—won't understand for years, won't truly comprehend until I'm alone and bleeding and fighting for survival in a world that wants me dead.
But they plant themselves there, deep in my bones, waiting for the moment I'll need them.
"What if I don't like them?" I ask, the question popping out with the random logic of childhood. "The Alphas. What if they're mean? What if they're stupid?"
Mom laughs.
Full and bright and utterly her—not the polished laugh she uses in public, but the real one, the one reserved for family, for these walls, for moments of genuine joy.
"Then you whip them into shape," she says, and her grin is wicked, dangerous, the smile of a woman who's spent her life making Alphas regret underestimating her. "Until they're exactly how you like them."
She gives Dad a wink over my shoulder.
I hear him chuckle—warm, rueful, the sound of a man who's been thoroughly whipped into shape and wouldn't have it any other way.
I giggle too, even though I don't fully understand the joke.
"Yes, Mommy!" I declare with the absolute conviction of a child who believes in the infinite power of parental wisdom. "I'm gonna do exactly that!"
She hugs me closer.
Presses a kiss to my forehead.
"That's my girl."
The words settle into my soul like a blessing.
That's my girl.
My badass girl.
My warrior.
My daughter.
The scene starts to blur.
Colors bleeding at the edges.
Sounds fading like music played too far away to hear clearly.
No.
No, please—
Let me stay.
Let me stay here where they're alive and I'm small and nothing hurts yet.
But the memory doesn't listen.
It fades the way all memories do—gradually, inevitably, returning me to the darkness I was floating in before.
Except the darkness feels different now.
Less empty.
Less final.
Mom's voice echoes through the void: "You'll be even better."
Dad's whisper follows: "We're watching over you."
And somewhere in the distance—impossibly far away, impossibly close—I hear other voices.
Male voices.
Urgent voices.
"—blood pressure stabilizing—"
"—antidote's working—"
"—just need her to hold on—"
Sage.
The name surfaces through the fog, carrying with it a tangle of emotions I'm too tired to sort through.
Sage is there.
Sage is fighting for me.
Sage didn't let me walk away.
The realization should spark something—hope, maybe, or determination. The stubborn refusal to die that's kept me alive this long.
But I'm still so tired.
Still floating in this warm, dark space where nothing hurts and nobody wants me dead.
Maybe I'll just rest a little longer.
A few more minutes in the darkness.
Some more seconds of peace before I have to go back to being the girl who kills, the Omega who survives, the heir to a legacy written in blood.
My mother's voice echoes one final time:
“Whip them into shape."
And despite everything—despite the poison in my veins and the grief in my chest and the exhaustion that goes deeper than bone—
I smile.
Just a little.
Just enough.
Yes, Mommy.
I'm gonna do exactly that.
The memory fades, and I’m back in the floating oasis, asleep once more.