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The feel of her body.
Her defiance.
When I open my eyes again, I can’t help but register how much the yard has changed since that night. It’s overgrown, and without water, the late summer sun has started to burn the grass, turning it brown in some spots.
It’s not the only thing that’s changed, though, I think as I eye the whiskey bottle again. Unable to resist its call, I reach for it, pouring another half glass.
Relishing in the comfort of the burn as the drink travels down my throat, I look out at the yard again.
No, it’s not just the yard that’s different.
Everything has changed.
23
Never-Ending Summer
Hetty
“Hurry, Hetty!” Beth whispers dramatically, her fingers digging into my upper arm sharply. “We’ve been gone for hours. What will she say?”
With my free hand, I wipe the sweat from my forehead as she pulls me down the rocky path. It should be getting cooler by now—the first day of fall is only a few weeks from now. But it’s still so unbearably hot. It’s as though my life has morphed into a never-ending summer.
Cleo is speed walking a few feet in front of me and Beth, her arms overflowing with coupon books. She drops one but doesn’t slow down to pick it up.
“Can you get that?” she yells over her shoulder.
“I think Elizabeth will understand, Beth.” I yank my arm free from her claw-like grip as we approach the dropped coupon book.
Beth huffs, staring off into the distance angrily as I bend down to pick it up. She doesn’t like when I refer to Rill and Elizabeth by their first names. She’s become so persnickety lately—sometimes I wonder if she has a ghost of her own.
“It’s not Omega Cypress I’m worried about,” she insists. “But her … that Colleen.”
“Ah.” That makes more sense. Elizabeth’s beta maid, Colleen, rules the Cypress House betas with an iron fist.
It wasn’t until I met her that I realized how … low-energy Gran had become in recent years. While she could be mean, for the most part, she was too distracted by Isolde and her antics to really impose any type of structure on us. So, in retrospect, I can see that we enjoyed a fair amount of freedom at Sage House.
I swallow a lump in my throat at the thought of my grandmother. I’ve done my best to block out the events that occurred the night of the blackout, but when a memory does hit me, it envelops me in pure panic.
Luckily, Beth doesn’t give me a chance to wallow. Linking arms with me, she yanks me out of my doom spiral, jabbering about how this morning Colleen told her she was cutting an onion incorrectly.
“The cheek of her! As if there’s only one way to cut an onion!”
I hum in understanding as we finally pass through the Cypress House gates, and I see what has become a strangely familiar sight over the past month.
About a dozen tents are spread over the overgrown lawn, various alphas weaving between them. They’re all either yelling obscenities at each other, shoveling food in their mouths, or sparring in an open space near the garden wall. The scents of meat roasting and fires burning, as well as the tang of unwashed male bodies, drift toward me on the heady summer breeze.
Not for the first time, I wonder if Elizabeth’s mother, Eleanor, is turning over in her grave at what’s become of her distinguished home. I can’t imagine that prim, Order-obsessed omega would have tolerated this.
In the immediate days after the blackout, all of Rill’s alphas relocated to Cypress House. Those who mated to Goldenrod omegas brought them, too, of course.
There was a swell of alphas and omegas here the first week or two, but slowly, they’ve all tapered off, leaving about a dozen or two behind. I’m not sure where the others have gone—presumably back to their homes.
For Cleo, Beth, and me, life at Cypress House is completely different from anything we’ve ever experienced. For instance, everybody works, not just the betas but the alphas and omegas, too.
Even Elizabeth.
The morning after we arrived, I thought Cleo was going to keel over when she saw Elizabeth kneading bread under the tutelage of an older omega with long, curly hair.
