Page 13 of Glitterati Omega

Three

H

e got a text while he was in the carhome. He didn’t bother to look at it until he was locked in the penthouse again, in the sanctity of his bedroom.

where did you go

It was simple, and Rupert spent several minutes trying to determine who it was that was clearly so concerned that they’d text him … forty-five minutes after he’d left the table, maybe a little longer.

Maybe it was a wrong number, a misdirected message. That would about figure.

He sighed, hurled his heels across the room, then sat down so heavily on the bed he bounced twice.

Home,he wrote back. He debated adding something else just in case it was someone who knew him—perhaps Morgan had dropped their phone in the punch this evening. It wouldn’t be a first.

Even if it was Morgan, he didn’t care enough to add anything else. He was too tired.

He dropped the phone, then forced himself up. He wandered into the bathroom, feet slapping marble tiles, relishing the cool against his skin. He perused his collection of bath bombs and bubble baths, trying to decide what he wanted. Something relaxing? Something uplifting? Something that would knock him the fuck out and let him forget his entire disastrous existence for a few blissful hours?

He settled on lavender in hopes he could lull himself to sleep without the use of the fentanyl patches tucked away in one of the drawers. He wasn’t supposed to use them anymore, that much was true, but he hung onto them for nights the pain was so bad it kept him up.

Or for nights like this, when he was wound up and spiraling.

He drew the bath, then wandered back to his closet. He shed the constricting dress and found himself a robe. He plucked his phone off the bed on his way back, glancing at the banner notification—that is too badwhomever was at the other end had written back, and Rupert debated whether or not they meant it. Did they even know who they were texting?

He dropped the phone on the counter, then shed his robe and crawled into the bath, trying to empty his head. He inhaled deeply, tried to relax into hot water, the heady scent of lavender.

It simply wasn’t fair that assholes like Percival Warwick could have children easily. Percival didn’twantchildren. Rupert did, and he was the one who had had four miscarriages, had never managed to carry past ten weeks. He was the one who’d had cancer and now had only one ovary and the doctor wanted to take it all, figured it was going to go bad on him in short order. He was the one who had been married, but then he got sick and Thomas had been unfaithful—while he was sick, while he was undergoing treatment, while he was scared out of his mind, and Thomas had been out there banging some other bint, and then he’d dumped Rupert on his sorry ass the second it became apparent Rupert wasn’t going to die.

Rupert wasn’t sure he could be blamed if he felt a bit jilted about the way everything had played out. And then there was Percival Warwick, falling in love and getting the happily ever after Rupert had always wanted, and oh, he didn’tdeserveit, but he had it and Rupert could feel as sore as he liked about it, but it didn’t change the facts.

He sank deeper in the water, thought briefly about drowning himself. He decided against it; Alina was going to call him in the morning, and he’d never hear the end of it if he drowned himself in the bath after he’d told her he was going to befine.

She would have come home with him if she’d thought he was any danger to himself. He couldn’t let her be wrong about that. She’d never forgive herself, and she didn’t deserve that. She was too good to him to make her carry any guilt over someone as useless as he was.

He covered his face with his hands and, finally, let himself cry. A good cry usually did wonders. He’d cry, then go to bed, and wake up ...

Well, he wouldn’t feelgood, but maybeless badthan he did right now. Steadier. Something.

God, he was a wreck. Probably better for everyone if he never managed to reproduce.

But that likely meant he was going to be alone forever. Most alphas wanted children—even if the media said omegas were obsessed with babies. Thomas had wanted children; sometimes, Rupert thought the alpha wanted them more than he himself did. That was why Thomas had said the nasty things he had about the miscarriages.

Or that was what Rupert had told himself, at least. It was the only way he could forgive the alpha, to imagine that Thomas had somehow been hurting worse.

But Thomas wanted children, so he’d left Rupert for someone else, and Rupert didn’t have much hope that he’d find an alpha who didn’t want children. An alpha who wanted a dysfunctional omega. Half an omega. Whatever the hell he was at this point. He was broken and missing parts—junk, ready to be tossed out with the trash, which was exactly what Thomas had done.

He had to get used to this sort of thing. Elise and Alina were going to get married, and he was sure they’d have a couple of children—although the two of them were busy with their careers, of course. But he suspected they might, eventually, decide to have children.

And Morgan—well, Morgan was almost forty, if he could do math correctly, but who knew? An alpha could settle down at any time. Omegas had less time—everyone joked about “biological clocks.” Rupert felt more like a ticking time bomb. How long did he have before the cancer came back and claimed the rest of his organs or even his life? Even if it didn’t, endometriosis was stealing his hopes from him, so maybe he would be better to just get it all ripped out of him, get it done and over with. Put the whole thing to bed, try to move on.

He sighed. There was adoption, certainly, perhaps surrogacy. Maybe he ought to have the doctor pull the other ovary, freeze the eggs, then use in vitro—but there was no guarantee his uterus would stand up to a pregnancy; it hadn’t yet, so he worried that would be a dead end. And the doctor wanted to pull it too. It was hard to explain what he felt when the doctor had told him that. He’d been told he was being silly when he felt like they wanted to take him, the things that made him who—or what—he was. Organs weren’t identities, weren’t destiny. And he knew that, but he’d always … thought of himself as an omega, and omegas had those bits and then he wouldn’t, not if the doctor had their way, so what the hell was he then? Not an omega. Not an alpha. Not anything, as far as he could figure.

That, as he understood it, was why people like Percival Warwick hated him—they thought he was a mush-brained ninny, wanting to be a mother, wanting to have children. Percival didn’t see any meaning in that, thought it was pointless, trivial. He was a person who existed outside of his reproductive system,thank you. He had skills and talents.

That was fine for him, Rupert thought, but he didn’t quite understand why no one thought of parenting as a particular skill or talent. Rupert was good with children—always had been—and he liked caring for others. But that ... somehow ... made him lesser. People like Percival looked at him like he was a disgusting centipede, like if they let him get too close he’d bite them and poison them with the cult of motherhood or something, and then they’d become brainless incubators with no personalities or joys.

That wasn’t at all how Rupert thought about parenthood. He couldn’t think of anything more meaningful in life than caring for the next generation, the future. But then, he supposed he was a soppy-headed git, the worst, most brainless sort of omega.