Page 59 of Glitterati Omega

She smiled. “I won’t tell. It’s a secret.”

He pushed it away. “It’s probably something disgusting then, like … like …”

“It’s good for you,” she repeated. “Rich in iron and many other things you need right now.”

“Where’s Winston?” he asked.

She shook her head. “We worry about him later. You eat that. I’ll mix the medicine.”

He frowned but decided that maybe he should eat something. And that perhaps the soup wouldn’t be so bad when it was warm.

Thandiwe made him drink a mixture of milk and something else—he didn’t know what rue was—but it was vile, and he longed to be sick after. She instructed him to go back to bed after that, so he did. She put a cloth on his forehead, and he slept again.

When he woke, night was falling; the sky was streaked with brilliant pink clouds. The house was almost silent, save for the singing of birds and the hum of insects and frogs outside.

He crept into the kitchen and found Winston staring out the window, a cup of tea in hand.

Rupert sat down next to him, but the alpha didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at Rupert. Rupert looked down at his hands folded in his lap. He sighed. “Well,” he murmured at length, “that probably convinced you that you’re better to stay far away from me.”

Winston startled, like he was surprised Rupert was there. He gave the omega a grave look. He took a slow sip of his tea, then set it down on the low, worn table. “I was worried,” he said.

Rupert bowed his head.

“I was gone for ten minutes, and I returned and you were … like that. I was concerned you’d done something drastic.”

Rupert let his shoulders sink. “I can be dramatic.”

“That is not beingdramatic,” Winston chided. He turned to face Rupert and plucked his hands out of his lap, squeezing them. “Tell me, does anyone else know this?”

Rupert nodded. “Yes, Alina and Charli and Moose all know. And Elise too, I think—Alina’s fiancée. And my doctors. I’m on several medications for … for depression.”

Winston peered at him. “And have you been taking them?”

He nodded again.

Winston sighed. Rupert pressed his lips together, then said, “I’ve been in therapy since I was twelve or so. I … have been having a harder time recently, though. Yesterday did not help, but I do what I can.”

“All right,” the alpha said. He crunched his brow. “Why do you have those drugs anyway? There were an awful lot of them in your case.”

“Leftovers from the cancer treatment,” Rupert admitted.

“Didn’t that end a while ago?”

“Long enough,” Rupert muttered. “I should probably get rid of them.”

“Mm,” Winston said, and Rupert felt he was being judged. He was so used to that now. He’d heard the word addiction tossed around, although he didn’t buy it. Not yet, at least.

He didn’t want to be, if he was. That would just be another barrier to what he wanted, and he already had enough of those.

“I don’t take them all the time. Or even often, I just have them, because …” He furrowed his brow. “I feel safer with them. Just knowing … if I can’t sleep or the pain’s so bad or something.”

“What pain?”

“From …” He gestured vaguely to his abdomen. “Cancer’s not myonlyillness, but they don’t really treat the endometriosis.” He didn’t bother mentioning the other kind of pain, the phantoms of emotional distress that sometimes kept him up at night, brooding over a listless, gray future that he didn’t know he wanted. Yes, he’d survived, but to what end?

Winston took another sharp breath. Rupert sighed heavily. “I know that’s a very good argument for taking everything out,” he said. “And that the depression and anxiety are very good arguments for me not being a fit mother.” He’d heard all that before too. His therapist thought it would be a terrible idea for him to have a baby. He didn’t think she understood how miserable that idea made him. She kept telling him to work on himself, to spend his time getting better, but he didn’t know what better looked like anymore. There was no recovering from having his reproductive organs removed. There was no real recovering from the trauma of having had cancer, the threat of it returning always looming over him. And there was no real recovering from the fact that Thomas—and most alphas, likely—didn’t want him. That nobody wanted him and that nobody ever had. Not his mother, not his father.

Sally told him he needed to learn to be happy with himself, but he didn’t know how to do that. How was he supposed to think he had any value, that he was worth anything when, all his life, he’d been so easily tossed aside?