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The words were muffled as I was thrown back all those years. Remembering as if I was a bystander watching from the shadows as Oberon and I walked out the prison. Our dirty clothes and insults hurled at us by the guards. Walking through the street to the room where Sophia lay in her bed with Tod playing on the floor.
We had made a fortune back ten times over without difficulty and with a couple of strategically fixed boxing matches. And all the while it was a society omega who had been the one to set up our success.
“Too fucking good to be true,” I spat. The old anger at her lady bountiful persona bubbling to the surface. The long buried fear and shame of those months choking me. But not enough to stop me lashing out. “I knew you were too good to be true. How are we meant to pay back that debt, Polly?”
She frowned. “You aren’t. I don’t want your money. If you want to pay me back, then pay off the debts of someone else.”
I stalked into the night until the darkness swallowed me up.
I’d known better than to think she had a heart to share with us. Some illusion drawn up after years of fantasies for my perfect omega. And somehow her rescuing me as she had countless others made me feel but one of hundreds. I just happened to fuck her every night.
“Puck! Robin, please stop.” She caught my sleeve, tugging at me. “Please, say something. I can’t bear it.”
“Was this some need to save the less fortunate? Paying the debts of strangers? And why would you? You hated alphas. Lady bountiful doing your bit by gifting money you stole from your peers to charities? Is that what you—”
“I didn’t do it to save you!” she screamed, twin spots of colour on her cheeks. “All I cared about was my nephew! The little boy whose birth family threw him away. Whose mother, the only mother he’d ever known, was dying. He needed a family who wanted him, loved him. You and Oberon were those people.”
“You could have taken him back.”
“And what? I was a girl of nineteen. An apex omega rejected by every alpha who courted me because I was not some pattern card, docile creature.” Her breath caught in an aborted sob. In the lamplight she looked more vulnerable than ever before. “I had hoped that you of all people would understand the weight of a stranger’s eyes as they pick apart each of your differences. Stare at you as if you are some animal in a cage.”
It was the closest she’d come to referring to the colour of my skin and the majority’s inclination to view me and those of my race as little more than animals they’d willingly enslaved. Even now, thirty years on from Takyi’s War and the revolution that overthrew British rule in the West Indies, society—all classes—only looked skin deep when their eyes passed over me and mine. “Are you claiming that enslaving someone is—”
“No!” She tugged on her hair. “I am sorry. They are not the same. They are nothing alike. I meant…I meant that you and I stand out. Or I felt like I stood out when I was nineteen. You and Oberon could do what I could not. You were alphas who only needed to have your debts paid.” Her eyes searched mine. “I never thought to have more interaction with you than that. How could I know I would want you so desperately or forced you to mate me?”
My mate.
“Forced him?” Jude spoke for the first time in a while.
“I wanted his to be my first knot. And then I knew if he didn’t mate me in my heat I would go mad.”
I wondered what my mother and father would make of her. This omega who was equal parts fierce protector of the most disadvantaged in our society and as blind to her own advantages as any aristocratic alpha. “Hippolyta.”
“I’ve disappointed you.” Her body went stiff.
“No. You haven’t disappointed me,” I assured her. “You are just a mass of contradictions. And I worried that we, that I meant nothing to you.”
“You give me too much credit.” She wiped at a tear that had broken free and had run down her cheek. “And you mean… You mean more to me than I knew.”
“You can be selfish and high-handed,” I admitted. “But when you are made aware you learn. Do you know how hard it is to learn?”
“I don’t think…”
“Very true,” Jude huffed. “You feel far too much.”
“Which is good,” I rushed to add. “But no more lady bountiful. No high handed behaviours.”
“I hate myself for believing my thoughts are clear when they are so tinged with anger and vanity.”
I barked out a laugh. “Goddess, now if only we could have Oberon admit the same, we’d make progress in turning the pair of you into decent persons.”
Her eyes flashed with tears but a smile graced her lips. “We are a rare pair. You shouldn’t be so good to us.”
“I’ll reserve the right to change my mind.”
“Then can we go in? Where a hot meal awaits us?”
“I doubt Oberon would appreciate the comparison,” she laughed, bright and carefree at her own joke. That was the woman who captivated Sarah. Who had captivated Sarah. The dull ache of loss caught me unexpectedly. How would she have fit in this pack we had built? “What put that frown on your face?”
