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We all swing to face her. “What?”
Hali continues to scan the newspaper. “It says here her mom is a beta.”
We all fall silent, the implications of that fact hitting home. Betas don’t birth omegas. If there are exceptions, no one in the city knows it.
Hali lifts her head.
“The paper could be wrong.” Rune frowns. “And why is that even in the paper?”
“They sound pretty sure,” Hali says. “Reporter says he spoke with a neighbor.”
“They always sound sure,” I snort. “Even when they’re talking out of their asses.Especiallywhen they’re talking out of their asses.”
Rune gives Cian a long look. “What exactly did you promise Everleigh? I caught bits and pieces, and I hope to hell that what I overheard isn’t what I overheard.”
I’m not sure where he’s going with this until Cian says, “That I’d try to find her sister. She said that she thought her mom—Anna Jackson—might not have been her real mom. I told her that if her real mom was still alive, I’d try to find her too.”
Rune leans toward him, pinning him in place with a hard stare. “You realize that if you find her real mom, Everleigh will decide she’d rather be with her instead of us? Or were you planning on lying if you found her?”
Cian doesn’t respond for several seconds. “Fuck.”
“Why do you want her to stay?” Hali asks, bouncing her pale blue gaze between us. “Because Lawrence isn’t going to just let her go. They were like, the perfect alpha and omega. At this point, it’s become his whole personality.”
She’s not wrong.
He loved to throw parties every couple of months to show off just how perfect his life—and his omega—was.
“Everleigh is ours,” I say.
Hali blinks. “No, she’s registered with the Omega Institute as—”
“She’s our scent match,” Rune rumbles, casting a glance up as he speaks quietly. Other than the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor as Cian was heading back down the stairs, we’ve not heard a peep out of Everleigh. “She’s ours.”
Hali stares at him for a little longer. “All of yours?”
I nod. “Scent matches.”
“Fuck,” she curses.
“Hali!” Nancy glares. “Watch your mouth.”
“It’s a shitty situation, Mom,” Hali says, not looking the least bit repentant. “You have to admit it.”
Nancy stops glaring to frown instead. “She had a bruise on her jaw. Did Lawrence…?”
“He was abusing her,” Cian says quietly. “Even if she weren’t ours, she can’t go back to him. She doesn’t trust alphas because of how he treated her. I imagine if we told her we’re scent matches, she’d feel like she just walked into another, potentially worse nightmare. If we tell her, she’ll run. If we try to stop her from running, she’ll believe we’re just like Lawrence.”
Nancy studies him for a beat and then says slowly, “It sounded like she was having a dream when I went up to get her for breakfast earlier. I left her to sleep longer and decided to let Hali wake her instead.”
Rune sits up, a line forming between his brows. “A nightmare?”
Nancy shakes her head, long brown strands brushing her cheek. “It sounded like more of a dream about needing to finish a drawing.”
We all study her, confused.
“Maybe it wasn’t a dream but a memory,” Hali responds, peering at her mom as if to work out if she’s on the right track. “Maybe she likes to draw. And maybe another way you can convince her she has nothing to fear is by—”
“Giving her something to do here that she enjoys?” I sit up, already working out how I can buy the contents of every art supply store in the city. Would that be too much? Probably. Do I care? No. If that’s what Everleigh wants, that’s what Everleigh gets. “Like drawing?”
