Omega (Alpha & Omega #1)

{Chapter Thirty Six}

Why in the hell would they invite my father over? They knew what kind of person he was, way before they met him at that godforsaken function.

He closed the door behind him and turned back to me, a stoic expression on his face.

What could he want with me? Why would he come all the way...to where? I didn't even know where Keon and Cayson lived. Nothing looked familiar when we went out. Even so, I remembered the flight and my father wouldn't just travel that long for no good reason.

Hands on my shoulders made me stop my trek backwards. Keon and Cayson were on either side of me, each with a hand on one of my shoulders.

"Phoenix," my father said.

I looked down to his shoes.

"I'd like to speak with her privately, if you don't mind." It wasn't really a request. If the brothers said they wanted to stay with me, he'd make sure they'd stay away. But Keon and Cayson didn't say a word.

I motioned down the closest hallway and he moved forward without even glancing back at me.

"Office is the fourth door on the left," Keon said.

I turned to look back at them over my shoulder before facing forward. My father and I walked in silence to the office. He opened the door for me and allowed me to go inside first.

When the door clicked shut, I turned to face him.

"How has your month been with them?" He didn't look at me. Instead, he walked around me and to the mahogany desk positioned towards the back of the room. He ran his fingers over the wood, then lifted them to see if there was any dust.

Why did he even care how I was?

"Fine," I said.

He looked back at me, a smile on his face.
Images from the day he took me to get my uterus removed flashed in my mind. He was being nice. Nothing good came from him being nice. He could be there for so many different reasons, but he couldn't take anything else from me. I had nothing left.

"Your mother and I signed for the release of ownership over you." He turned to face me and leaned his hip up against the desk. "So, in all databases, you're parentless."

I tried to keep from flinching, but I couldn't stop it. He could take more from me, it seemed. He took my mother, who I believed to have cared about me enough to at least keep me as her daughter. But what? They sign some legal mumbo jumbo and all of a sudden they don't have a kid? It was that easy?

When I finally got my bearings, I looked back up at him.

"Also," he said, watching my reaction, "in the United States, they're petitioning for omegas to lose citizenship. They'll be objects to be owned and bred, if it passes."

I felt my entire body go numb. The floor began to spin and it took everything I had to remain standing.

"Not that it matters here," he scoffed. "Fucking Canadians."

I was in Canada? That's where I'd been living for the past month?

Even then, they were trying to get rid of citizenship for omegas? So many omegas would go from humans, to objects in a matter of days if that petition passed.

"Why are you telling me this," I asked. I kept listing to the side, almost falling over.

"I'm so glad you asked." He grinned.

I'd asked the correct question. I was rewarded with a rare smile. Younger me would have been over the moon at the idea that he was smiling at me for doing something right for once. As it was, twenty year old me didn't like it. Twenty year old me was afraid of that smile.

"You have a chance to turn everything around for yourself." He held out his hands like he was giving me some sort of sick gift. "You remember Remmy? My chemist friend?"

I didn't nod. I didn't answer. I just stared at him.

"Well," he continued, not really needing a reply, "he's been working on a serum for quite some time. It'll turn any omega into a beta. You'll get one shot a month for a year, and your body will shift itself to become a beta. After that, you can start on the alpha serum that he's also working on."

I thought he couldn't take any more away from me. But he just kept going and kept hammering more and more nails into my coffin.

"Two years of pain and you'll be an alpha, Phoenix." He was smiling like it was the greatest thing in the world. "I know you can push through the pain to be what you were supposed to be all along, can't you? Oh, you don't even have to answer. In a year, we can put you back on our registry and you can go back to being the heir to my fortune, and one more year after that and you can be anything you want to be. Remember when you told me you wanted to be a psychiatrist? You can do that."

I needed to sit down. I needed to breathe and get air in my lungs but every word he spoke pushed me further and further into the ground. I felt like weights were being pushed down on me, one at a time until I could barely stand.

The child in me wanted to say yes. To please him. The adult in me wanted to tell him to fuck off.

But the me standing in front of him was frozen in place.

"There's only been a fifteen percent success rate," he said, shrugging. "The test subjects all don't have the goddamned willpower to push through it. But you..."

Oh, God.

"You can," he whispered, walking forward. "You won't die like the others. I have all the faith in the world-"

"Die," I asked, the word almost choked out of my throat.

He stopped walking towards me, tilting his head. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, turning his attention away from me. He was trying to keep his cool. His hand at his side flexed and then balled together into a fist and I knew he wanted to punch me for interrupting. But he wouldn't, because I could be what he always wanted me to be.

When he looked back at me, he was calm. "Yes. Die. But you won't, Phoenix."

How could he know that? How in the hell could he know that I would live through the twelve months to become a fucking beta?

I knew the next sentence before he even spoke it.

"Even if you do," he said, grinning again, "it'll just further the research."

My death meant nothing to him, and he just proved it with those few words. My death would push the research further, to slowly make it so that it was eventually a one hundred percent success rate, rather than fifteen. And he didn't care about the death it left in its wake.

Because those deaths were just omegas.

And omegas were nothing but slaves and breeding mechanisms.

Right?

°°°°°

A/N: When I'm reading, I hate reading cliffhangers. But when I'm writing, I love writing them. But this time, I'll give you the option.

I have the next chapter written and I can post that today so you'll have two updates, but...chapter thirty eight won't be posted until Tuesday. If I get enough people saying they want the next chapter, I'll post it 🤷🏻‍♀️ if not, it'll be posted as planned on Friday.

Have a great day, ladies and gents 🤗