Reborn Omega: Escaping My Cruel Alpha Mate

ALEAH GREGORY POV:

My eyelids were curtains soaked in lead. I fought to lift them, each breath a new battle, scraping my lungs like shattered glass. The air, thick with the cloying scent of lilies, did nothing to mask the chemical tang of medicine, the undeniable stench of decay.

My twins, Ryder and Blair, stood by the bed. They were pristine in their custom-tailored clothes, their faces scrubbed clean. Not a single tear marred their perfect complexions. There was only impatience. Annoyance.

A skeletal hand, bruised with the ghosts of a thousand needles, rose from the silk sheets. I reached for Ryder, a rasping sound tearing from my throat.

He flinched back, his small nose wrinkling in disgust as if I were something rotten he'd found on the sole of his shoe.

"Don't touch me," he said. His voice was cold, a perfect, chilling echo of his father's. "You smell awful."

My hand simply fell, landing without a sound on the duvet.

I looked into his eyes, the same ice-blue as Cassius's, and saw only a reflection of my own haggard, dying form.

My gaze shifted to Blair. She was fiddling with the lace on her dress, utterly absorbed, as if her mother's impending death was a boring television program she was forced to endure.

I remembered then. I hadn't married Cassius for love. My grandmother, a Healer of immense power, had poured her own life force into saving the old Alpha Conley when he was on death's door. The Moon Goddess, in her infinite, cruel wisdom, had forged the mate bond between me and his son, Cassius, as repayment.

A debt. A curse.

My entire life had been the interest payment on that debt. I gave up my family, my name, my future. I became the wolfless Omega Luna of the Blackfang Pack, a walking disgrace.

I thought bearing them, my Alpha-blooded children, would change things. I had poured every ounce of love I possessed into their small bodies.

"When is Dad coming back?" Ryder demanded, his voice sharp with irritation.

"He's with Aunt Coralie," Blair chirped, a note of pride in her tone. "Aunt Coralie is a fashion designer. Her dresses are a hundred times prettier than Mom's old robes."

Coralie Mueller. The name was a silver needle, sliding into the numb flesh of my heart. Cassius's mistress. A secret the entire Pack knew, except for me.

"An Omega should know her place," Cassius had told me when I first found out, his voice devoid of any emotion. "Don't delude yourself into wanting things that don't belong to you. Like love."

Ryder walked to the bedside table. He picked up the IV bag of nutrient solution, his expression one of pure contempt.

"So much money wasted on this useless stuff every day," he said, the words practiced, adult. "Dad says it's enough to buy Blair ten Kensington princess dresses."

Shock, cold and sharp, managed to pierce through the fog of my dying mind. I stared at him, this child I had carried, the boy I had once held as he slept. He was calculating the cost of my life against the price of a dress.

Blair giggled. "Brother's right. It would be better if you just died quickly. Then Dad wouldn't have to worry anymore, and we could go live with Aunt Coralie."

Each word was a scalpel, expertly slicing away the last vestiges of my maternal love.

I looked at them, truly looked at them for the first time, and saw the cold, selfish cruelty that was the pure, undiluted legacy of the Conley bloodline.

I had thought my sacrifice, my devotion, would earn me a family. Love.

How utterly laughable. My life was a joke.

A coppery taste filled my throat. The world began to darken at the edges, the last of my energy draining away like water from a cracked vase.

I closed my eyes.

I gave up. On my children. On my mate. On this godsdamned bond.

My only wish was that I had never existed at all.

I felt it then, a faint whimper from deep within me. My wolf soul, the one that had never manifested, cried out once, then fell silent.

I heard a nurse gasp. The shrill, insistent scream of a flatlining monitor.

But I felt nothing.

Only the cold, welcoming dark.