He knew what seeing Osmond’s face would do to me.
He was playing a game, and I was falling for it.
Because it was taking all I had not to launch myself at Osmond.
The years hadn’t been kind to Osmond. He looked haggard, smaller than I’d remembered him. Thinner. There were dark circles under his eyes. He seemed twitchy, hands flexing and then curling into fists again and again.
I remembered the first time I’d met him, the look on his face when he realized Joe had given me his wolf. The disgust. The disdain. He’d probably gone right to Richard after. Told him everything. Told him how Thomas had held him up against side of the house at the end of the lane, snarling in his face, telling him that I was worth something. That I mattered. That just because I was human didn’t make me any less than the wolves that surrounded me.
Thomas had stood up for me.
And then Osmond had betrayed him.
I thought how easy it would be to bring the crowbar down upon his head.
Just to see the skin and skull split, the spray of blood.
I’d be torn apart, sure. I probably wouldn’t even make it over to him before I was surrounded by Omegas.
But I could try. I really could.
His eyes flashed like he could hear my thoughts. They were violet, just like the others.
I said, “Your eyes.”
He flinched, like he hadn’t expected me to speak.
“Was it worth it?”
The Omegas laughed again.
Osmond said, “It doesn’t matter.” His voice was quiet. “What’s done is done.”
What’s done is done. Like my mother. Like Thomas.
Oh, the rage I felt.
The anger.
It must have been radiating off me, and even though the Omegas weren’t mine, even though I was not their Alpha, I was still an Alpha, and their shoulders tensed and they whimpered and they whined at the sight of me.
Osmond looked to cower, but stopped himself at the last moment. “Enough,” he said harshly to the Omegas. They barked and yipped at him in return.
“How did you do it?” Osmond asked me. “How did you become an Alpha?”
“How do you sleep at night?” I asked him. “Knowing you did what you did?”
“I sleep very well.”
“Lie,” I said. “You don’t look good, Osmond.”
“This isn’t going to end well for you. You have to know that by now.”
I smiled at him. He flinched again. “Maybe not,” I said. “But I know who I am. Can you say that?”
“We looked into you, Matheson. No wolves. No one in your family was ever a wolf.”
I said nothing.