“Mum.” He cut her off. “I asked you why you disrespected my sister like that.”
She scoffed again, her hard expression faltering ever so slightly. “She was mydaughter.”
Pember dropped his gaze, a tiny thread of guilt starting to curl in his belly.
“And because I was sick of having her in the house, being reminded day after day about what she did.”
The thread dissolved and Pember’s jaw twitched. “Reminded?” he said, the word barely above a whisper. “Youdon’t want to bereminded? I was there, Mum. I was there when she… when she fucking killed herself. When she was there one minute, then gone the next. Do you… do you even know what happened?”
A muscle ticked in his mum’s jaw. “I don’t want to know.”
“We were standing on the platform at Charing Cross,” he said, unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “We were going to the splash pools so she could dip her toes in the water, because she hadn’t left the house in two months. She hadn’t shifted in over a year and she was losing funding for her PhD. She couldn’t get out of fucking bed, she couldn’t go out, Mum! Do you know how fucking depressed she was because of y?—”
“Pember!” she snapped, a warning look in her eyes.
“The train was about to arrive,” he continued, unrelenting. “She said she wasn’t feeling well. Asked me to get her a drink from the vending machine before the train came. I turned my back on her, and when I looked back?—”
Pember squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the lasting memory of his sister’s face as she leaned back into the oncoming train.
Resigned.
Exhausted.
Her smile as she closed her eyes crushed his fucking soul. She’d been warm up until that point. They’d held hands as they walked to the station.
“You’ll remember me, won’t you, Pem?”Those had been her words as they walked down the steps into the underground. Little did he know it was her way of saying goodbye.
She was looking at him in her final moments before being dragged sideways into the tunnel. The force had been so greatthat she’d left her shoes behind on the platform. Just two white pumps sitting alone.
Pember had scrabbled forward, scooping up the shoes and screaming her name as if doing so might somehow bring her back. But she was gone in an instant. More than gone. Her body had been pulverised and spread all down the tracks. The nightmares had started straight away, and for months afterwards he couldn’t distinguish laughter from tears.
“Enough!” his mum said, slapping the table. “Why are you torturing me, Pember? What have I done to deserve?—”
“What haveyoudone? What haveIdone to have my medication cancelled? O-or a random man turn up at my house, and a false report made against me at work?!” He rose, the words growing unsteady. “To have my sister’s ashes thrown across my front doorstep like a… like afucking joke!”
Taking a breath, he lowered himself into the chair again. His mum crossed her arms, eyebrows raised.
“Because this is punishment, isn’t it? For wanting… wanting to shift, for wanting to be away fromyou. For wanting to live. For fucking existing!”
Suddenly, Tracey let out a screech of laughter. “You shouldn’t have existed! Neither of you! This was never the life I wanted. Two omega kids with a beta father. I was going to be a dancer, Pember! I had the top agent in the business and I was in the best condition of anyone else on the circuit. I’d caught the eye of so many alphas they were practically tripping over themselves to claim me. Then your dad, yourfuckingdad got me pregnant me during a European tour, andpoof.Everything was gone. No one wants a knocked-up omega.”
She was breathing fast, but her voice grew softer.
“You don’t think I wanted to shift? That I didn’t want a pack of my own one day? I call out to my wolf every day, but where is she? Gone. She’s abandoned me like everybody else. IfI’d have given birth to alphas, things would have been different. They could have looked after me, the house. It would have made losing my career easier to swallow. But no. I had your sister. And thenyou.”
Pember’s face froze in stunned silence. He couldn’t tell what was the truth and what was manipulation anymore. The woman across the table… he didn’t know her at all. Perhaps he’d never known her.
The room felt as though it was closing in around him, lights danced in the corner of his eyes like he was about to pass out.
“Y-you—” he stuttered, inhaling through his nose. “You hate being an omega, don’t you?”
His mum sucked her teeth and stayed silent.
“And you want me to hate it too. And Immy? You don’t want me to be happy, you want me to be miserable,like you. You made us feel so worthless. You destroyed Immy. You destroyed everything about her! The fact that she was doing well with her career in London and she wanted to be a dancer like you. But you just had to keep twisting the knife, and now she’s gone you’re doing the same to me.”
“You’re doing it to yourself!” she bellowed, slamming her fist on the table. “I’ve seen the advert for that job you took.” She scrunched her nose. “I saw the sorts of things you do. Honestly, Son, it’s so beneath you. What did you think you were doing? Saving the world? Making a difference? You could have done that with?—”
“I make a difference!” he shouted, shooting to his feet so fast it made the chair clatter. “Imakea difference.”
