CHAPTER 15: SCRAPS

"Why is she here?" Her familiar but fierce pale blue eyes looked at me with barely concealed venom.

It was Rhea Garrenwhan.

The Alpha rumored to be sleeping with Darek. Who I had also unfortunately found making out with Valden today. And now she was sitting next to my mate looking like she owned him.

Her hand had moved past his fingers like a Luna staking her claim and was now tracing lazy outlines over his shoulders like she had no intention of removing them. She seemed to know that it made me uncomfortable. Just as she knew about my past with Valden as she stuck her tongue down his throat.

She continued narrowing her cat eyes at me as Darek stayed seated next to her, an unreadable expression reflecting on his face.

"Well? Why are you here?" She repeated again to me when Darek didn’t acknowledge her question. It felt like he was contemplating how to answer that too. He definitely didn’t seem keen on letting anyone know about the mate part of it.

"Darek asked me to stay here for some time after he...saved me from some of the delta guards," I muttered, swallowing hard. It sounded so incredulous. Him saving an Omega from his guards who would and did very well tremble and kneel at his towering form. When he could command an entire army of Lycans with just one cold glance. It was laughable if you thought about it. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Rhea’s mouth fell open regardless.

"Did you just call him by his name, Omega? How dare you? Do you not know that he’s your Alpha?"

Fuck.

I didn’t know what came over me. The name was at the tip of my tongue the whole time, and I’d been tasting it, waiting for the moment to spell it out loud.

I bit my lip, looking back at him to see if he was furious about the slip-up.

Darek was already picking up his knife and cutting through his meat like he couldn’t care less. I let out a silent sigh of relief.

"And why would he possibly save someone like you?" She turned to me again. "What’s so special about you, huh?"

It felt like she was also asking that because of what I meant to Valden once. Like she couldn’t stand the fact that two men who were interested in her could possibly be interested in someone like me. Like she was just fed up with my name and my face coming up between her and her lovers.

The fact that Darek and Valden really might be her lovers made bile rise in my throat. Neither of them were mine. They’ve made sure I knew that. Darek might have been my mate but he didn’t seem like he had any interest in pursuing that part of me. No, that wasn’t what he was interested in about me.

The part of me he was interested in had everything to do with deciding how to kill me and nothing to do with fated love.

"Wait, don’t tell me. Have you actually come here to seduce him like you did Valden? That’s what you’re into, right? Seducing those in positions of power so you could leech off of them. I’m guessing that’s what they teach you on the periphery."

I visibly flinched. That was a low blow. And I never tried to seduce Valden into anything just because he was the captain. Humiliation spread through me as I realised Darek probably thought so too now.

But the mate bond was real. It’s not like I could have done anything about that.

"I...I didn’t seduce anyone." I spoke out before I lost the nerve.

"That’s funny. Valden told me himself that you did. So you can go ahead and quit playing the innocent doe-eyed victim," she spat.

I opened my mouth, maybe to protest or to plead. My hands were shaking and my lips trembled with the accusation.

No way Valden would have said that, would he?

"Sit, Maeve," Darek spoke for the first time since I’d come in. As if he had had enough of the conversation happening in front of him. His head was still facing the plate in front of him as he kept taking slow bites of his food.

I slowly made my way over to the chair next to him, opposite to the one occupied by Rhea, while she kept giving me heated looks of hate.

I picked up my knife and fork, weighing the cold metal in the palm of my hand awkwardly before trying to remember how to use them. It had been so long since I had enough food to cut into smaller pieces. Even as an Omega, we didn’t get to use the fancy cutlery. Those were all reserved for the rich and the powerful.

"You know, Omega. Some people are just born to be a rat. No matter who you whore around with, you’ll always be what you are," Rhea said while rising from her chair, eyes glittering and rounding the table to my side of it.

I froze.

"Do what you always do. Lick the scraps off the floor. That’s the only thing you deserve." She reached forward and tipped the contents of my plate on the floor.

I got up quickly, the chair scraping over the carpet.

It was all true.

It didn’t matter if I’d be sleeping on silk sheets or soft mattresses. If I doused myself with expensive perfumes or robed myself in velvet. I’d always be that same rat from the periphery. I could never be comfortable with this kind of life, knowing what it entailed for the kind of person that I used to be.

And I never wanted to be comfortable anymore.

"Excuse me," I muttered, blinking rapidly, willing the tears not to fall through the cracks.

I didn’t wait for her to see that she got to me. I just turned around and ran out of the wretched room.