Page 2 of Her True Alpha
Phee squared her shoulders and met the beta’s eyes. She knew what it took for proper condescension. This skinny beta service worker forgot herself. Ignoring the offensive green medicine bottle in the woman’s hand, Phee pointed at the nurse’s feet. “Why are you wearing that preposterous footwear?”
“Oh, these?” She lifted one foot as if to examine it.
Phee hissed, imbuing the sound with feeling. “Yes. Why are you wearing those?”
The woman shivered at the sensation of Phee’s displeasure. Phee may get easily overwhelmed by her inner empathic omega, but she was not a girl to be out-maneuvered by a beta woman. She knew their type, and knew how to emote until their spine bowed in respect.
The beta almost cried out when the impact of Phee’s will hit her full-on. Her mouth dropped open, and compelled to answer, she stuttered, “Th-Th-These are so that the s-s-sound of our walking doesn’t offend omega breeder s-s-sensibilities.”
What nonsense. Phee couldn’t believe it. Was she in a fertility clinic, or a ward for broken breeders with shattered minds?
This beta nurse was less-than. She would never produce alpha or omega children—she would never even have a chance. She could not bond with an alpha, could not heal him with her blessing; betas had no blessing to give. The most they could offer any alpha was subpar sex. The nurse was breed, certainly, but at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Phee was legacy, damn it. Her status still meant something. The daughter of one of the 12 Sectors’ highest-ranking scribes, she was not just another female off the street. She’d learned how to take and keep her place as an omega before she’d turned thirteen.
The nurse had answered Phee’s question as if she’d rehearsed it in front of a mirror, a well-known beta trick of creating a false truth to circumvent the compulsion of stronger breed.
Because the nurse with the mole worked in an omega fertility clinic, most of her clients would not be push-overs. They’d know an insult when they heard one, thus requiring the woman to practice her responses.
Phee snarled, Hopping down off the examination table, snatching up the glass bottle and shattering it against the wall. Filled with a noxious fluid, it exploded in a splatter of slime and green shards.
The beta screamed in surprise as Phee’s rage filled up the room in a suffocating flood.
“I know your kind, and you will be reported. Your insolence will not be tolerated.”
Before the nurse could answer, the door popped open. Another beta woman appeared, this one older. “Is anything wrong here?”
“No,” Phee told her coldly.
“Dear, do you want me to call your mother? I know this is a hard day for you. It’s not your fault, and it’s not this nurse’s fault. These things happen.”
“Call my mother? Am I a naughty child now? How long was I kept waiting alone in this room after the doctor left? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Did you come back expecting me to be bleeding out neatly into the drain on the floor? Is that how this clinic works?”
“Ma’am, you are upset. I know this is quite a troublesome time for you,” the older nurse said. The younger nurse cowered, but her mature supervisor had more experience with omegas. Tension bracketed her mouth in little spider web lines, but otherwise, she was unmoved.
Her lack of response fed Phee’s rage. She glared at the older nurse. “No. Shit.” Finally, the woman flinched. “Yes, I am upset, and this is a ‘troublesome’ time. But I am not a fool. How many omegas have been put in this room and told they are barren?”
“Miss, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Phee raised her voice and focused her will. She wouldn’t let them get away with this cruel game. The more she looked at the two beta women, the more certain she became they’d orchestrated the entire appointment to humiliate her. “How many barren omegas have been in this room that you know of? Tell me. Tell me now.”
The older nurse paled and looked ill.
Phee crossed the room to her and looked her in the eye. “How many barren omegas have been in this room, nurse?”
The nurse forced the words through her clenched teeth. “Twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four. You bitches. You knew. You made me wait on purpose. Did you drink a cup of tea while waiting for me to dissolve into uncontrollable, devastated sobs? Did you take a bit of cake, laughing, hoping I wouldbreak?”
The younger nurse burst into tears.
Turning her back on them both, Phee grabbed up her headscarf, coat, and outdoor bag. “My appointment is over. The service here is abysmal. Don’t think for a moment that you won’t be hearing from my father and my husband-mate. You will be charged with breaking breeder laws.”
“Miss—” the older nurse attempted to interject.
Phee rounded on her. “Oh, I know you can let slip to the world that I am barren omega. Everyone will know. But that is what you want—to humiliate me. To harm me. Bring me down to your level. You did. You win. I hurt. And who cares? What do I have left now?
“Do you think I will hide this—what you did? My father will see you in court, but that’s just the start. Maybe you didn’t know that my younger sister recently mated a brother of the king? You know, Constantine Kane, who enacted the omega breeder protection laws, and who goes out of his way to see that no harm comes to any omega anywhere? The king who cut off the arms of the alpha doctor who tried to give his omega an inappropriate exam? The king who hunts down anyone who takes part in the abuse of an omega?Thatking?”
