Page 12 of Her True Alpha
“Your mother told me to bring this to you,” Menollie said. She made a sloppy effort to stand at the ready, hands behind her back the way Mother preferred.
“Thank you,” Phee said. She didn’t want to know who sent it. She didn’t care. It looked expensive. The better-appointed the basket, the higher the insult.
“I wanted to tell the delivery boy to shove it up his ass, but you know how the front door is right where your Mother likes to sit all day with her needlework. Why did he come to the front anyway? Deliveries are in the back. But it was a beta, in a fancy suit with a vest.”
Phee blinked at the drone. Their manner of working together in Phee’s home had been simple. Phee had given the three servants lists—sometimes detailed, sometimes vague. She expected them to be clean, but since they only lived in a couple’s apartment, Phee didn’t worry about their uniforms, hair, or presentation. The house was too small for entertaining. She always met others while out.
Even her mother had never visited her apartment.
“You should not say that.” Phee corrected.
“But I’m supposed to speak the truth,” Menollie replied, a cheeky laugh hiding in her words.
“What color was the vest?”
“That the beta wore? Red.”
“Oh. I should be honored, then.” Phee looked at the basket again. Was there wine? If there was wine in that basket, she was drinking it. Bella Crimson would not skimp on her insults. The two served on the Orphan League together and had never agreed on how to do things.
“I wasn’t going to bring it outside—what are you supposed to do with it here? But your mother…” Menollie motioned to the basket. In the light of day, with the sun on her cheeks, she almost looked like an adolescent omega. The girl wasn’t very tall, but she had enormous eyes, and all that hair. A rosy promise hid in her cheeks, and for a drone, she had too much sparkle.
“My mother indeed. If you don’t watch yourself, you will find yourself on the flat edge of her discipline spoon. I think I told you the expectations she has of her drones, didn’t I?”
“Cook says I’m lucky she hasn’t used it since your sister left, or else I would have bruised knuckles.”
“Indeed,” Phee said.
“You’ll need a bath. And what have you done to your hands?” Menollie clucked, leaning near.
“It’s nothing.”
“No alpha is worth any of this.”
It wasn’t about Grayson Swift, but she asked, “What do you know about alphas?”
Menollie’s face went dark, her brow pulled down over her eyes. Rubbing at the tattoo on her hand, she looked toward the street. “More than I want to.”
“How old are you, Menollie? I don’t remember what your paperwork said.”
“I’m twenty-three.”
Three years and a world younger than Phee.
Menollie said, “If you don’t want help, I don’t have a good reason to linger. I’m supposed to be peeling potatoes.”
Phee nodded. She didn’t want to ask more. She didn’t have the energy. Lately the will to move came and went in spurts of frenzy at the strangest times. She couldn’t tell if it was physical or all in her head. She watched Menollie disappear into the house, leaving the basket behind.
The wave of loneliness came from of nowhere, emotion slapping her whiplike and strident. It found her the minute the door clicked shut, as if it had been waiting for the opportune time.
It seemed a drone who she treated like a household accessory was the only friend Phee had. What would Menollie say if Phee told her it felt like her reason for living no longer existed? Would she care? Would she stay and offer to share the wine hopefully hiding in the basket from Bella Crimson?
Motherhood had never appealed to Phee. She had made plans to pass that burden on so that she never actually had to be a mother. She could just do her duty, the way her mother had done her duty, and then go about her business. Many times, Phee had wondered how to avoid the doctor-recommended three months of breastfeeding. Her mother said that when Phee was born, the Administration demanded an entire year.
Menollie was the type to like children. The girl was too pretty and thin to be a proper nursemaid, but she would have been kind to Phee’s children. Phee imagined that Menollie might play games with them, touch and hug them, the way Naya did with her brothers.
Phee had spent an inordinate amount of time planning to escape the jail sentence of having a child at her breast or on her hip. She’d never wanted that.
But the choice of motherhood no longer existed for her. Rejected by her mate and betrayed by her body, she was empty. And everyone knew it.
