50. Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Forty-Nine

Owen

S hadow walks me down the path that leads us out of the academy’s gardens.

I feel numb about my surroundings now that I’ve started to process the feelings I was left with when I walked away from my asshole, elitist parents.

It’s pretty out here, I guess, but it’s a manufactured kind of beauty, everything deliberately positioned and planted to look perfect.

It reminds me of the yard at my parent’s house.

I made the mistake of picking my mother flowers once.

The gesture put a smile on her face for a few precious seconds.

It died quickly when she realized where I’d gotten them.

Two seconds later, she was calling our gardener to go buy new plants.

She didn’t speak to me for a week after that fuck-up.

Wouldn’t look at me or acknowledge my existence in any kind of way.

I was five, but I learned my lesson. It never happened again.

I did everything I could to please them, and none of it was ever good enough.

Anything I achieved or earned at school was met with indifference or one of my parents telling me they were sure I’d do better next time, as if winning a football game, or going up a grade in Math was the bare minimum they expected from me, and I should always be trying harder.

So, that’s what I did.

I studied harder, and I practiced more, and I got straight A’s across the board by the time I graduated high school. They still weren’t impressed, or proud of me.

They didn’t come to my graduation, and they didn’t react when I showed them my grades.

All they did was tell me I’d be ready to go to the first social soon, and that I was lucky some decent colleges had accepted me since apparently no Omega would want me if I didn’t show I was capable of greatness.

I was beyond tired by the time my father made that little speech at the dinner table.

I’d already made my mind up that I wasn’t going to follow in his footsteps.

I had no interest in doing a business degree and going to work for him just so I could take over his family businesses at some point in the future.

That sounded like hell.

I’d already spent years listening to him putting down everything I ever did.

There was no way I would survive dealing with that shit in a workplace as well as at home.

So, when the ultimatum came, I already knew what I was going to do.

I was ready to leave. I knew it was time.

That didn’t make it hurt any less.

They’re still my parents.

There’s nothing I can do to change that.

It doesn’t feel like there’s anything I can do to rid myself of the rage that’s tightly bound to those people and how they treated me. I can’t change the past. I can only try to let it go.

I push them out of my thoughts. I don’t have to figure it out right now.

But I probably do need to know where my Omega is taking me.

“You don’t know this place,” I remind Shadow as he leads me down the path.

He shrugs when I look at him. “I don’t need to know it.”

I’m not sure what that means until he leads me back toward the exit we just came out of.

It’s a little bit to the left of the reception area, in a corridor that leads to the kitchens on the left, and the classrooms further down on the right.

Wherever Shadow’s leading me, he seems confident about it.

I follow along, willing and curious.