“Did Sister Matilda have a pack?” I asked.
“Of course not. She’s a nun.”
“Then why were you listening to her?” I prodded. “I’m an omega with a pack, and I haven’t even been with my alphas.”
She wrinkled her nose, looking lost for a moment. “You’re not… gold pack like me. They said I’d have to do more to make up for it.”
She had no idea that, by all rights, my eyesshouldbe gold.
Still, I took in those words, knowing how far we’d have to go before she was healed from the poison they’d fed her for… how many years? “Well. You do have a pack now, and we make the rules. Not Sister Matilda.”
“I don’t know.” She sounded unsure, fingers anxiously twisting my shirt. “I just feel like I’m going to wake up and you’ll realize you’ve been tricked.”
I stroked her cheek with my thumb, a low simmer of hatred beginning at the idea of anyone who’d made her feel lesser. “You’re ours, now, firefly. There’s no taking that back.”
She swallowed.
“You think Vandle and his special eyes would have picked wrong?” I added.
She frowned, eyes shivering back and forth for a moment, but she didn’t answer. I was drawn back to her previous words.
“What did you do for heats at the Convent?” I asked. I wondered if she was like me, drugged up so many times the first true heat would be uncontrollable.
“They said we had to learn how to do it alone.”
“You… what?” I asked.
“We’d have to wait it out.”
“No drugs?”
“That wouldn’t be… right…” She whispered. “We had to understand the cost of our eyes.”
There was a strange ringing in my ears. “How many heats have you had like that?”
“Five… at first they came closer together, but then they were more spread out…”
I wondered if that was the trauma…
Jesus Christ.
The agony that would have caused…
It explained how touch starved she was.
“Your eyes are perfect, firefly.” That's all I could find words to say.
No one should have ever made her feel there was something wrong with them.
She was looking into mine right now, though, as if trying to figure out what they meant.
“You know… my eyes have always been different, even before they were gold,” she said.
“Were they?” I asked. I had a strange feeling, that between her snow white hair, pale eyelashes, and light skin with pink undertones, I might know.
“Used to be light pink. And I couldn’t—still can’t go out in the sun, much.”
I smiled. “I’m sure they were just as beautiful pink.”