The Arrangement (Omegas of Hunter's Point Book 1)

Chapter 24

Damian stepped out of his elevator and into the marble-floored entry hall of his flats.

Home. Or at least it used to be.

What was it now, besides empty? Lifeless. No smells of baking greeted him. No music. His textbooks sat abandoned on the living room table where she'd left them. Von had been the heart of the place. Now, she was gone. She was gone, because he'd pushed her away, the same as he did every woman who got too close.

It was for their own benefit, he reasoned. He, of all people, couldn't bear to doom a woman to live out her life with him. What kind of mate could he possibly make given the examples he'd grown up with? He knew he wasn't a violent man, but his father hadn't always been violent, either.

Even as a young child, Damian had known that his parents weren't like his friends' parents. They didn't kiss and say nice things to each other, but they didn't say mean things either. They lived together. Father worked. Mother stayed home. The nannies occupied him, and Em, and Stefan. The first time he'd seen his father hit his mother had seemed to come out of nowhere.

That night, something had been off. His parents had been fighting since they'd arrived home. He didn't even remember what about anymore, but he could still hear his father bellowing, still smell the acrid scent of the alpha's anger thick and discernable as it had been from the third-floor nursery where Damian and his sibs had cowered. His mother's scream, that was what had drawn him from the security of the nursery. On cat's paws, he'd snuck downstairs.

They were in the sitting room, and both of them were in evening clothes. Mother's dress was torn. Father had her by the hair, questioning her. She was crying. The smell of her fear had made Damian sick to his stomach. It had been so quick that Damian hadn't been entirely sure what had happened. There had been a loud smack, then his father was storming out the door, and his mother was lying motionless on the floor.

He'd rushed to her. She'd been stirring by then. He didn't remember if she'd said anything to him but burned into his recollection was blood. It had dripped from her nose onto the expensive sitting room rug, blending with the red dyes already present in the design. Once she'd struggled into a chair, he'd wetted a washcloth to clean the telltale staining from her face.

Later, she'd covered the bruise as Von had, with makeup. The arguments grew more frequent, but Mother hadn't allowed him to help her again after that. Father had never dared put hands on Damian or his sibs. He seemed to store up his rage to unleash on his mate when she least suspected it. Over the years, Damian had only been able to judge the severity of the bruising by the thickness of the concealer his mother wore.

He tapped the switch just inside the door, and the lights in Von's room flared to life. Her scent lingered, ghostly and intangible: apples, and cinnamon, and nutmeg. It made his presence in a space so marked as hers feel like a violation, somehow, though her return to it seemed almost impossible.

It was better that way. She was safer away from him. He'd have to make arrangements to meet her so he could return her things.

He ran both hands through his hair. So close. Gods, he'd come so close. A small, insistent part of him told him that his parents' fate was not necessarily what awaited him and Von, and that his father having been a violent mate didn't mean Damian would be so. But was it worth the risk?

The thought of raising his hand to Von made him want to cut both his hands off as a precaution. But he reminded himself, his father hadn't begun regularly beating his mother until years after he'd claimed her. There was still time for Damian to turn, to change, into the monster his father had been, to see her fear of him reflected in her eyes.

As it had been in the shower. She'd been terrified, terrified of what he'd almost done, maybe even terrified of him.

No, it was better this way. She had a future ahead of her that didn't include him. He would find a way to build a future without her.