Alone with the family, Bram looked for a lamp and found one with some spare oil. The dust on the windows concealed the windows had also been covered with moldy old blankets nailed to the frame to keep from passing through them. Even with the lamp lit, from the outside the shack would appear to be empty and tranquil.
"I'm slipping," Bram said out loud to himself. Then he looked at the family.
The man was certainly an omega. Damion had called him a harlot, French slang for an omega, especially an unmarried one with children. Omegas in Ireland weren't so ill-treated, in Bram's opinion. In fact, people of all types were mostly equal until child-baring was involved and then such people —be them women or omega— were said to be "go máithriúil" or "in a motherly way". Bram preferred his home's way of dealing with people, but he was a stranger in a strange land and had needed to adapt.
In France there were six types of people, depending on whether they were a man or woman, and whether that man or woman was an alpha, a beta, or an omega. Men and women could be equal within their stations, but an alpha, a beta, and an omega could never be equal. They even dressed differently. This man was dressed like an omega. At first glance it was a woman's dress, but upon closer inspection it was a two-piece garment, the top modeled after a woman's dress, the bottom a pair of trousers with wide, straight legs that took on the silhouette of popular women's skirts of the time. He wore a shoe that was a cross between men's and women's, a middle level heel and color to match the outfit. But he was modern, his hair wasn't long and done up, as was the ladies' fashion, but cut short and curled around his chin, even messed up from his ordeal.
The omega was beautiful, aside from his upper class clothes. He was tall and from his weight, strong too. He wasn't as pale as the upper class tended to be, and Bram wondered if he was foreign, but his hair was white as snow, as was his girl's. The boys had his face —his strong nose, high, foreign-looking eyebrows, proud mouth— but not his hair. One had jet black hair, the other, strangely, shared Bram's red hair.
Bram noted how the group was dressed for dinner and hadn't moved at all during all of this. Likely they'd been drugged and removed from their home under cover of night. He sighed. Despite allowing people to think he was a dumb Irishman who could barely speak the native tongue, Bram knew who he was. He was the hired muscle for a criminal organization and he had blood on his hands. However, he had never killed a mother and his three small children and he wasn't about to start now.
On the opposite side of the shack, as the sofa that held the family, were a few rickety looking chairs. Bram pushed himself to press several hours and routes into a blink of an eye and begrudgingly trudged up to the chair that wouldn't collapse under him. With a headache building in his temples from strain, he eased into his selected chair and got as comfortable as he dared.
As he settled, a morbid thought crossed his mind: Bram had no idea what the family was drugged with. If whatever it was killed them in their sleep, he could get away with this whole tragic affair without having to get his hands dirty. A pang of disgust hit him immediately, and he almost stood up in revolt against it. Bram's next thought was more panicked. He wondered if he should get help. There was only one person he could trust with the task and only one way to get to her and back in time.
Bram compressed the next few hours in another eye-blink and was relieved to see the family stirring before his eyes came together. His head began to pound, and Bram let his chin drop onto his chest as his eyes fell shut. As much as he wanted to check on the situation he found himself in, his head felt as if it was going to split at the seams. He took a breath and let himself relax as much as he dared.
"Daddy?" Caoimhe tugged on his hand frantically, trying to get his attention.
Bram had to admit he was distracted, confused. The rich green fields of his home, always so distinct in his dreams, were fading, changing, warping into something new and different. He wanted to hold on to them.
"What is it, love?" Bram said absently, still holding on to Caoimhe's hand. "What?"
They spoke Gaelic in his dreams. Or, at least, they usually did. He still was, but Caoimhe wasn't. She was speaking French, a language she'd never heard. It made Bram nervous. Was he slipping more than he thought? Losing more than he was willing to give up for this strange new life he'd adopted.
"Daddy?!" Caoimhe was getting urgent, but laughing. Excited, full of fresh new energy, and so unlike her usual self in his dreams. Normally, he could only conjure a pale intimation of her energy; his grief kept him from embracing the girl he had loved.
Her hand began to slip from his and yet he couldn't turn his head to look for her. Bram was still watching the shifting landscape. Ireland was fading from his dreamscape and began to be replaced by a School of Paris style oil painting of the city he'd adopted. Brick buildings bloomed taller than the trees, human-made angles taking the place of the soft curves of the trees and the bog. The green gave way to reds and yellows, to browns and purples and people, human people began to fill the space, the sharp clack-clacking of their heels on the stone pavements only proving their material forms.
Bram stood bemused and frightened in his own dreamscape until the shock of Caoimhe's hand slipping from his snapped him out of it. He turned quickly, only to have sunshine in his face, blinding him.
"Daddy, what's that?!" Caoimhe asked, her excitement at a pitch.
"Darling, you know what that is," another voice said.
Bram blinked the light out of his eyes. Caoimhe stood looking at someone. Only she wasn't herself. She was the little girl of the omega. She was Caoimhe.
"That's the Eiffel Tower, Darling," the voice said.
Bram looked. It was the Eiffel Tower dominating the skyline. It was the nameless omega mother, his two boys standing by him.
"Daddy?" Caoimhe called. She was talking to Bram. She was not Caoimhe. She was. "Daddy, can we go to the Eiffel Tower?"
"Ask your Papa," Bram heard himself say.
The nameless omega laughed merrily. "We'll go together," he said.
Comments (0)
See all