Who Wants a Broken Mate? (The Fae Omegas, #4) [SAMPLE]

Chapter 2

Nina

"Based on a thorough investigation, it has been determined that Miss Nina Oisin is a non-accomplice to the Westhouse trafficking organization. However, her actions, including assisting in the creation of battle balloons for the organization, will be punished with 25 negative points recorded on her Supernatural Council file. Leniency is given because Miss Oisin is also a victim of the organization and several victims testified to her helping them during their stay in the Westhouse trafficking den. This is this jury's final judgment."

As soon as the judgment was given, my legs became limp noodles, and I had to hold on to the defendant's table to prop myself up. Since the Westhouse trafficking den was raided by the Supernatural Council a month ago, I had been separated from my brother, living in a temporary prison camp, because I was a suspected accomplice of Lord Westhouse's trafficking organization.

When I walked into the room that I was directed to by a security personnel, I saw my little brother standing there. He was dressed in clean clothes without holes in them, a far cry from the clothes he'd had to wear at Lord Westhouse's trafficking den.

When he saw me, he burst into tears. I hugged him while wiping the tears rolling down my face. He must have been so afraid that I would go to prison and he'd be all alone.

"Don't cry. Everything will be alright. The kind lady from before promised that if they acquitted me, they would find us a new pack to live in."

He nodded, with his face still buried in my shoulder, while I patted him on the back.

Eventually, we broke our embrace, and he moved back, wiping his tears with his sleeves and hiccuping once.

After our reunion, we had to stay in a Supernatural Council safe house for teenagers like us for a while.

Thanks to our social worker, Zoey, we snagged a remote scholarship to a prestigious art institution for supernaturals for my brother. Although he still had to make concessions by choosing to be a graphic artist instead of a painter because of the cost of painting materials, I was still thrilled to see him pursue his artistic dreams after my step-father had ruthlessly rejected and ridiculed it.

Before we could celebrate the scholarship, however, our step-father somehow found us and came to 'get us back'.

Thankfully, there were Supernatural Council guards around or I couldn't promise that I wouldn't unleash the wrath of my instinctual magic on my step-father.

Seeing him dug up memories I'd buried deep in my mind of the day he and my pack Alpha drugged me and sent me to an old visiting Alpha's bed against my will.

The feeling of helplessness, despair, and fear I felt that day led to that old Alpha's death. And I couldn't sympathize with him at all.

However, I was devastated that I had killed someone. Because even though I had no control over my powers back then, I knew I was the one who killed him.

Fear of my abilities as well as what my Alpha and step-father would do caused me to run with my brother who had sneaked in to rescue me.

Although I knew surviving as a rogue with a twelve-year-old, albeit a very mature one, would not be easy, I also knew that I couldn't run away without my little brother.

Even though my stepfather was patriarchal and my brother was his first son, he didn't care about my brother at all. After all, he never loved my mother. My mother had just been a duty hoisted onto him by his Alpha after his Alpha got tired of my mother and the daughter she had birthed for him and wanted to move on to another mistress.

Immediately after my mother's suicide, my stepfather had mated his favorite mistress and brought his other son into the house. And his new mate was not a simple person like my mother. If I left my brother in her hands, she would probably kill him discreetly to get rid of her son's status as an illegitimate son.

So, that day, my brother and I escaped our pack with all the money we stole from the old Alpha I killed. We traveled by bus far away from our town until we got to a big city and started living on the streets, only to be targeted by Lord Westhouse's trafficking scouts.

When the Supernatural Council officers found out that my brother had a father on his birth records, something I had glossed over with the fact that there was no father recorded in my birth records, they got straight to business. They interrogated my stepfather about his relationship with us and then interrogated my brother and me separately with truth serums because I'd already lied to them before.

After I explained many of the things that happened to my brother and me before and after our mother's death, the Supernatural Council filed a legal dispute. Within a week, the family jury in charge of our case heard our case and resolved the dispute by adding negative points to my stepfather's file, applying for an audit of the Woodburn pack, and making me my brother's guardian since I was already 18 years old.

My step-father and pack Alpha also received one of three strikes to their Supernatural Council files for drugging me and sending me to an older Alpha against my will. This meant they were only two strikes from status persona non grata, a status that would make them exiles in both human and supernatural society.

Three days after our names were removed from our stepfather's family registry, my brother and I received news that they had assigned us a new pack.