Reborn Omega; I Refuse To Be Your Substitute

The First Step Away

I couldn't sleep.

I stood in Noah's doorway and watched him breathe, one arm thrown over his stuffed rabbit, mouth slightly open the way it always was when he slept deep. I remembered the hospital room from before. The way Lucien had told me I wasn't going to get custody and I'll not see my son ever again.

God.

They hadn't let me hold him. My son was taken away while I signed the stupid document as I was dying.

I pressed my hand flat against the doorframe and made myself a promise, quiet enough that only Phoenix could hear it.

*I won't lose you again.*

*Then stop just thinking it,* Phoenix said. *Do something about it.*

She was right. Wanting revenge had gotten me through the first few hours. It wasn't going to get me anywhere else. I needed a plan, and not the kind I kept turning over in my head at three in the morning. A real one.

I went back to my room, pulled out an old notebook from the bottom drawer, and started writing.

*Things I need before leaving.*

My own savings, Noah's documents, a safe place to go. My medical license and certificates. Also, evidence, if it came down to custody. I need a job lined up before I ever walked out the door.

It wasn't elegant, it wasn't even complete. But it was real, and that mattered more.

*Look at you,* Phoenix said, and there was no teasing in it this time. *You're finally thinking like someone who wants to survive.*

"No," I said. "I'm thinking like Noah's mother."

She went quiet after that, and I let the silence sit while I kept writing.

My phone buzzed on the desk. A reminder I'd set weeks ago, back when I still thought tonight might go differently. *Glass House, 7pm.* I'd planned to bring the cake I made myself, the one Lucien said tasted like something a child would bake, back before he stopped bothering to lie about being disappointed in me.

I looked at the reminder for a long moment.

Then I pressed cancel.

*That was easier than I expected,* Phoenix said.

"Some things deserve to stay in the past."

I meant it. I felt lighter saying it out loud than I had in weeks.

I turned to the closet next, to the box on the top shelf I hadn't opened in years. I wasn't ready to open it. At least not now.

I laid it all out on the bed and looked at it like I was seeing it for the first time.

*Planning to become a doctor again?* Phoenix asked.

I didn't answer right away. I ran my hand over the edge of one journal, remembering nights I'd stayed up reading these instead of sleeping, back when I still believed Lucien might one day ask what I actually did with my time.

"I never stopped being one," I said finally.

I was still gathering everything into a folder when the door opened without a knock.

"What," Regina said, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, "is all this?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

"Everything in this house concerns me." Her eyes swept over the papers scattered across the bed, the folder in my hands, and something like suspicion settled over her face. "What is a useless woman like you doing with all this? Planning to run off already?"

Something in me went very still.

I set the folder down carefully, because my hands wanted to shake and I refused to let them.

"Don't call me that again."

Regina blinked, clearly not expecting it. "Excuse me?"

"I have spent years respecting you," I said, keeping my voice level, "even when you didn't deserve it. I let you speak to me however you liked because I thought that was what a good daughter-in-law does. I was wrong. You will not call me useless in my own home again."

"Your home?" She laughed, sharp and humorless. "This house belongs to my son."

"Then it belongs to a man who isn't here," I said.

I didn't raise my voice, I didn't need to. Somehow the calm made it worse for her, because her face went red in a way it never did when I used to just take it quietly.

"How dare you speak to me like this??"

"I'm not raising my voice, Regina. I'm simply done lowering myself."

She stood there for a moment, mouth working like she wanted to find something cutting enough to win. She didn't find it. Instead she turned, grabbed the vase on my dresser, the one I'd bought myself last spring with money I'd saved doing translation work Lucien didn't know about, and hurled it against the wall on her way out.

It shattered into more pieces than I could count.

I stared at the mess for a second. Then I picked up a broom, because crying over a vase felt like a waste of energy I didn't have.

"Mama?"

Noah stood in the doorway, rubbing one eye, hair sticking up in three directions. The shattering must have woken him.

"Hey, baby." I set the broom down and crouched, and he ran straight into my arms the way he always did, small and warm and smelling like the lavender soap I used in his bath.

"Grandma was loud," he said into my shoulder.

"Grandma was just leaving."

He pulled back and dug into the pocket of his pajamas, and out came a folded paper flower, a little crooked, the petals made from scraps of colored construction paper glued together with more enthusiasm than skill.

"Happy birthday," he said, holding it out with both hands like it was something precious. "I made it at school. I didn't forget. I wanted to give it to you when Daddy comes home, so we could do it together."

I took it from him like it actually was made of glass.

Wait... he didn't forget my birthday.

He actually didn't forget—

Tears welled up my eyes. I thought he forgot when I asked him that day in dinner. In my past life, he had replied with an "oh".

Every gift I'd ever received in that house, the jewelry, the designer things Lucien handed over without looking at me while he handed them, none of it came close to this. I held the little flower and felt something crack open in my chest, gentler than the vase, in a good way this time.

"I love it," I whispered. "I love it so much."

"I love you too, mummy."

He beamed, satisfied, and let me tuck him back into bed before I went back to my room.

That was when the courier arrived with the second package of the night.

I already knew before I opened it. The wrapping was the same plain black paper, wrapped with the same careful hands.

Inside was the wolf. White gold, mid-stride, head lifted. And underneath it, the note.

*Happy birthday, Esme. You once told me wolves protect what matters most. I never forgot. — K*

I fastened it around my neck and looked at myself in the mirror for a long moment.

*Someone remembered,* Phoenix said quietly.

I touched the pendant. For the first time in years, I felt like someone had actually looked at me and seen something worth remembering.

I was still standing there when my phone buzzed with an email. Unknown sender. Subject line: *Request for Consultation.*

A hospital I didn't recognize, asking for help on a case they described as unusual, difficult, beyond what their own doctors could solve. I didn't know if they knew who I really was, or if this had simply found its way to me the way these things always did.

*Medicine is knocking again,* Phoenix said.

"Not yet," I whispered, and marked it unread.

I was folding the note back into its wrapping when I heard the front door open downstairs.

Footsteps. Fast, familiar, hours earlier than they should have been.

"Esme?" Lucien's voice carried up the staircase, sharp with something I couldn't quite place. "Esme, where are you??"

My hand went to the pendant before I could stop it, covering it like it was something to hide.

*Something's wrong,* Phoenix said, and all the warmth had drained out of her voice.

The footsteps stopped outside my door.

The handle began to turn.