The Omega

Chapter 6 - Revelations, part 2

"You took them in? The unmated omegas?" Alec asked, unshed tears in his eyes.

"Yes, darling. I did. Three. In a way they were like my own children." Magnus said, wiping the tears from Alec's cheeks.

"That's why you know so much about omegas. Because you cared for them?" Alec asked.

"Yes." Magnus said.

"Can we go back for a minute?" Simon asked. "You said that the Clave has records of all of these murders. All Shadowhunters and their children. Hidden in secret records deep within the Clave. Records that 'don't exist' in the Shadowhunter world. And that the surviving omegas either found their mates and were kept secret, or where kept by the downworlder families that took them in. All kept hidden from the Shadowhunter world and the Clave. Since all of these omegas were either mated or taken in by downworlders, is there any kind of record of them anywhere?"

"That's a very good question, Simon. And the answer to that is yes. The Clave has public records of all the non-omega Shadowhunters families and their children, the records you can easily access. They also have the records that 'don't exist', records that only the highest-ranking Clave officials can access, dating back to before the first Purge and what happened after. They don't have records of the surviving omega children or what happened to them because they don't know. And to be honest, I'm not sure that today's Clave officials even know about The Great Purge or about the records the Clave did keep about the murdered omega families. That knowledge may have very well died out with the Clave members that have passed since that time. But there is a book in the Spiral Labyrinth that has it all. It contains everything, the names of the omega families that were killed and their children. What happened to the surviving children, mated and unmated. The names of the downworlder families that took them in. It lists the names of the mated omegas as well as their Shadowhunter mates and families, their children and their mates, as well as their descendants. It lists the unmated omegas, as well as the fates of the omega Shadowhunters that were presenting during the time of The Great Purge, and more."

"What do you mean their fates? The fates of the Shadowhunters that were presenting during the time of The Great Purge." Jace asked.

"It was all pretty much the same thing, just different circumstances." Magnus said. "While the omega families were being killed, more omegas were presenting. The Clave made quick work of 'dealing' with them. They couldn't out right go after a newly presented omega. So they would just bide their time and wait. Someone on the inside was always involved, but the results were the same. The omega died, male or female. Either by an 'accident' or 'mishap' while in the field or while on patrol. Sometimes it would be a 'horrible training exercise' gone wrong. None of them were 'obviously' murdered, but one by one as they presented, within a few months, they were dead." Magnus said.

"You said that you've put up more wards over the years than you can count. What did you mean?" Clary asked.

"Established or recently presented omegas were dying one by one, either by various Shadowhunter activities, made to appear as accidents, demon attacks, that sort of thing. If my understanding is correct, a Shadowhunter doesn't take on a demon without backup. It was noticed quickly by the downworld. We had, since The Great Purge, started keeping records of all new Shadowhunter births and their presentation status. And the Shadowhunters were noticing it as well. After a couple of families lost their children, presumably because of their omega status, after everything they had come to know about Clave and their views on omegas, which the Clave could no longer hide, they started keeping their children home on their presentation date. Several of the Shadowhunter families had friends or extended family that had an omega in their household and knew about the downworlders involvement. If their child presented as an omega, they would reach out to whoever it was they knew for help. Pretty much all Shadowhunter families knew what would happen if their child presented as an omega and kept the secret, for their child's sake. Once a child presented as an omega, a fire message would be sent to me or whoever was the High Warlock in their area was. Using a glamour in case it was a trap we would meet with the new omega and their family and once it was confirmed that they were in fact an omega, we would take the young omega and would get them to safety. Then the family would create some story as to what happened to their child to report to the Clave. They would tell them that they had presented as an alpha or a beta and that their child had somehow died. It didn't take long for the Clave to start questioning the stories they were receiving. After so many Shadowhunter deaths with no bodies, they knew something was up. But we got lucky. Around that time, omegas stopped presenting. At least in Shadowhunter families. Obviously, the hidden mated omegas continued to produce omega, or even alpha and beta children, that the Clave didn't know about. Regardless of the status of an omega families children, they were never registered with the Clave at birth, so they were never trained to be Shadowhunters. The Clave was clueless." Magnus said. "There were a lot of hidden nephilim that the Clave knew nothing about. The only record of them is in the 'The Omega' chronicle, also in the Spiral Labyrinth."