one
Vespera
Therejectionsicknesscomesin waves.
Three weeks ago, they cornered me in my dorm. All three of them blocking the door, Dorian's ice-blue eyes burning with that possessive certainty, Oakley reaching for me with gentle hands that made it worse somehow, Corvus explaining in that clinical voice why fighting biology was irrational.
My nails caught Dorian's face when he stepped too close. Four crimson lines bloomed across his perfect cheekbone, and the shock in his expression gave me the half-second I needed.
I grabbed my purse and ran.
The chase through campus should've been humiliating—three powerful Alphas pursuing one omega across the quad while students stopped to stare. But I was already too far gone with rejection sickness starting to burn through my veins, the marks on my neck screaming as I put distance between us. Someonegasped. Phones came out. I heard Dorian shouting my name, felt the pull of the bonds trying to drag me back like invisible chains.
My vision tunneled. Blood was still wet under my fingernails.
The campus gates rose ahead. Beyond them, a city bus idled at the stop.
I don't remember the last fifty yards. Just the fever spiking, my legs giving out, students scattering as I collapsed at the gates. The bus driver's worried face. Dorian's desperate voice calling after me, already distant, already too late.
The doors closed. The bus pulled away.
The rejection started the moment I chose to flee. Every mile I put between us, every hour I stayed away, every conscious decision not to return—that was the rejection. My body knew what I was doing even if there was no formal ritual for it. The bonds screamed at the separation, demanding I turn around, go back, submit to what biology insisted was inevitable.
I barely made it onto that bus. By the time Dad picked me up in Columbus, I was delirious, the marks burning like brands, my body revolting against what I was forcing it to endure.
Distance. Time. Refusal to return. That's all rejection really is: the stubborn, continuous choice to stay away from what your body insists you need.
Now I'm home in Franklin, Ohio, in the bedroom I grew up in, surrounded by remnants of who I used to be before Northwood Academy tried to break me.
I press my cheek against the cool wood of my childhood dresser. The Little Mermaid stickers I'd put there at age seven catch the afternoon light—faded and peeling at the edges, but still innocent. Dad refinished this dresser himself, an estate sale find he made beautiful again through patience and skill.
The marks throb in unison with my heartbeat. Dorian's mark, the largest, burns with possessive fury. It sits right where neck meets shoulder, the traditional Alpha's claim, and it pulses withheat that makes me dizzy. Oakley's mark behind my ear aches differently—deeper, almost mournful, like disappointment made physical. Corvus's mark, placed with surgical precision to be visible above any collar, itches with mathematical regularity, as if my body is trying to solve an equation with no solution.
Three marks. Three severed bonds. One choice that might actually kill me.
But it's my choice. The first real choice I've had since they decided I belonged to them.
My father's voice drifts up from downstairs, on the phone with someone from the community theater. "No, I need at least another week off. Family emergency... Yes, I understand we're in tech week... Marcus can handle the light cues, he has my notes..."
Another week off. That's at least two weeks of pay he's losing, and I know exactly how much we can't afford it. The technical director position at Franklin Community Theater pays barely enough to cover our mortgage and bills in a good month. But here he is, choosing me over money we desperately need.
The door opens softly, and Dad enters carrying a tray. There's a bowl of soup—chicken and rice, homemade from scratch the way his mother taught him—and a glass of water with a bendy straw, the kind I loved as a kid. A sleeve of saltines, a blue Gatorade, and a single daisy from the garden in a tiny vase.
"You need to eat," he says, setting the tray on my nightstand.
"I'm not hungry." The lie comes automatically. I'm beyond hunger, beyond normal human needs. My body only wants one thing, and it's three hours away at Northwood.
"I don't care." He sits on the edge of my bed, cataloging my deterioration with the same attention to detail he uses when documenting technical problems at the theater. "You're going to eat something, drink the entire glass of water, and then we're going to talk."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Vespera." His voice carries that particular tone he uses when he's trying to be patient but is running out of reserves. "You showed up at my door three weeks ago looking like you'd been in a war. You've been burning with fever for days. You scream in your sleep. And you won't tell me what happened."
"I told you. I rejected them."
"Those boys who were..." He struggles for the right word. "Pursuing you?"
"They're not boys, Dad. They're Alphas. And they weren't pursuing me—they claimed me. During my heat. Against my will."
