My mother had barely survived breaking one bond with one alpha who wasn't pack-bonded to anyone.
Five pack bonds.
It would be suicide. Instant, absolute, unsurvivable suicide.
That option was never on the table, my omega said quietly.You knew that. Deep down, you've always known that. Five flowers meant five bonds meant completion or death. There was never a third choice.
I stumbled out of the bathroom before my legs could give out completely. The fever that had been building all day spiked without warning, a wave of heat that made me grab the doorframe for balance, my vision swimming at the edges. My mark burned, both colored flowers hot to the touch, throbbing in time with my racing pulse.
Soul sickness, some distant part of my brain supplied.Two incomplete bonds now. It's accelerating everything.
I made it to my desk, some desperate part of me thinking if I could just do something normal, something routine, maybe everything would settle down. Maybe I could outthink this the way I'd outthought everything else in my life. I opened my laptop with shaking hands and pulled up a new document, my fingers finding the keys through muscle memory alone.
Writing. I could write. That's what I did when the world felt too overwhelming, I took the chaos inside me and transformed it into words, into lyrics, into something that might mean something to someone someday.
Everything that came out was wrong.
Five threads pulling me underFive voices calling me home
I deleted the lines. Tried again.
Pack-claimed before I had a choiceDrowning in destiny's voice
No. That was worse. Too close to the truth I was trying to escape.
They found me anywayDespite the walls I builtFive hands reaching through the darkFive reasons why I?—
I slammed the laptop shut and shoved away from the desk so hard the chair nearly tipped over.
My notebook, my new notebook, since I'd lost the old one when I'd collided with Hwan, sat on the desk beside me. Then the new one I was just starting I left back at the conference room. I grabbed it and threw it across the room without thinking, watching it hit the wall with an unsatisfying thump and fall to the floor, pages splayed open like an accusation.
Everything I tried to write was about them. Every word that came out was shaped by the bonds burning in my chest, by the two flowers blooming on my neck, by the three more that were coming whether I wanted them or not.
Was this what it meant to be pack omega? Was this what "completion" felt like — having your entire identity consumedby the bonds until you couldn't even create something that was purely your own?
I was shaking again.
Not just my hands this time, all of me. Fine tremors running through every muscle, my jaw clenched so tight it ached, tears burning behind my eyes that I refused to let fall. I paced my apartment like a caged animal, back and forth across the worn hardwood floors, my omega pacing alongside me in some internal space I couldn't see but could definitely feel.
Stop fighting, she pleaded.You're making it worse. We need to calm down. We need?—
"I know what you need," I snapped. "You want them. You want me to roll over and present and let five alphas claim me like I'm some kind of?—"
That's not what I want.Her voice was sharper now, frustrated in a way I'd never heard from her before.I want to feel SAFE. I want to stop hurting. The bonds are burning because we keep running from them. Our body is fighting itself trying to complete connections we won't let form. If we just?—
"No."
—let ourselves rest?—
"NO."
—build a nest?—
I stopped pacing.
My hands were already reaching for the throw blanket on my couch.
I hadn't even realized I'd moved. Hadn't noticed my feet carrying me across the room, my fingers closing around the soft fabric before my conscious mind caught up to what my body was doing. I stood there frozen, staring at the fuzzy grey throw like it had personally betrayed me, like it was somehow complicit in my omega's mutiny.
