The morning light had shifted while I was in the shower, golden now instead of grey, streaming through my windows and painting everything in shades of false hope that felt almost mocking given my circumstances. My laptop sat where I'd slammed it shut yesterday, closed and silent, a portal to information I wasn't sure I wanted to find but knew I couldn't avoid any longer.
I needed to know what I was dealing with. Needed to understand exactly how much danger I was in, even if the knowledge terrified me. Ignorance might be bliss for some people, but I'd learned long ago that ignorance was just another word for vulnerability — for letting the world happen to you instead of preparing to face it head-on.
I opened the laptop with fingers that trembled slightly, the screen flickering to life with a brightness that made me squint, and navigated to a search engine. My keystrokes seemed too loud in the quiet apartment, each tap of the keys like an accusation.
Incomplete soulmate bonds omega symptoms
Multiple incomplete bond soul sickness
Pack bond complications omega
How long can omega survive incomplete bonds
The results loaded, each link a door to a room I didn't want to enter but had to anyway. Medical journals with dense text and clinical language. Research studies full of statistics and sample sizes. Forum posts from desperate people seeking answers that might not exist, their words tinged with the same fear I could feel crawling up my own throat. News articles about omegaswho hadn't survived incomplete bonds, their stories reduced to cautionary tales in local papers.
I started reading.
The first article was clinical, detached, the language of scientists describing a phenomenon they studied but didn't have to live through, observing suffering from the safety of their research institutions.
"Incomplete soulmate bonds trigger a cascade of physiological responses in the affected individual,"the text informed me with cold precision."The body interprets the partial connection as a wound requiring healing, and diverts resources accordingly. Initial symptoms include low-grade fever, fatigue, and generalized malaise. As the condition progresses, patients experience increasing weakness, immune system suppression, and eventual organ failure."
I kept reading, scrolling through paragraph after paragraph of information that painted an increasingly bleak picture of my future.
"Timeline for symptom progression varies based on bond strength and individual constitution. In single incomplete bonds, symptoms may remain manageable for several weeks before becoming critical. However, each additional incomplete bond compounds the effect exponentially."
My blood ran cold, a chill spreading through me despite the fever that still burned beneath my skin. I clicked on a study specifically about multiple incomplete bonds, my cursor hovering over the link for a long moment before I forced myself to press down, and felt my heart stop as the data loaded onto the screen in neat columns and terrifying numbers.
"Research indicates that the physiological impact of incomplete bonds follows an exponential rather than linear progression,"the study explained in its detached academic tone."Where a single incomplete bond might cause manageablesymptoms for several weeks, two incomplete bonds can accelerate soul sickness by a factor of four. Three bonds increase deterioration by a factor of eight. Four or more incomplete bonds are rarely documented, as most subjects do not survive long enough for comprehensive study."
I had two bonds now.
Two flowers blooming on my mark, their colors bright and beautiful and terrible against my skin. Two threads burning in my chest, reaching for alphas I'd fled from like they were monsters instead of men.
Three more waiting to trigger.
If the study was right, I was already experiencing four times the normal rate of soul sickness. The fever, the weakness, the bone-deep exhaustion — all of it accelerated, compressed, rushing toward an ending I couldn't escape no matter how fast I ran.
When the remaining three bonds triggered — and they would, I knew that now with cold certainty, there was no escaping a pack bond when all five members shared the same mark and the universe had apparently decided I was their missing piece — the effect would be catastrophic. Thirty-two times the normal progression. Or more. The math became meaningless at that point, numbers too large to comprehend. The numbers just meantfastandunsurvivable.
I kept reading, each word another nail in a coffin I could feel closing around me with every passing minute.
"For omegas specifically, incomplete bonds can trigger irregular or premature heat cycles. The body interprets the incomplete bond as a signal that an alpha is present but hasn't claimed them, and attempts to 'force' completion through heat. This biological imperative can override suppressant medications entirely."
My heat.
I was supposed to have two or three months before my next heat. The suppressants regulated my cycle with clockwork precision, kept everything predictable and manageable, gave me warning and time to prepare — time to stock up on supplies, time to clear my schedule, time to lock myself away where no one could smell the desperate need pouring off my skin. Something had felt off since yesterday — a wrongness in my body that I'd attributed to the soul sickness but might be something far worse.
A tightness in my lower abdomen that had nothing to do with digestion. A sensitivity to touch that went beyond the fever. A restlessness that made my omega pace in ways that had nothing to do with anxiety and everything to do with biological urges I'd spent years trying to pretend didn't exist.
I pressed my hand against my stomach, feeling the wrongness there, the building pressure that I'd been trying to ignore like ignoring it might make it go away. If I went into heat with five incomplete bonds, I'd basically be sending up a signal flare visible across the entire city.
Every alpha in Seoul would know. Would smell me on the wind like smoke from a fire that couldn't be contained, would feel the pull of an omega in distress calling for help she didn't want to accept. And the five who were actually bonded to me — the five whose marks I bore on my skin, whose threads I could feel stretching between us like invisible chains — they'd find me.
No matter where I ran.
No matter where I hid.
The pack bond would call them home, and they would come, and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.
