“I’m not going to argue with you. Leave me alone.”
“And then what? What happens after I leave?”
“I get a moment to myself to grieve!” As soon as the words leave my lips, my chest starts to ache. I was barely holding back before, but now that I’ve said it, my heartbreak has flooded to the forefront. “Give me some time to fall apart. To mourn the relationship I came here expecting to find. My life has changed forever. Not only is my best friend, the man I was in love with, three men, but they’re my scent matches. I will have to be around your pack for therest of my life.”
I dash the tears off my cheeks with my hands. “So, you’ll have to forgive me for wanting to fall apart on my own. The Ariana I was before I walked into this house has died, and she deserves a funeral.”
Grant’s face is stricken as he processes what I’ve said, and I don’t give him time to respond. I close myself in the en-suite bathroom, knowing that here I am free from the all-seeing eye of the producers.
I slide to the floor, my back against the door, and cry.
I cry for sixteen-year-old Ariana, who has just lost her brother.
I cry for eighteen-year-old Ariana, who realized she was in love with her best friend and never told him.
I cry for twenty-year-old Ariana, who couldn’t leave her home without extreme panic attacks.
And I cry for twenty-six-year-old Ariana, who shoved her fears down to put herself out there and meet her best friend, and found three men in his place.
I want to talk to Marlie. I wish I could tell her what has happened, curse her out for putting me on this show to begin with.
If I had my computer, I’d be searching up Forsaken Omega Syndrome, as if I haven’t read every research paper on the subject already, trying to figure out how long I have.
Until the sickness kicks in.
Until my choices are taken from me.
Can a brief exposure be enough to trigger the disease if it isn’t repeated? Could I leave now and be okay without seeing them again?
There was a small study done on people who presented with symptoms of FOS who, to their knowledge, had never met their scent matches. All of them had been on heavy suppressants for a while, though, so that was more than likely the cause of their suffering.
It’s not that FOS is always a death sentence, but it’s hard to see it as anything but after what happened to Calvin. It can be treated with pheromone infusions from scent-matched Alphas, if they’re available. While that may sound like an impossible task for someone who has never met their scent match or lost them, there is a pheromone donation system, similar to blood donation, that can help with some milder cases, provided they are compatible enough.
Not that they helped Calvin.
We tried everything—even experimental research trials.
None of it worked.
I never told my mom this, but he didn’t want to live anymore. He lost his entire pack. The men he loved. Why would he want to continue living without them?
He gave up on his body, so it gave up on him.
Maybe I could get the guys to regularly donate pheromones so I could get infusions without having to see them. That’s the best-case scenario at this point.
Of course, my hindbrain is reeling, telling me that they’re my Alphas, and I should give them a chance. That I already love Sax, so it would be easy to love them, too.
And maybe, if they had told me the truth over video call, I could have given them a chance. I could have at least heard them out.
But they knew my biggest fear, my deepest hurt, the event that shaped my entire life, and decided that it would be a good idea to have me face it on television. In front of however many people are on theExpectedcrew supervising, and the entire fucking country when this episode airs.
How can I ever forgive them for that?
There is no moving past this.
Sax knows me. Or should know me. It couldn’t be a shock to them that this has broken me. I was holding onto the fact that I would be in Sax’s arms right now as a way of ignoring that I was being exposed to Alphas on set, that I was away from my home, from my things, my comfort, and now I don’t even get that.
I can’t let Sax hold me, because how can I be held by someone who doesn’t exist? By three men who lied to me?
