The list of after-effects to severing a bond that I’d been handed by the practitioner who had performed the procedure was long and terrifying. Of course, they’d only given it to me after the painful, hour-long surgery was complete.
“Don’t worry about it,” Chester had told me without being able to look me in the eyes as we sat in the dingy recovery room with its peeling wallpaper and crooked-hung pictures. “I hardly feel a thing.”
I hadn’t had the energy to glare at him. The surgery had exhausted me and left me with a splitting headache. Probably because my skull had literally been cracked open so they could insert the probe to fry that part of my brainstem.
The procedure was much easier for alphas, of course. Nothing had to be done to them at all. Once the bond was severed from the omega’s side, it snapped back into the alpha, like a rubber band. Chester had been told he would likely suffer from occasional migraines for the rest of his life, but alphas had few emotional side effects. Like omegas, they would never be able to bond again, but that was little consolation.
Never able to bond again.
At the time, that had been the least of my worries. I’d been so traumatized by Chester and his coldhearted demands that I hadn’t wanted anything to do with alphas ever again. I’d barely wanted to be in the same room with my Dad and my brother Paul.
Until my first heat after the sever.
Hell was too light a word for what that had felt like.
Biology was a bitch.
Because omegas were naturally inclined to connection and nurturing. We were programmed for relationships and caring. The urge to conceive and bear children was closely followed by the imperative to find an alpha to bond with.
All that had been stolen from me.
I sniffled and wiped my face against the pillow, feeling guilty for leaving a thin snot trail there. Morning sunlight peeked around the edges of the blinds that blocked the bedroom of Mads and Benny’s luxury RV from the rest of the cold world.
Jack was warm and solid in the bed beside me. His knot had gone down after he’d fallen asleep and I’d pulled away, intending to keep to myself on the other side of the bed. I couldn’t stop myself from slinking back against him and hugging his large frame like it was my lifeboat in a storm.
He smelled so good. The complexity of his wet rocks and ocean scent was fascinating. The salt of his skin when I licked itfilled my senses even more. He was so sweet and kind as well. Way more than I was used to from alphas.
Then again, I’d been deliberately only hanging out with the wrong alphas for the last few years, and then only when I absolutely had to be near one.
I wanted to be near Jack. That was the problem.
It was a huge, huge problem.
I sniffled again, trying desperately to stop the tears that I’d been wallowing in for the last hour. Jack would wake up soon, and I didn’t want him to see me like this.
I wrenched myself away from him and rolled to the side and out of bed. I had to pee anyhow, and I tiptoed through the narrow, open doorway, then pivoted around a tight corner and into the closet-like bathroom.
RVs were pretty cool, when all was said and done. We weren’t hooked up to water or electricity or anything, but the toilet was one of those weird things that stored waste until a tank could be emptied, so it worked.
Jack was just waking up when I crept back into the bedroom. “Hey,” he said, breaking into a warm, lazy smile for me.
It cut like a jagged knife through my heart. The throbbing pain of that instinctive part of me that was desperate to bond was horrific. I couldn’t hide the wince that the feeling brought to my face.
“You okay?” Jack asked, muscling himself up to one arm and studying me with concern.
“Yeah,” I lied, scrambling back into bed so I could plaster myself against his warmth. “Just cold.”
“It is cold,” Jack said, closing his arms around me.
He breathed in my scent deeply, and I felt his cock harden against my thigh.
Then he froze, snapped his eyes wide, and said, “We have to get farther away before anyone realizes we’ve gone.”
Meaning he wanted to get as far from his disgusting father as fast as possible.
“Yeah, we do,” I said, pretending to be thrilled by the chase. I’d gotten damn good at pretending everything was fine and I was filled with a lust for life. “I think you dropped the bag with our clothes in the other part of the RV.”
I got up under the excuse of going to fetch it. As soon as I was away from Jack, I grimaced with pain and gripped my gut at the twin feelings of another heat wave whispering and the need to be as physically close to my alpha as poss?—
