My heat was over.
Just like that, after less than twenty-four hours, the whole thing had ended abruptly. And it wasn’t because I’d conceived.
I roared into a sob of grief so loud and ferocious that Jack flinched. I couldn’t stop myself. The cruelty of it all was horrible. I wept and screamed as I turned my face into the pillow and clutched a hand over my womb and the place where it felt like my capacity to bond had its seat, even though it was supposed to be in my brainstem.
I couldn’t stand this feeling. I couldn’t live with this anymore. I was broken. Parts of me had been ripped away, and I would never get them back. I would never be enough for Jack, never be the omega he deserved. I would never be myself again.
“Quincy, Quincy,” Jack’s panicked voice spoke somewhere above and behind me. “God, Quincy, are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
Slowly, details of everything around me started to seep back into my consciousness. Jack’s knot had gone down and he’d moved away from me. He still hovered above me, though, his large body acting as a shield from things he couldn’t see.
I had post-heat aversion to touch in the worst way, though. I scrambled away from him to the far side of the bed…even while all I wanted was for him to hold me and stroke me and tell me everything would be okay and it was just a bad dream.
“Quincy, please talk to me,” Jack said, shifting a bit, like he was trying to get a look at my face without touching me.
“Go away,” I moaned, pressing my face into the pillow so he wouldn’t see how miserable I was.
“Oh. Okay. If that’s what you want.” Jack’s voice was so lost, so helpless.
He inched back, like he would climb off the bed, but I panicked, not wanting to be alone.
“Don’t leave me!” I shouted, flipping to face him and even reaching out for him.
I must have looked terrifying. All color drained from Jack’s face. He stretched out a hand to me, his face a mask of panic, but as soon as our fingers touched, I hissed and pulled back.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, eyes glassy with frightened tears. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
I burst into tears and sagged on the rumpled bedsheets. “I’m sorry,” I managed between sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
Jack continued to hover, hands brushing the air a few inches above my body, like he wanted to touch me even though he knew he shouldn’t. His concern was so palpable and so intense that it kept me crying long after the inner pain began to subside and my omega went back to hugging himself and rocking in the corner of his prison again.
“Jack,” I said simply, reaching for his hand again.
“Can I…should I….”
He lowered himself onto the bed, tentatively reaching for my fingers.
“I need you,” I said, feeling hollower than I ever had.
Our fingers touched, and even though it made me wince, I forced myself not to pull away. Even that infinitesimal brush of skin against skin was simultaneously too much and not enough.
“Please tell me what happened, Quincy,” Jack whispered, resting his head on the pillow opposite mine so that our eyes were level. “I want to help.”
I shook my head, squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, and swallowed, before opening my eyes. For a moment, I just stared at him, drinking in the sight of the first alpha who had mattered to me in five years.
“I have a severed bond,” I confessed in a whisper.
“A—” Jack stopped what had probably been a question. He swallowed, and the fear and worry in his eyes turned to sympathy so big it looked like pain. “Oh, Quincy,” he said, daring to caress my fingers more fully, like he was pulling me into the tightest hug ever. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me? That must have been?—”
He stopped and sucked in a breath. I could tell from the spark of understanding in his eyes that he knew a bit about what happened to an omega when a bond was severed.
“I didn’t think omegas could—” He paused again, and a guilty look came into his eyes before he looked away. “I did some legal work for a…for an asylum for omegas with a severed bond a few years ago.”
I was still crying. I couldn’t stop myself. But it was strangely reassuring that Jack already knew something about bond severing and its effects.
“I was young,” I explained, barely whispering at first. “Chester, that’s the alpha’s name, was a childhood friend. We were inseparable, even before either of us started to present asalpha and omega. He was everything to me, and I thought I was everything to him, too. By the time we graduated high school, everyone knew we’d be together forever.”
“But then…if you loved each other….” Jack swallowed. “What happened?”
