…collapses, feeling lost.
The change is coming, tearing through my stable life, taking all and giving all… I sink to the floor, the probe slipping from my fingers.
I cry. And sob. The kind of crying that feels like catharsis, cleansing… freeing. I let it happen after so many years of holding it back, like a flood breaking through a cracked dam…
Footsteps in the hallway.
"Blue!"
He rushes to me. Gabriel’s gentle hands wrap around me and lift me off the floor like I weigh nothing, holding me tightly against his chest.
"What happened, Blue? You’re scaring me…"
But I only laugh through my tears. "I’m scaring myself! I haven’t cried like this since I was sixteen… This is weird. My tear ducts still work."
Then the words get stuck in my throat, I can’t catch my breath, but I see Gabriel turn his head and glance at the screen.
"What happened? Tell me, baby, is everything okay?"
I tilt my head back and look at him, into his eyes, shifting from the screen to my face while he’s still holding me.
"I’m going into heat."
Gabriel blinks.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen that expression on his face, completely thrown, like he has no idea what my words mean, or maybe what my reaction and my crying mean, since they don’t really match what should begood news.
I can almost see the gears turning in his head as he runs through possible responses.
Eventually, he settles on one.
"What matters most is howyoufeel about it right now."
One thing is certain, I know exactly howhefeels. I catch the slight dilation of his pupils, the subtle swallow, the obvious increase in his heart rate.
A young alpha’s body can respond in only one way to an omega in heat. It’s the most powerful hormonal trigger in AO reality, the one that drives omega to alpha and alpha to omega.
"Euphoria. Ecstasy. Elation."
"Got anything that doesn’t start with E?"
"Something in me is closing now, some broken loop, Gabriel. I learned how to live without this, and now I will have to learn how to live with it. I want to love my old life and appreciate its advantages, see its value, but at the same time I want to experience a parallel life, something different, and learn to enjoy that too. It’s like being given two lives as a gift."
Gabriel smiles with such warmth that it melts what’s left of my fear.
"That’s beautifully put. Only someone mature can look at it that way and find something meaningful even in a period that, objectively speaking, could be considered difficult."
"People have forgotten that growth happens fastest through hardship. Difficulty can strengthen character, and pushpeople to reach potential they never would have touched if they’d stayed in comfortable stagnation and wasted the unique talents everyone is given."
"Another solid summary," Gabriel grins.
"Fate decided I’d get to have both lives, to taste them both… to learn what kind of pain and what kind of joy each path carries."
"I’m glad to hear that… and I really want to be by your side as all of this unfolds, starting with the first step, which is… a few days of wild sex!"
Right. He’s an alpha, after all, and they really do like thinking with that… lower brain.
"Yeah, we can start with that," I grin in response.
