Page 148 of Toxic

I felt like an idiot, and a heavy exhaustion settled over me. I went back to my room, lay down on my bed, not wanting to think about any of it. I closed my eyes… and soon, I fell asleep.

***

My eyes opened again at… 10 am the next day! I jumped to my feet immediately, realizing Soren hadn't come to me, whatever that might mean. I threw on some pants and a T-shirt and rushed over to his room. I knocked, but there was only silence.Closing my eyes, I listened for any sounds from inside, but there wasn’t anything—not even a heartbeat.

Then, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw a text message:

"I’m sorry, Skye, but I’m going back home with Liam. I need to think things through and clear my head. Thank you for your patience and understanding, but I haven’t made any decisions yet. I need time. Can you give it to me?"

I stared at the screen, blinking in disbelief.

"He needs fucking time," I muttered under my breath, feeling a wave of shock hit my system. I really wanted to throw the phone at the wall, but that would be senseless. It was a good phone, after all. So, I only let out a loud growl and tilted my head back, staring at the dim hotel lamps lined on the ceiling.

Liam clearly hadn’t given up and had kept asking Soren until he finally agreed… and left, just like that.

A sharp pang of pain ran through me, but was it really that surprising? I knew Soren had been struggling with a constant internal conflict about what to do.

Standing there with the phone in my hand, staring at his message, I tried very hard to control my negative emotions. It took a lot out of me. Like, a hella lot. But what could I fucking do?!

I knew that Soren didn’t react well to any kind of pressure. In an ideal world, I just had to wait as long as he needed and hope for a positive decision. But it was damn hard.

Bitterness, disappointment, anger, and sadness mixed in my body, almost replacing my blood. I felt like I was breathing misery, toxic fumes filling my lungs—it was all just… too much to bear.

***

On Saturday afternoon, I went back to my rented apartment. I didn’t reply to Soren’s text—I simply didn’t know what to say to him, and I didn’t have the strength to deal with all these shenanigans one more time.

I was feeling so exhausted by this constant battle for him, by this strange triangle that had formed between him, Liam, and me. If Soren was going to choose me, it had to come from him. But could it ever happen? Let’s be real—Soren’s main problem was his inability to decide firmly and stick to it.

The only option would be… freaking kidnapping him! Which was ridiculous.

What else was left to do? Confront Liam? Kick his ass? That would surely make things worse. Soren wasn’t the type to respond well to me brawling with his longtime friend. He’d think it was ‘so alpha’, another reason for him to despise us.

But as Sunday passed, I started to realize there might be another factor influencing this whole situation.

Something unexpected but also… VERY expected at this stage: a strange, undefined longing spread through my entire body—I missed him. It had only been two days since I last saw him, yet against my own will and resolution, I began to feel an increasingly strong need to see Soren.

Could this be the famous ‘Pull’ between True Mates—but this time, the proper, intense version of it? Well, we had sex, so the second stage of bonding should start now—at least in theory. I remembered that the article I read predicted that beta+alpha would now feel exactly what alpha+omega felt… from the beginning!

This would now include the impossibility of being separated. If we stayed apart, we would die within two weeks.

Scurrying around my apartment, going in circles, muttering madman stuff under my breath, I almost cackled darkly to myself—wow, that would be something if that turned out to be true. The ultimate irony, a true crème de la crème of ridiculous situations.

Soren wanted to escape from me? No fucking way, there was no escaping a damn TM!

Monday brought me some temporary relief when I saw him for the first time—in the parking lot, holding hands—damn it!—with Liam. Bittersweet and disconcerting.

I suppressed another useless wave of anger because, really, what was the point? It made no sense. The rest of the morning I spent in a kind of strange state of conscious disconnection from everything I felt.

Soren hadn’t been at work for a week, so he arranged a meeting where the other employees updated him on their progress. His substitute, Fay, had handled things well, so there wasn’t much for Soren to do. He assigned us all new pieces of code to work on, but the entire time, he avoided looking at me.

So, we were back at square one.

At certain moments, I just wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all—this game of cat and mouse. I couldn’t keep playing it any longer. I decided I wouldn’t ask him for another chance. I had the feeling that if I did, he would give me a definite no. His text message was clear: he needed more TIME. I could see it on his face as he worked, focused on his laptop—how determined he was to ignore me. Okay.

So, for the next few days, I woke up, ate, slept, showered, and worked. Like a robot. I only spoke to him when it was absolutely necessary for work, but unfortunately, my body had other ideas and cravings. I still wanted him. I was constantlyturning my gaze away because the sight of his beautiful face and slender body sent a fever through me that couldn’t be cooled. But I consciously chose to fight those emotions.

And there was something else.

---