Page 16 of Broken Bonds

“Fine.”

She guides me the rest of the distance to the guest room, which is on the opposite side of the nursery. Theunfinishednursery.

There is so much I’m going to be doing alone from now on.

Once tucked in the bed, Jillian hurriedly heads to the kitchen as I get comfortable. Propped up against the headboard with plenty of pillows to help with support, she comes back and sets a plate with a BLT on it in front of me, one sprinkled with lots of pepper just like I like it. There’s also a sugar cookie left over from when Ollie had baked them for me a few days ago when a craving for them suddenly hit. After setting the bottle of water on the nightstand, she stands there, not moving. I thank her, and she waits until I take a bite of the sandwich before leaving me be, shutting the door behind her.

I taste nothing as I eat. The bread is a challenge to chew and swallow, yet I eat it all for the sake of the babies. Once I finish the sandwich, I drain the bottle of water to cool the stinging in my throat. I don’t eat the cookie, instead setting the plate with it on the nightstand.

Laying down with my back to the door, I succumb to the deep sleep my body has been threatening to send me into after the overload I’ve put it through. My alphas don’t visit me again tonight in my dreams.

Instead, nothing but never-ending black greets me, and I welcome it with open arms.

ChapterThree

LINK

The call camein the early hours when it was still pitch black out and there wasn’t even the faintest hint of sun. It was a lawyer letting me know my brother had passed away the previous night.

In the event of my brother’s passing, he was instructed to call and notify me of the situation. The lawyer told me he would let me know when Lake’s omega has chosen the date for the funeral so I can be sure to make arrangements to attend.

I have no idea how he got my phone number or knew where to find me.

Following the call, I slowly lowered myself onto the edge of my bed, my mind racing. I remember the phone falling out of my limp hand as my head bowed, and I clutched it in my hands, my elbows digging into my knees.

Although we were twins, our ideas of how our lives should go were very different, which meant that our relationship was not as close as most twin connections once we got older. We had a habit of butting heads over the stupidest things when we became teenagers.

I was often filled with joy over the smaller things in life, while Lake was more pessimistic and consistently moodier than I was. His face was rarely seen without a sour expression unless Van was in his presence, which used to annoy me at times because I was his brother, his twin, the other half to his soul, but I learned to be happy with his happiness.

No one could make him happy like Van could. His presence alone could make him grin from ear to ear, so I tried not to begrudge him that.

There wasn’t necessarily any one specific thing that caused us to fall out with each other. To be honest, I wouldn’t even say we had a falling out. I just woke up one morning, and he was gone. Not even a note left in his wake.

When our alpha designations were officially and fully brought into play, Lake was not happy. Van and he had been together for quite a while before he transitioned into an alpha, and he was adamantly against attending the alpha/omega school in our area that all alphas and omegas must attend.

Something about not wanting to be made into the ideal alpha for an omega.

I’d argued with him, telling him how we needed to go to help us learn the skills necessary for effectively managing and using the alpha energy we had been inundated with.

It never mattered to me that he was in a relationship with Van. That was never an issue. I just wanted to make sure he didn’t get himself hurt or hurt someone else. I guess he took my words to mean I was against him, and everything just fell apart.

When I woke up the next morning after our argument, they were gone.

No clues as to where he could have gone, nothing. He didn’t even take his fucking phone.

My first year at Alpha Omega Academy, I tried to find him, but as an eighteen-year-old kid with no resources, there wasn’t much I could do. I had to put finding him on hold until I was done with school and then I could continue searching.

I met Forde and Rion in my second year at AOA and the way we all clicked together so seamlessly… it felt like I’d found my family. Lake and I were wards of the state until we presented as alphas and he ran away, so it was always just us for as long as I could remember.

Once you present as an alpha or omega, they ship you off to the closest AOA they can find. If you’re lucky and there’s one close to where you live, you don’t get sent far. We’d lived in a small town at least an hour from the closest AOA, which is where I ended up a few days after Lake disappeared.

We had been each other’s only family our entire lives, the one constant thing we could count on, but that all changed when I found Rion and Forde. I told them everything about my brother, the only individual on the planet that shared my exact facial features. I made it clear to them I was determined to locate him when we graduated, and they both promised to be with me every step of the way. Upon graduating, we set off with high hopes, but we never could pin down where he settled.

I used to have dreams. Dreams that I’d find him, and he would join our pack. Van, too, if they were still together. We’d welcome them both, and when we found our omega, that’s exactly what they’d be. Ours.

All of ours.

For a while there, I thought he’d died and I somehow didn’t know. But I could still feel inside of me that he was breathing. Some intrinsic part of me that was connected to him by more than just DNA recognized that my other half was still out there.

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