Page 37 of Unbreak Me

Day grimaced. "You don’t need to sugarcoat it, Jan. I appreciate the effort, but it wasn’t a great choice. And I know that now. Those eleven years weren’t a breeze."

I hesitated. It was clear his surrogate past weighed heavily on him—maybe even the reason for those silent sessions where he stared at the hills.

But at some point, we had to talk about it.

"How did it exactly work?" I asked softly.

His tone was flat when he answered. "It went like this: as my heat approached, I put up an ad through a matrimonial agency that also mediated surrogacy. A couple was found, andthen there were meetings, arrangements, and contracts to sign. When my heat started, I had to go to the hospital for artificial insemination. They repeated the procedures over two days, just to be sure. In between, I’d lie alone in a small hospital room and deal with it all."

"Did you try… to live normally in the meantime? Go on dates?" I asked carefully.

He shook his head and lit another cigarette. "During my pregnancy, I had to give up sex—that was part of the contracts I signed. The couples didn’t want to risk STDs or anything happening to the baby because of some other alpha. So yeah, I was lonely."

"But omegas during pregnancy—" I hesitated, not sure how to phrase it. Everyone knew that time could be tough for them with their increased sexual needs due to the rise in hormones.

Day seemed to guess what I was struggling to say. "It wasn’t easy. Hormones definitely heighten… urges. But, since the child wasn’t genetically mine, my body kind of sensed it, in a way. I didn’t have as strong cravings as I probably would’ve if the child had shared my DNA. Doctors say surrogacy pregnancies kind of trick the omega’s hormonal and immune systems, making the process a little easier to handle—even without a partner. Sure, the lack of alpha pheromones increases the risk of miscarriage, but that didn’t happen to me."

"I didn’t know that," I murmured, unsure how else to respond. "How did you manage to deal with it all, mentally?"

Day shrugged, that same nonchalant move I was starting to recognize as his way of hiding what he really felt. His hand twitched toward his pendant but stopped halfway.

"It wasn’t easy," he admitted. "But I kept my mind on the financial side of it. The money let me focus on stuff I enjoyed. I read a lot, wrote books—most of them just for me. Posted stories on amateur writing sites, helped promote authors I liked, andran a small publishing house, like you already know. That was my little world."

"Pregnancy can really limit physical activity. How did you handle that?"

"I managed pregnancy really well—no physical issues at all. That’s part of why I kept doing surrogacy. I had easy labors and felt good throughout the entire gestation," he said, then hesitated. "Only… the mental side was much harder." Day took a deep drag on the cigarette. "I really enjoyed prenatal yoga for omegas during that time. It helped me relax, even though I wasn’t comfortable making friends in the class. Most of the omegas there were waiting to meet their own babies, and I… I was just waiting for someone to come and take the child away." His voice quivered for a moment before he regained his composure. "It was such a stark difference. They could never understand that. Still, I kept going—it helped me stay fit."

I noticed that same bitter expression on his face—the one I’d seen when I first met him in the glass booth. It was like years of loneliness and pain had etched into him, leaving their mark.

For some reason, I felt like now might be the right moment to ask about Nico. If we were going to delve into heavy topics, it was better to do it all at once.

So I blurted out, "Can you tell me about your ex? What was your relationship like?"

His body tensed slightly, his pulse rising, and he grimaced before taking another long drag of his cigarette. "It’s not a happy story."

"I figured. But it sounds important."

He shrugged again, extinguished one cigarette, and lit another almost immediately. The constant smoking was proof enough of how much this conversation was taking out of him.

"Nico and I met in high school, before our glands matured. Back then, we didn’t know if we were compatible. We just… fellin love." He said it like he was telling a story he now considered foolish, his voice tinged with contempt and irritation.

"When we matured at the end of high school, we found out we were Half Mates. It was a good discovery—relationships like that are considered solid, even if they’re not High Mates. We went to college together, both majoring in English literature. Those were good years. We had shared goals, understood each other. By the end of college, we were planning to get married. But Nico had ambitions of becoming a journalist. He signed up for an extra course taught by a guest lecturer—an omega from a famous family of press moguls. This lecturer was seven years older and already a successful journalist. And, well… that’s when it all fell apart. The lecturer turned out to be Nico’s High Mate. It happened just a month before our wedding date."

He fell silent for a moment, blowing two smoke rings into the air.

"There’s not much more to say. It was the worst time of my life. Everything collapsed. I’m not going to bore you with the details of how I felt—you can probably imagine. After that, I didn’t see the point in trying for another relationship. Because, in the end, someone with a higher compatibility could always come along and leave you alone with a broken heart."

"There’s one exception to that: True Mates," I said with a wry smile. "You couldn’t do better than that."

He rolled his eyes. "Sure, but let’s be real—it’s rare to find a True Mate. So now I prefer to rely on suppressants. I don't want to risk the same situation again."

We sat in silence for a while. He kept smoking, as I watched him.

Day was leaning back in his chair, his brown hair tied up in its usual bun at the nape of his neck. For some reason, I started wondering how long it was. The thought just randomly popped into my head.

"How long is your hair?" The question slipped out before I could think about it.

He turned his gaze away from the hills and finally looked at me, his eyes narrowing slightly. We stared at each other for a beat longer than usual, and I realized I might’ve stepped on some kind of landmine.

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