Page 32 of Chain Me Knot

Emma

The bedroom is large, with pale blue walls and a queen-sized bed covered in more blankets than I've seen in years. Phoenix called it “mine” when he brought me here to rest after lunch on the patio, but I know better than to believe anything is truly mine.

My fingers trace the soft comforter as I sit rigidly on the edge of the bed. Five blankets. Three pillows. More comfort than I've known in years and yet I can't relax.

Phoenix said the nest is through the door to my right. He wanted me to go in there, his eyes so earnest it almost hurt to look at him. As if I would know what to do with such a space.

I was nineteenthe last time I tried to build a nest. I was in so much shock at being sent to the Basement underground at Haven I neededsomething.

I knew it was against the rules, but I also hadn’t thought the three blankets I’d been given and molded into a shape on top of the thin mattress on the metal bedframe could be called anything resembling a nest.

I’d seen what they should look like. I wasn’t totally naive. At Haven, the omegas pored over glossy omega magazines, dreaming of the beautiful nests pictured inside. We used to talk about our first shopping trip into any of the specialty stores purpose-built, and what we’d buy. The textures. The colors.

The consequential fucking.

I just hadn’t thought the three threadbare blankets Hugo and Lars had thrown on me constituted anything resembling a nest.

But I’d been desperate.

“What do you think you're doing?” Hugo's voice had cut through my concentration as I arranged my worn sweater and an extra pillowcase into the blankets.

“I—I was just—” The words died in my throat as Lars entered behind him, both alphas blocking the doorway of the room I shared with Mira and Leah.

“Nesting without permission,” Lars finished, disgust evident in his voice. “As if you've earned that privilege.”

I remember how small I felt, how I tried to explain that I was feeling anxious, that nesting was a natural omega response to stress.

“Natural?” Hugo had sneered, advancing into the room. “You think you know what's natural for omegas? We'll show you what's natural.”

What followed was three days of “correction therapy” where they systematically dismantled any notion I had about omega rights or dignity. Three days of being forced to recite my “lessons” while they stripped me bare, hosed me down with cold water and barked at me to ‘present’ for hours in the walk-in freezer.

That was their favorite correction. They’d walk around me, laughing while I was locked in my body and unable to move. Unable to stop them seeing every private inch ofme.

That was when I made up my imagined beach. The beach I told myself I would find one day. One day when it would all be over.

Except ‘one day’ never came.

I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing the memory back into its box. Some parts of those three days remain mercifully blurred. Others remain in perfect, painful clarity. The final lesson, delivered by Lars as they ended it:“Omegas nest when their alphas permit it. Omegas comfort themselves with their alphas' approval. Everything you are, belongs to them. Remember that, or next time your punishment will last a week.”

I never made a nest again.

Not that I could have done so in the Carmichaels’ basement. As cold as it was down there, they only gave me one thin blanket, more to keep me alive than for any concern about my comfort. That ragged piece of fabric was never a nest, never a comfort. Just one more reminder of how little I mattered.

I have five blankets now. Three pillows. A dedicated nesting room. It should feel like luxury.

Instead, it’s a test I'm certain to fail.

This room has features that are undeniably different from any basement I've known. Carpet instead of concrete. A bathroom with actual hot water. And most shocking of all… windows. Real windows. With a beautiful view obscured by curtains.

I rise from the bed, fingers trembling as I pull back the fabric. My body is rigid, I expect someone to come barreling through the door to yell at me not to touch them. It takes a herculean effort to make myself push the curtains to either side of the frame.

Summer light floods the room, momentarily blinding me. The sun warms my skin, but I’m so pale the sunshine doesn’t take long to start hurting. I retreat to the bed, pulling my knees to my chest as I stare through the glass. The compound spreads before me, manicured lawns, security fencing in the distance, and the pool where we ate lunch. Sunlight dances across its surface, turning the water to a sheath of glittering sparkles.

It's mesmerizing. Beautiful in a way I'd forgotten things could be.

I wonder if the water at my beach looks like that. Glittering and alive. I worry that the image in my mind isn't accurate, that I've been clinging to a fantasy that doesn't exist because in reality I’ve never been to a beach.

I was sixteen when my parents died in the car accident. Just four days after I'd presented as omega and my mother had registered me with the designation office. I'd been at school, taking a math test, blissfully unaware that my life had already changed forever when the principal called me into her office. “There's been an accident,” she said, the police officer beside her already holding paperwork for my transfer to the Haven Institute.

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