Page 23 of These Bonds that Unite Us
“Little Omega,” Nebula whispers hoarsely.
Omen’s attention flits between us, and I’m lost in a sea of green. Drowning in the crashing waves of her pain as it becomes tangible in the air. Fucking hell, this gets worse the longer we are here.
“You’re here,” she croaks. I can’t tell if she’s happy to see us or if our presence is only causing her additional pain. I hope it’s the former because she has suffered enough at our hands.
“We’re here, darlin’.” I squat before her, putting myself at eye level where she sits on the couch.
“Why?” She isn’t looking at us, she’s watching her hands twist around each other in her lap. Her nails dig into her skin and leave little red marks.
Slowly, I reach out and place one of my hands over hers, gently pulling them apart so she can’t hurt herself. She freezes with the contact, her green eyes snapping up to meet my own dark orbs. “Why?” she asks again. This time the word is choked out, the sound full of agony.
“Because we fucked up,” Nebula admits beside me. He hasn’t moved from where he collapsed to his knees. I can feel his fear in our bond, his worry we might be too late to reverse the rejection. We all made shitty choices and now we have to make up for them. Admitting we were wrong and apologizing are only the first steps. “I fucked up. I let my anger toward your family overpower the connection between us when I should have given you a chance to explain.”
Omen nods slowly, before looking at each of us. Her eyes linger on Nexus where he’s silently sobbing behind us, his red-rimmed eyes trained on the floor. She turns back to Nebula and asks “And now?”
“We start over. I want to listen. To hear your story and get to know you without the secrets– both yours and ours. It wasincredibly wrong of us to lash out at you for hiding your birth identity when we’ve never shared ours.” Nebula explains.
“Ah yes, because your choice to adopt your stage names is the same as her hiding her birth identity to stay alive,” Bea scoffs. Drawing Omen’s attention to her. “Don’t let your instincts bully you into forgiving them,” she says with a pointed look our way.
My teeth grind hearing the venom in her voice. We may deserve some of Bea’s ire, but at this point, she’s being obstinate and endangering my omega. I don’t know how much longer I can put up with her bullshit.
“Bea,” Foster hisses. He levels a disapproving look at the other omega before pushing to his feet and dragging her from the room. He pauses in the doorway. “I’ll be right outside. If you do anything to upset Omen I won’t hesitate to call venue security in here to remove you.”
When they’re gone the room feels even tenser than it did before. I wish I could fix it, but I know our girl is going to need a better apology and time to heal before we get to that point.
“Brock Farrow. That’s my birth name. After we started getting popular with our music, I permanently changed it to Titan Graves so I could distance myself from my family.” Those green eyes pierce into me with my admission. I know she’s heard what my family was like, their judgmental attitudes and vicious ostracism of anyone they deemed less than, but I feel like I owe her another truth. “My mother was cold and distant. She loved to gossip and gaslight the people close to her. My father was better, but he could be just as savage when you didn’t live up to his expectations. Their reputation was the most important thing to them, even over their son’s happiness.”
I squeeze Omen’s hand when I see tears welling in her eyes. She’s cried enough because of us, we don’t deserve these empathetic tears.
Nebula must feel the same because he quickly pulls her attention to him. “Weston is my real first name. I choose to go by Nebula because it has allowed me to keep running from the unresolved trauma surrounding my sister’s death. Which is something I’ve recently started working on in sessions with my new therapist.”
Omen sits stiffly while she listens to Nebula. I feel for my packmate, knowing he has the most ground to cover with her after everything. If I were her, my fear of his rejection wouldn’t fade easily. Especially knowing the connection between Elizabeth’s death and her brother.
“I’m Colton Ellis. I don’t really have a reason for becoming Callisto, it just felt right.” Cal seems embarrassed as he admits this, but Omen nods which seems to alleviate my beta mate’s discomfort.
Her eyes turn to Nexus next. Concern and pain radiate in equal measure throughout the room as she waits for him to speak. He’s finally stopped sobbing, but he also hasn’t looked at her again since we walked in.
His silence drags on for several seconds before he uses a shaky hand to wipe his face and looks up. “My name was Ryder Bowen. The youngest of five and spoiled rotten by my family, though most of the time I think they babied me because they wanted to make up for all of the bullying I had to endure at school. I’m not a very athletic alpha. I love fashion and reading books with romantic plots, and I have anxiety. All things that got me picked on a lot. I choose to go by Nexus because I want to be the confident person I became after leaving the Alpha Academy and not the weak, self-loathing person I was before.” His bond is a flurry of determination, disgust, and sorrow. It’s easy to see he’s going to derail our original plan so I urge Omen to share her story with us before he can react.
“I was born Sarah Montgomery. Daughter of New Hampshire’s vocal anti-pack advocate, Pastor Grant Montgomery.” She rips her eyes away from Nexus and stares at her hands where they still rest beneath mine. “I fled from my home when I presented as an omega at the age of eighteen and was taken into the DAU’s protective custody program. They helped me create my new identity as Omen Powell so I could hide from my birth family.”
She shakes my hand off and hugs her arms around herself. It takes all of my self-control to not pull her into my lap when I watch her try to hold herself together. We’re right here, a breath away, but she won’t accept our comfort. Not when we are the cause of most of her pain.
“I’m also your Fated omega.” Her breaths are heavy as if this short burst of speaking has left her winded. Yet another reminder of how much we’ve hurt her.
“We can take a break-” Cal starts, but she cuts him off with a shake of her head.
“I started to suspect your pack was at the other end of my Fated connection after one of you wrote to Titan when we were leaving the ziplining company in Louisville.”
I suck in a sharp breath at the reminder of how she’d started to panic after I kissed her. I had wrongly assumed she was going to reject me and lashed out before she could hurt me.
The list of things we have to make up for seems endless at this point. Not that it matters. We’ll happily spend an eternity groveling as long as it means she’s by our side.
“Then I tested my theory before your show in Little Rock.”
“The bee,” Cal murmurs.
“Yes. I needed to know for sure.” She sinks back against the couch, drawing her legs up so she can rest her head on her knees. She looks so damn small and weak, I can barely stand it. If Icould rip my heart from my chest and place it in her hand to heal her wounds, I wouldn’t hesitate.
