Page 42 of These Bonds that Unite Us
Omen offers me a tight smile before refocusing on some spot on the ceiling. “The medicine Doctor Russell gave me to combat the effects of the chemical rejection aren’t working the way they should. My body is now trying to force a heat, which is causing the strain in my immune system to counteract the medicine.”
“So you are going to go into heat soon?” Callisto questions.
Our girl pales drastically, her head shaking back and forth. “I can’t.”
“Little omega, you won’t have to suffer through this heat the way you did the last one–”
“No. Not ‘I can’t’ like I don’t want to. My body physically cannot handle a heat. It…” she trails off. Her lips purse. It’s clear she is fighting some internal war with herself.
“Whatever it is, you can tell us,” Callisto reminds her softly.
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip as she looks at him. The pain in her wide eyes slices another deep mark into my rib cage,right above my heart. Yet another invisible scar I will bear as a reminder of the wrongs we’ve committed against her.
“When I confronted my father, after the FCDA cut the video feed, my heart stopped beating.”
A buzzing sound fills my ears and my lungs won’t seem to work. I must have misheard her, surely she didn’t say–
“If Lex had chased after Doctor Harrison instead of staying in the church with me, I never would have walked out of that horrid place.”
A choked sound fills the room. It takes me several seconds to realize it is coming from me. We all saw how close to death she looked when they placed her on the table, but to hear she died, for even a second… My heart shatters into a million tiny pieces as the true weight of our sins is laid bare before us.
What kind of pack are we to be standing here asking for her forgiveness when our actions nearly killed her?
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty. I need you to understand why being here is so difficult for me. There is a part of me terrified I will make some misstep and you’ll reject me for real this time. Even with your apologies, the doubt still lingers. I barely survived this time, I can’t–” She chokes out a sob that wrecks me.
I don’t hesitate this time. I grab her from the chair and pull her against me, letting her cling to me while she breaks. The guttural sobs wracking her body shake me with their violence. Each tear falling down her cheeks lands like a punch from an MMA fighter against my body.
Let Fate take aim and strike me down if I ever even think about hurting my omega this deeply again.
My mates kneel around us, frozen by the raw pain in her voice as she falls apart. The bonds between us echo with the same torment rattling inside of my head. Whatever it takes wewill fix this. She can steal the life from my body and use it to heal the wounds we’ve caused her if she has to.
When her sobs turn to sniffles, I sway us back and forth. A purr rattles to life in my chest, startling all of us. The calming motion and soft vibration help to quell her sadness and fear, though its presence still fills the air around us.
“What does your doctor recommend happen next? Is there another medicine you can try?” Cal asks her with a shaky voice. Tears line his eyes, but with the way he is blinking rapidly, I don’t think he will allow them to fall. She doesn’t deserve to be inundated with the evidence of our grief when our actions are the root of her pain.
“Um, a bond,” she chokes on the word, like even speaking it hurts her in some way. “A bond is the only way to stop the rejection, and... it would be most effective coming from you.”
Green eyes peek up at me before dropping to my chest again. I splutter in shock, nearly knocked to my ass. “Y–You want us to bond you? After everything you just admitted? We don’t deserve you gorgeous, why would you offer us the thing we want most?”
“It’s because we are your Fate matched mates, isn’t it?” Nebula asks, his voice resigned.
“Yes.” She stops, then shakes her head. “No.”
Omen pushes away from me and stumbles to her feet. She angrily wipes the tears from her cheeks as she looks down at me. So many emotions swirl in her green eyes I can’t begin to name them.
We watch in confusion as she turns to the side and pulls down her sweatpants. She wants us to bond her here? Now?!
When the material slips past the bottom of her ass, the world stops spinning. There on her beautiful, pale skin, is a gray, decaying half-bite mark. “It has to be a bond with you, Nexus, because it was your abandoned partial bond mark that caused the worst of the chemical rejection.”
I shuffle forward on my knees until my head rests against her hip. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry.” Apologies fall from my lips in quick succession. It’s like those are the only words my brain can process.
I did this.
It is my fault my omega has been suffering through this hell for months.
It’s all my fault.
“A bond with you could save me,” she admits, “but I–I need time to think. I needed you to know what Doctor Russell suggested, so you have time to think too–”
