6. Bianca
BIANCA
Beeping. Rhythmic and insistent.
The sound drags me toward a surface I don’t want to reach. Consciousness means pain, and I’ve had enough pain to last several lifetimes.
But the beeping won’t stop .
I crack my eyes open to a white ceiling. The hospital. Disinfectant smells burn my nostrils.
My hands are bandaged. The nurses had to restrain me. I remember clawing at my neck until it bled, digging my nails into the places where scent glands sit beneath my skin. Useless glands that mock me with their existence.
I want them gone.
There’s a pressure around my wrist. Warm. Solid.
I turn my head, muscles stiff and uncooperative. Mom slumps in the chair beside my bed, her fingers wrapped around me. Even in sleep, she won’t let go... like she’s afraid I’ll slip away.
Maybe I will.
Her face looks like she’s aged ten years… eyes swollen, makeup long gone, worry lines carved deep.
I try to speak. Nothing comes but a dry rasp. The sound wakes her. She jerks upright, blinking until her eyes focus on mine.
“Bianca,” she breathes. “Oh, thank God. You’re awake.”
Awake seems like the wrong word. My eyes are open, but I’m dead inside.
“Don’t try to talk,” she says, reaching for water. “Your throat is damaged from the screaming.”
She holds the straw to my cracked lips. The water feels like salvation and torture at the same time.
It all comes flooding back.
The ridge.
Whitney’s text.
A video I wish I could unsee.
My whole body flinches, and Mom’s hand tightens around my wrist.
“No,” she says quickly. “Don’t go there. Stay with me.”
But I can’t. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes, hot and endless. I don’t make a sound.
“Oh, baby.” I hear her let out a sob.
She lowers the bed rail and slides in beside me, careful of the IV lines and monitors. Her arms wrap around my lifeless body, pulling me against her warmth.
“I know,” she speaks into my matted hair. “I know you’re hurting.”
Her words don’t help. She doesn’t understand. No one understands what I’ve lost.
Sobs tear from me once again, violent enough to shake the whole bed. I clutch at my mom like she’s the only thing keeping me tethered to earth.
Maybe she is.
My physical body might be here, but the girl I once was is gone, gone, gone .
“Mama,” I manage, burrowing against her.
She pulls me as close as she can, kissing my hair and rubbing my back.
I close my eyes, letting darkness pull me under again. Better to drift than remain in a world where breathing feels like dying.
The next few weeks blur together in a haze of medication and doctors. Dr. Wagner, a psychiatrist, tries to get me to talk. I give her nothing at first—just stare at the ceiling and look for animal shapes in the water stains while she asks gentle questions.
Talking means thinking. Thinking means remembering. Remembering means more pain .
Numb is my preference.
They have to keep my hands in mittens because I won’t stop scratching myself to the point of bleeding.
“Tell me about what happened on the mountain,” Dr. Wagner says during one session.
I don’t want to. But maybe if I just tell her, this part will be over with. Then I can lock it up tight and never speak of it again. The words come out lifeless. I don’t recognize my own voice. I tell her about the alphas. About foolishly convincing myself they were mine.
“And now they’re bonded to someone else,” I finish flatly.
“That must have been devastating.”
Devastating . Such a small word for the complete annihilation of my soul.
“I was delusional. Just a crush, I guess,” I say, lifting my shoulders into a small shrug. It’s all so painfully pathetic .
Then, I tell her about Dr. Montgomery. About the diagnosis that carved away the dreams I had for our future and left nothing but a small glimmer of hope.
Hope that they would somehow not be deterred by my shortcomings.
That I would still have value and be enough for them.
Right before they obliterated what was left of me and confirmed in the most horrifying way possible that no, I was, in fact, not enough .
“He said I’m deformed inside and I’ll never fully awaken. That I can’t have children. That my omega will stay trapped forever.” The words taste like poison, but I feel detached, like I’m speaking about someone else.
Dr. Wagner makes careful notes. “Have you shared this with your mother?”
I shake my head.
“I think she needs to know, Bianca. She’s trying to understand your pain.”
So I tell Mom that evening when she brings dinner that I won’t eat.
Mom’s face goes through every emotion as she processes what I’m saying.
“Oh, Bianca,” she whispers. “You’ve carried this alone for so long.”
After I tell her about Dr. Montgomery’s recent testing, Mom is quiet for a long time.
“I knew Emmett Montgomery in college,” she says. “Brilliant researcher. I always respected his work.”
She’s never mentioned knowing him personally before.
“But,” she continues, reaching for my hands, “that doesn’t mean he’s right about everything. Maybe we should get other opinions?—”
“Dr. Wagner already has my files from Dr. Montgomery,” I interrupt, pulling my hands away. “She reviewed everything. She didn’t disagree with his findings.”
“Bianca—”
“I don’t care,” I spit, my voice rising despite the tremor in it. “I don’t want to be an omega. I don’t want an alpha. I don’t want anyone. Ever.”
The last word comes out on a sob. She pulls me against her chest, both of us crying now.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she chokes out, her arms wrapped around me.
By week four, the doctors declare me stable enough for discharge. Physically, anyway. Emotionally is another story entirely.
“I won’t be going home,” I state to my mother when she mentions returning.
She nods like she expected this. “I found a place. A little town called Hunter’s Creek, about two hours from here.”
Two days later, we drive through winding mountain roads until we find it, wedged between hills like it’s a secret from the rest of the world. Quaint in that suffocating small-town way where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
But it’s not Emerald Hills.
The cottage sits on an acre a short walk from the tiny downtown. Isolated .
Perfect for being left alone.
“What do you think?” Mom asks as we park.
I stare at the cottage with its white clapboard siding, green shutters, and a wraparound porch with rocking chairs that face tree-covered slopes. Cute. Peaceful. But I don’t care what it looks like. As long as it’s far, far away from them .
“It’s fine,” I say flatly, my eyes fixed on the forest.
Fine . The word I use for everything now.
The cottage is small but clean. It has two bedrooms, a basic kitchen, and a living room with windows that offer a view of the woods. After weeks of fluorescent hospital lighting, the natural light should be a welcome change. Instead, it just makes everything look too bright, too real. Too exposed.
Mom spends the next few days setting up my new life like I’m a doll she’s arranging in a dollhouse. She fills the fridge with food I won’t eat, makes a schedule that she attaches to the front with a rooster magnet, and calls to confirm appointments she’s already set up.
She opens the top drawer of the nightstand, placing something inside. “I put your bee charm in here for safekeeping,” she says softly, closing the drawer with a gentle click.
Safekeeping.
The words twist painfully inside me. What’s safe about any of this? What’s safe about being tossed aside like I’m nothing? What’s safe about running off to the mountains, abandoning everything I’ve ever fucking known?
I stare at the closed drawer. A tiny piece of gold that, for the briefest moment, meant everything to me is now just one more thing I can’t bear to look at. Just like my own face in the mirror.
“Okay,” I say, because it’s the only word I have left.
“Come on,” she says the day before she has to leave, keys jingling in her hand. “I want to show you around town.”
I don’t want to go anywhere, but arguing is fruitless with my mom. So I climb into the passenger seat and let her drive me through Hunter’s Creek’s blink-and-you-miss-it downtown area, which takes up three whole blocks.
“There’s the grocery store,” she says, pointing to a small building with peeling paint and a handwritten sign.
“The owner’s name is Mrs. Feekes. Very sweet woman.
She’s going to have someone bring staples by every few days until you’re ready to do it yourself.
She has my number if you need anything.”
Great . A babysitter.
We drive past the post office, a diner that looks like it hasn’t been updated in the last fifty years, and a tiny library with flowers planted out front.
“And here’s where you’ll be seeing Dr. Hartwell,” Mom says, pulling up in front of a converted Victorian house with a small sign that reads Hunter’s Creek Counseling .
I stare at the building. More therapy. More digging into wounds that can’t possibly heal.
“She specializes in trauma recovery,” Mom continues. “I’ve already scheduled you for twice a week to start.”
“Okay.”
The next stop is a community center on the edge of town. An old brick building with a parking lot full of potholes.
“There’s a support group here,” Mom explains. “For omegas who’ve experienced... difficult situations. Tuesdays and Thursdays at six.”
Exactly what I don’t want to be doing… sitting in a circle and commiserating with other people like myself. Fucking kill me now.
“Do I have to?”
“Dr. Hartwell thinks it would be good for you. But we can start with just individual sessions if you’re not ready.”
I’m never going to be ready. But Mom has that look on her face… the one that says she’s trying so hard to help me fix this shell of a person I’ve become.
“I’ll try,” I say.
We drive back to the cottage in silence. Mom makes lunch that I pick at. She reorganizes the kitchen cabinets. She calls Dad and gives him updates in hushed tones while I sit on the porch and stare at trees that stretch as far as I can see.
One. Two. Three. Four.
I count the pine trees on the nearest ridge. Numbers don’t have faces. Numbers don’t kiss you like they mean it and then abandon you when a better opportunity comes along. Numbers are simple.
Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.
The counting gives me a way to fill the void. All the places where their laughter used to live. All the corners where I kept cherished daydreams about our future together.
Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five.
Mom’s voice drifts from inside, muffled words I don’t try to understand.
Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three.
Just numbers. Just trees. Just breathing in and out until the sun goes down and I can sleep and forget for a few hours.
That evening, Mom sits beside me on the porch swing, a cup of tea growing cold in her hands.
“I’m leaving in the morning,” she says quietly.
I knew this was coming, but the thought of being all by myself terrifies me.
Not that I will admit it.
“Winston...” She stops and shakes her head. “He’s so worried about you. I haven’t told him everything, but he knows you’re not well.”
Winnie . My throat squeezes, and I force the urge to cry away.
“He wants to talk to you. He’s been asking?—”
There’s no way I can face my brother yet.
“I’m not ready.”
Her face falls a little, but she nods. “I know, honey. I told him that,” she assures me, reaching up to smooth my hair back from my face. “But when you are...”
“Okay.”
She fidgets. “I could come back on weekends if you want. Just until you’re more settled.”
“No,” I say, a little too quickly. “I need to do this alone.”
“Okay, honey. If you change your mind…”
“Thank you,” I manage.
“I love you, Bianca. More than you know. And this...” She gestures at the cottage, the mountains, the little life she’s built for me like a safety net. “This isn’t forever. This is just until you’re strong enough to come home.”
But I don’t think I’ll ever be strong enough. I don’t think I’ll ever want to go home to a place where they feel like a boogeyman I’ll run into around every corner.
Home no longer exists.
“I know,” I say anyway.
That night, I lie in the lavender-scented bed and listen to Mom packing in the next room. The rustle of clothes, the zip of suitcases, the quiet sounds of a mother preparing to leave her fragile daughter behind.
In the morning, she hugs me goodbye on the porch. Her eyes are red, but she’s trying to hide it and keeps her voice upbeat.
“Call me,” she says. “Every day. Even if you don’t feel like talking.”
“I will.”
“And go to therapy. Please. For me.”
“I will.”
“And please eat. You’re nothing but skin and bones.”
“I will.”
All lies, but they’re the lies she needs to hear.
I watch her drive away until the dust settles and the rental car disappears around the bend. Then I walk back into the cottage and close the door behind me.
Silence . Complete and total silence.
For the first time in a long time, I’m alone. No doctors, no nurses, no Mom hovering.
Just me and the emptiness I’ve been carrying since that day on the ridge.
I walk through the cottage like a ghost, touching surfaces, testing the reality of this place. My bedroom has a window overlooking the mountains in the distance. The rest of the cottage is what Mom has tried to make cozy and homey for me.
The idea of finding comfort in anything is laughable… not that I feel capable of laughter.
I crawl into bed and burrow underneath the blankets.
It’s supposed to be a fresh start.
But you can’t outrun what’s inside you.