BLUE
Almost exactly three weeks after we were kidnapped, I wake up in the middle of the night with a strange sensation.
Gabriel and I are, as always, sleeping in Joining, so I carefully ease myself off his cock and head to the bathroom, assuming it’s just some kind of stomach issue.
A sudden, unfamiliar pain twists low in my abdomen. I look at myself in the mirror, my cheeks flushed, my pupils blown wide.
The one possibility that flashes through my mind right away feels almost impossible. Impossible? Come on…
It’s been nearly two months since I first slept with Gabriel, and I still haven’t run that test on myself that would clear up my doubts.
I even prepared a portable ultrasound device so I could do it, but I haven’t used it yet. It’s just been sitting there, waiting for the right moment.
I leave the bathroom and head to my small office on the second level of my penthouse.
I don’t use it often since I usually work in the one two floors below, but right now it’s perfect. I turn the machine on, pick up the probe, and position myself in front of the screen.
My hands are shaking, strange… and my breath keeps catching in my chest.
Reactions like this are rare for me. I’ve practically turned self-control into an art form, but now my whole body is trembling like it’s caught in a violent gust of wind.
Even though I’m a skilled diagnostician when it comes to ultrasound and I’ve examined countless patients, doing it on myself presents a strange difficulty, as if I have to split into both patient and doctor at once, two opposing needs, two completely different perspectives on my situation.
One almost clinical and professional, and the other belonging to a sixteen-year-old boy whose future shattered, who cried himself to sleep for weeks and months, aching for that small organ he lost, the one that meant so much to him.
Maybe too much? Maybe I built too much tragedy around that loss, because I did learn how to live after all, and I did learn how to enjoy life despite what happened.
Human resilience is immense! I turned mine into a point of pride, and now part of me is falling apart while another part is being born again as I press the probe to my abdomen.
The image calibrates on the screen, and out of the interplay of light, shadows, and darkness, what I’m looking for comes into view.
My uterus.
Such a simple image.
I’ve seen it hundreds of times on ultrasound screens in other omegas I’ve examined, those who came to me for consultations, often with tumors or other degenerative conditions, since I always handled the most difficult cases.
But this uterus is different, it’s… perfectly normal. Healthy.
Instinctively, I freeze the image on the screen, lean in, and take basic measurements like a clinical doctor would, calmly analyzing what I see, describing it as if I were about to print the image out for a patient.
My eye recognizes the condition immediately. This is a uterus ready for heat. The lining is thick, fertile, waiting, and the best part is that it doesn’t look anything like the uterus of a first heat, which all omegas go through and which is usually infertile.
In young omegas it’s half the size and the lining isn’t developed, but here everything looks as if the first heat has already happened.
On the screen is the uterus of a mature omega.
And I’m looking at it, lodged in my own body, in a place where there used to be nothing but an empty cavity, as they tore the damaged organ out of me after that accident.
My shadow, what was once that sixteen-year-old boy, finally raises its head tentatively, curiously, while… another part of me, the strong persona I built…
…collapses, feeling lost.
The change is coming, tearing through my stable life, taking all and giving all… I sink to the floor, the probe slipping from my fingers.
I cry. And sob. The kind of crying that feels like catharsis, cleansing… freeing. I let it happen after so many years of holding it back, like a flood breaking through a cracked dam…
Footsteps in the hallway.
"Blue!"
He rushes to me. Gabriel’s gentle hands wrap around me and lift me off the floor like I weigh nothing, holding me tightly against his chest.
"What happened, Blue? You’re scaring me…"
But I only laugh through my tears. "I’m scaring myself! I haven’t cried like this since I was sixteen… This is weird. My tear ducts still work."
Then the words get stuck in my throat, I can’t catch my breath, but I see Gabriel turn his head and glance at the screen.
"What happened? Tell me, baby, is everything okay?"
I tilt my head back and look at him, into his eyes, shifting from the screen to my face while he’s still holding me.
"I’m going into heat."
Gabriel blinks.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen that expression on his face, completely thrown, like he has no idea what my words mean, or maybe what my reaction and my crying mean, since they don’t really match what should be good news.
I can almost see the gears turning in his head as he runs through possible responses.
Eventually, he settles on one.
"What matters most is how you feel about it right now."
One thing is certain, I know exactly how he feels. I catch the slight dilation of his pupils, the subtle swallow, the obvious increase in his heart rate.
A young alpha’s body can respond in only one way to an omega in heat. It’s the most powerful hormonal trigger in AO reality, the one that drives omega to alpha and alpha to omega.
"Euphoria. Ecstasy. Elation."
"Got anything that doesn’t start with E?"
"Something in me is closing now, some broken loop, Gabriel. I learned how to live without this, and now I will have to learn how to live with it. I want to love my old life and appreciate its advantages, see its value, but at the same time I want to experience a parallel life, something different, and learn to enjoy that too. It’s like being given two lives as a gift. "
Gabriel smiles with such warmth that it melts what’s left of my fear.
"That’s beautifully put. Only someone mature can look at it that way and find something meaningful even in a period that, objectively speaking, could be considered difficult."
"People have forgotten that growth happens fastest through hardship. Difficulty can strengthen character, and push people to reach potential they never would have touched if they’d stayed in comfortable stagnation and wasted the unique talents everyone is given."
"Another solid summary," Gabriel grins.
"Fate decided I’d get to have both lives, to taste them both… to learn what kind of pain and what kind of joy each path carries."
"I’m glad to hear that… and I really want to be by your side as all of this unfolds, starting with the first step, which is… a few days of wild sex!"
Right. He’s an alpha, after all, and they really do like thinking with that… lower brain.
"Yeah, we can start with that," I grin in response.
Then Gabriel turns and heads toward the exit of the small office.
He’s moving straight for the bedroom.