Chapter 27 – BELLS
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
BELLS
Iwake up because my body decides it's done tolerating my bullshit.
The nest is suffocating. Every blanket Phoenix and Rafael brought feels like it's wrapped around my throat, cutting off air. The plush rabbit I'd been clutching is somewhere on the floor, abandoned when the nausea started creeping up my esophagus like a particularly aggressive vine.
My skin is on fire. No, scratch that—my skin is alternating between molten lava and arctic tundra so fast I can't tell which temperature is real anymore. The heat should've peaked hours ago. This isn't normal. This is—
Oh fuck.
I'm going to puke.
I stumble out of the nest, legs shaking so badly I nearly face-plant into the carpet. The bathroom. Need the bathroom. Need the toilet. Need to get this poison out of my system before it kills me.
The tile is cool under my knees. Thank god for small mercies. I barely make it to the toilet before my stomach decides to violently evict everything I've consumed in the past twelve hours. Which isn't much, but my body doesn't care about logistics.
Water. Champagne. Bile. More bile. The protein bar Phoenix forced me to eat earlier. All of it comes up in waves that leave me gasping and shaking and wishing I could just die already because at least death would stop this endless cycle of misery.
Another wave hits. I grip the porcelain like it's a life raft in a storm. My hair is plastered to my forehead with sweat. The leather collar around my neck feels like a noose.
When was the last time I felt this sick? Never. Not even during my first heat, the one triggered by my stalker's bite. This is different. This is—
Poison. Someone poisoned me.
Bryan didn't just spike my drink with heat-inducing drugs. He laced it with something else. Something designed to make me suffer, to make me vulnerable, to make me need help.
To make me easier to claim.
The realization hits at the same moment another wave of nausea does. I heave into the toilet until there's nothing left, until I'm just dry-heaving and crying and shaking so hard my teeth are chattering despite the fever cooking me from the inside out.
I need to tell someone. Need to call Phoenix and Rafael. Need to—
The bathroom tilts sideways.
Or maybe I tilt sideways.
Hard to tell when the floor is rushing up to meet my face and the walls are doing that fun spinny thing they do right before you black out.
I hit the tile with a thud that I feel more than hear. Cool. The tile is so cool against my burning skin. Maybe if I just stay here. Just for a minute. Just until the world stops trying to shake itself apart.
My eyes close.
Thump thump thump.
Knocking. Someone's knocking on the adjoining door.
"Bells?" Phoenix's voice, muffled through wood and the ringing in my ears. "You okay in there? We haven't heard anything in a while."
I try to answer. Really, I do. But my mouth won't cooperate. My tongue feels like it's made of lead and my jaw won't open and everything hurts so much I can't remember how words work.
More knocking. Louder this time.
"Bells? Answer me. Please."
Still can't. Can't move. Can't speak. Can't do anything but lie here on this bathroom floor and try to remember how to breathe.
"Fuck this," Rafael's voice. "Phoenix, move."
A pause. Then the sound of splintering wood as something heavy impacts the door. Once. Twice. The third time the lock gives way with a sharp crack that echoes through my skull like a gunshot.
Footsteps. Running. Multiple sets.
"Jesus Christ—" Phoenix's voice, much closer now. "Bells!"
Strong hands on my shoulders, rolling me over. I force my eyes open just enough to see Phoenix's face swimming above me, all worried blue eyes and furrowed brow.
"You're burning up," he mutters, one large hand pressing against my forehead. "Raf, she's—wait. What?"
His eyes have gone wide. Wider than I've ever seen them. He's staring at me like I just sprouted a second head.
Oh.
Right.
I'm naked.
Completely, utterly naked because I stripped out of everything hours ago when the heat started spiking and clothes felt like sandpaper against my skin. And when you're naked, certain anatomical features become... obvious.
Like the fact that I don't have a cock.
Like the fact that I very clearly have breasts. Not huge ones, but unmistakably present.
Like the fact that I am absolutely, undeniably, female.
"You're a girl?" Phoenix blurts out, his voice cracking on the last word.
I try to respond. Really, I do. But what comes out is just a pathetic groan that sounds like a dying cat being strangled by a accordion.
Rafael appears in the doorway, taking in the scene. His eyes track from Phoenix's face to mine to my very naked, very female body sprawled on the bathroom floor.
"Holy shit," he breathes, his eyes growing darker as his pupils widen. His shock immediately becomes concern as he takes in my state. "Bells, are you—?"
"I'm fine," I say, forcing myself up onto my knees with motor coordination and strength I'm borrowing from a version of myself that has them. The room spins violently to punish me for my hubris.
Okay, not fine. But I manage not to collapse again.
Oh, right. Phoenix is holding me up, one huge, muscular arm bracing me while taking care not to touch anything I wouldn't want him to. A gentleman even in the middle of an emergency.
"Let's get you in bed," Phoenix suggests. A suggestion I'm more than willing to take, considering that standing on my own might as well be an Olympic sport.
Phoenix lifts me like I weigh nothing and carries me out of the bathroom, placing me in the middle of the nest I'd so carefully constructed, now cradling me like it was designed for this exact purpose.
Which, I guess, it was.
Phoenix disappears and returns with a cold washcloth that he presses to my forehead. The relief is immediate and overwhelming. I could cry. Might be crying already. Hard to tell when everything is wet and burning and spinning.
"What happened?" Rafael asks, sitting on the edge of the bed. "You were fine a few hours ago."
"Poisoned," I manage to croak out. "Not just... heat drugs. Something else."
They exchange looks that would be funny if I weren't currently experiencing what feels like the heat death of the universe in my own body.
"We need to take you to the hospital," Phoenix says firmly. "This isn't normal."
"No." The word comes out stronger than I expected. "Can't. Rex knows... I'm a girl. But not... not omega. Can't know. Ever."
"Bells—"
"Promise me," I grab Phoenix's wrist with what little strength I have left. "He can't know. If he finds out... if anyone finds out..."
They exchange a look, and I can tell they're both at war with themselves. Between respecting my wishes and the alpha instincts that probably had a meltdown when they found me collapsed on that bathroom floor.
"Besides," I say in a desperate attempt to reassure them and lighten the mood, "no way anything is left in my stomach now."
They look unconvinced, but Rafael slumps against the wall and groans, dragging both hands down his face. "I fucked around with a guy unnecessarily. Bells has been a girl all along?"
Despite everything—the fever, the nausea, the fact that I just turned my stomach inside out in a hotel bathroom—I manage to crack one eye open and glare at him.
"Priorities, Raf," Phoenix mutters.
"I see you took my suggestion earlier to heart," I say dryly, amused at the flush spreading across Rafael's face. Then another wave hits, but this one isn't nausea. This one is pure heat, the kind that makes my back arch off the bed and a sound that's definitely not human tear from my throat.
"Fuck," Rafael mutters. "Her scent just spiked again."
"I can smell it," Phoenix says, and his pupils are dilating as I watch. "Bells, we can't help you if—"
"You're our scent match," Rafael interrupts. "Both of us. Phoenix and me. You're our scent match."
I freeze.
The words become an invisible fog I can't wave away, can't dismiss, can't pretend I didn't hear.
Scent match.
Both of them.
My brain is trying to process this through the fever haze and the artificial heat and the fact that I just puked my guts out on a hotel bathroom floor, but the information won't quite stick.
Scent match.
Me.
"I'm sorry to dump that on you right now," Rafael says, his dark gaze softening. "But you need to know before anything moves forward. If it does. If you want it to."
Phoenix nods, his blue eyes serious despite looking at me like a starving wild animal, blown pupils and all. "We're not trying to pressure you. Just... full disclosure."
Full disclosure. Right. Because that's what we're doing now. Laying all our cards on the table while I'm naked in a nest and they're both staring at me like I'm the answer to a question they didn't know they were asking.
Then it hits me.
Rex.
That night at the stone tower when he stumbled and crushed me against the wall. The way his entire body went rigid, the sharp intake of breath, how he's been avoiding me ever since I started sleeping in his bed and making it smell like omega.
And he fucking hates me.
"Oh gods," I breathe, the realization settling in my chest like concrete. "Rex is my scent match too. And he hates my guts."
Phoenix sighs. "Rex doesn't hate you, he's just—"
"Insane?" Rafael supplies helpfully.
"No," I say. "I mean… yeah. Maybe. But he really, really hates me. And there's no way it's just that he knows he's my scent match, and that's why he's pissed. He has to be in denial or something. If he knew I'm an omega, he'd use it as leverage."
Rafael's brow furrows. "What do you mean?"
"He knows I'm a girl," I say again, fighting to keep my voice steady through another wave of heat. "Saw me changing when he was prowling around in a maintenance tunnel not long after I met you guys the first time. That's when we got in a fight and I slashed him with my knife."