Chapter 24 Mirabelle
Mirabelle
“Can I open my eyes yet?” I say, still facing towards the corner of Rowan’s little kitchen, away from the living room.
“Not yet!” Rowan huffs as he sets something down on the couch.
“You’re making an awful lot of noise. I’m so curious now!” I grumble.
“I just didn’t expect there to be so much stuff!” He mutters under his breath. “Okay, you can look now.”
I spin around, blinking my eyes so they adjust.
“Oh my God!” I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth.
Piled on top of the couch are neat, crinkly plastic cases full of what look to be a variety of fresh blankets and pillows. There are a few extra fuzzy-looking blankets he’s neatly arranged, too. It’s like an omega’s nesting dream.
“Is this—is this all for me?” I ask, my voice a strained whisper.
“Course it is, Sugar. Who else would it be for?” he says, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.
“It took a while to ship here, but these kits came highly rated, so I just got a few different ones. Why don’t you come over here and give ‘em a feel and tell me whether you like ‘em. I can always return them if—“
I throw myself around him, my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
“Oof,” he breathes out, his hands coming to grip my thighs as he takes an unsteady step back, bumping into the stack of vinyl bags.
I should probably be a bit more careful, considering the fact that his black eye has only recently faded and his ribs are still a little sore. But I can’t help it.
In the past two and a half weeks since that day I made my first attempt at a nest, I’ve moved my nest to Rowan’s room. He insisted I sleep in his bed instead of on the floor next to the couch.
Because he’s insisted on sleeping out on the couch, to my disappointment, he hasn’t shared my nest since.
“Don’t return them—“ I say, burying my face in his neck. “Please don’t.”
“You haven’t even felt them yet. What if you hate them? I’ve been doing a lot of research, and sometimes omegas are really sensitive to the kinds of fabrics that’re in their nest.”
“I’ll love them all, I promise. Please don’t take them away.”
“I won’t take ‘em away if you don’t want ‘em gone, so you’ve got nothing to worry about, Sugar.”
“Good,” I say, squeezing him even tighter.
“Big fan of you wrapped around me like this,” he chuckles under his breath. “But don’t you want to try them out? Give ‘em a feel?”
I nod against his neck, inhaling his clean basil scent one last time before I slide down his body.
He glances away, the tips of his ears pink as he clears his throat.
“Like I said, I got you a few different kits, but I made sure they had a fitted top sheet since I know you like making that tent thing on my bed.”
My hands sink into fluffy fabrics and squishy pillows, and I can’t keep the unbridled joy I’m feeling off my expression.
“This is amazing!” I say, immediately trying to drag two of the kits at the same time to the bedroom.
“Here, let me help you,” he laughs, hefting one onto his shoulder.
I spend the next who-knows-how-long assembling the nest with Rowan. He dutifully follows all of my instructions, even if they’re a little silly and annoying, like “no, don’t fluff the pillow vertically, do it horizontally!” and “no, no, that blanket goes down first!”
When we’re done, a new fitted sheet with little strawberries is stretched over the top of Rowan’s bed, hanging from the headboard and hooking around the corners of the footboard, creating a little tent.
Inside, there’s a cozy circle of new pillows and a whole pile of new fuzzy blankets and thick comforters.
It looks like heaven.
Tears fill my eyes as I crawl inside, hugging my knees to my chest.
“You like it?” Rowan asks, leaning down to peek through the opening on the side of the bed.
This nest looks amazing, better than I ever could’ve imagined, with all the new, pretty, and soft fabrics surrounding me. But there’s something missing.
“I love it,” I croak out, scooting to the side and patting the bed beside me.
“You want... me? Inside your nest?”
I give him a jerky nod, my throat closing in as my heart races out of my chest. His hesitancy seems to confirm to me that there’s a heaviness, a weight, to my request. I guess an omega asking someone to enter their nest is a big deal.
He eases into the small space slowly, as if he’s expecting me to ask him to leave at any moment.
But I don’t.
I want him in here.
As he settles in my nest, leaning against the pillows by the headboard so he doesn’t bump the low-hanging canopy, that sense of emptiness eases. I curl up next to him, resting my head against his chest.
“Wh—whoa, are you okay, Sugar?”
I clutch at his t-shirt, pressing my face into the fabric to soak up all of his scent.
But there’s still something missing. It’s not enough.
I let out a frustrated sound from the back of my throat.
Rowan’s hand instantly flies up to push some of my hair away from my face.
“You’ve gotta tell me what’s going through that pretty head of yours, Sugar. I can’t read minds. Do you want me to leave?”
“No!” I insist, pushing myself up and staring at him with wide, panicked eyes. “Please don’t leave!’
“Then what’s wrong?” He asks softly. “Something is obviously not right here.”
Rowan belongs in my nest. I want him here. But my nest is still missing something.
Three somethings.
Or rather, three someones.
“I don’t—I don’t know how to say it.” I worry my bottom lip between my teeth as I avert my gaze. He’s looking at me far too intensely. Like he’s reading my mind.
He reaches out and gently tugs my bottom lip from between my teeth with his thumb.
“It’s okay, I won’t judge you. This is a safe space.”
“I think... I want more than just you in my nest,” I whisper.
He nods slowly, understanding dawning on his face.
“I assume you mean the alpha fighters, right? Anyone in particular? You and Griffin seem to have been getting along pretty well.”
“All—all of them,” I mumble.
Rowan’s expression shifts into something unreadable, making panic flare low in my belly.
“Is that weird? That’s weird. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”
“It’s not weird, Sugar,” he says slowly. Like he’s trying to pick his words carefully. “Lots of omegas have a pack of alphas.”
A pack.
I’ve heard whispers back at the facility about omegas who had an entire group of alphas, but it wasn’t until I met Reyna that I actually met an omega with a pack.
She said she had been kidnapped and was being held against her will and that she had an entire pack waiting for her. The handlers told me to expect her to be confused. That she wouldn’t know what she was talking about as she adjusted to the facility.
But I saw her bite marks. She wasn’t lying.
I want bite marks.
“I—I like them,” I say, burying my face in Rowan’s shirt to hide my face, flushed hot with embarrassment. “Isn’t it wrong to like all of them when there’s only one of me?”
Rowan’s hands flex against my waist as he takes a shaky inhale.
“Nah, I don’t think so. I think them being... drugged and feral makes things more complicated. But if this were a different place, and you all met normally, I don’t think there’d be any issues with the four of you forming a pack.”
A crease forms between my brows as I push myself up.
The four of us? But I like Rowan too. If I had my way, it would be the five of us together as a pack, just like we’re a team here.
“Do packs... do they have betas?” I ask.
He blinks at me, his hand coming up to cup my cheek.
“I—I really hope that’s allowed,” I say, nuzzling my face into his hand. “’Cause I like you too, Rowan.”
The words sound childish as I say them. I wish I knew a better way to explain my emotions. But it’s already hard enough to admit what I have so far. Sharing the way I feel about this is scary.
“You do?” He asks, letting out a sharp exhale.
“Yeah! Do you—do you like me?”
“Of fucking course I do,” he growls, propping himself up on an elbow. “But I’m a beta. A pathetic one at that—“
“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” I snap.
“I am pathetic,” he bites back. There’s a tightness around his eyes that serves as the physical manifestation of the deep shame that’s coming to the surface for him. His hazel eyes are dark.
“What’s wrong?” I guess it’s my turn to ask him now.
He just shakes his head before he reaches up and grips the long, curly strands of his hair so hard I worry he’s going to tear some of it out.
“Stop that!” I reach for his wrist and try to tug it away, but he just shakes me off. “Rowan, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”
“I thought I’d be able to ignore it, to keep you in the dark and not tell you. To just buy you presents, now that I finally have access to some money, and pretend to live as normal of a life as we can here,” he says, his voice a strained whisper.
I have to lean in to hear him properly.
“But I have to tell you,” he continues.
“Tell me what?”
“How much do you remember about what happened to you at the facility?”
“What—what do you mean?” I ask, my brows drawing down in confusion. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with this. With you. With us,” he says, waving a frantic hand between us. “Did they ever take your blood?”
My throat closes and my heart pounds, right along with my head. I cradle my temples between my palms as I curl forward, a sharp pain shooting through my head.
Heat. Restraints. Needles.
Flashes and images of bright lights, restraints, and an unending, all-consuming pain hammer away at the walls of my skull.
“O—oh,” I gasp.
“Fuck, Sugar,” Rowan says, reaching out and brushing a thumb against my cheeks. His fingers come away wet.
Oh. I’m crying.
“We’re not allowed to talk about it,” I whisper. “I—I guess I kind of forgot about it.”
“You forgot about them torturing you during your heats?” He growls.
I flinch backwards at his words, the headache only growing worse.
“I didn’t—I didn’t remember until you said anything.”