Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Callie
The heat was finally receding, leaving me wrung out like a dishcloth that had been used to mop up an entire ocean. My limbs felt disconnected from my body, heavy and useless, while my mind floated somewhere between exhaustion and that peculiar clarity that comes after a fever breaks.
The nest still smelled like sex and sweat and satisfaction, but underneath it all was something else.
Safety.
For the first time in years, I'd gone through heat feeling completely, utterly safe.
"Water?" Nova's voice came from somewhere to my left, still rough from three days of growling and groaning and making sounds I'd pulled from him that his streaming audience would never believe their composed British businessman capable of.
I managed to turn my head, which felt like a monumental achievement.
He sat propped against the nest wall, his usually perfect hair sticking up at angles that defied physics, his designer stubble now approaching actual beard territory.
He looked wrecked. They all did. And somehow that made my chest tight with something that wasn't heat-related at all.
"Please," I croaked, then cleared my throat. "God, I sound like I've been gargling gravel."
"You sound perfect," Milo said from behind me, and I felt the nest shift as he moved closer, his warmth pressing against my back. "Though you might want to avoid any ASMR content for a few days."
Ghost actually snorted at that, the sound so unexpected that Crash fell off the edge of the nest depression with a yelp. The sudden movement made everyone tense, Alpha instincts still hair-trigger sensitive, but then Blitz started laughing, and the tension dissolved into something lighter.
Nova pressed a water bottle to my lips, supporting my head with his other hand. The simple care of it, the way his fingers automatically checked my temperature against my temple, made my throat tight for different reasons.
"I should probably mention," I said after draining half the bottle, "that was nothing like my usual heats. It was different."
They all went still, and I could practically feel their collective concern spike through the air like electricity before a storm.
"I mean—" I rushed to clarify, seeing Nova's jaw clench. "Not bad different. Just... different. Usually, I'm alone, obviously. In my apartment. With my vibrator and a towel and lots of regret. It's... clinical. Mechanical. Something to endure and get through as quickly as possible."
"How long?" Ghost asked quietly.
"Three days, give or take. Same as this. But the intensity..." I trailed off, trying to find words for the difference. "It's like comparing a match to a forest fire. Both are technically fire, but—"
"But one reshapes the entire landscape," Nova finished, and yes, that was exactly it.
I struggled to sit up, muscles protesting every movement. Immediately, five sets of hands reached to help, then all pulled back at once, nobody wanting to crowd me. The consideration made me want to cry, which was ridiculous. I'd cried enough over the past three days to fill a small lake.
"Before my first heat on suppressants," I heard myself saying, the words tumbling out like water through a broken dam, "I tried to handle one heat without them. After freshman year of college."
The nest went quiet except for the subtle hum of Ghost's environmental systems, still automatically adjusting to my needs even as the heat faded.
"There was this Alpha in my media studies program. Rex Hamilton. The same one that’s calling this fake.
" The name tasted bitter on my tongue, like medicine left too long in the mouth.
"He was... everything you'd expect. Confident.
Charming. Had that whole tortured artist thing that made undergrad Omegas swoon. Including me, apparently."
Crash growled, low and protective, and I found myself leaning into the sound rather than away from it.
"We'd been together six months. Nothing serious, or so I thought.
But when my heat hit unexpectedly, I'd miscalculated the timing coming off suppressants, he said he'd help.
Said he'd take care of me." I pulled my knees up to my chest, making myself smaller.
"He lasted exactly four hours before he couldn't handle it anymore.
Said I was 'too needy,' 'too much,' that my heat was 'aggressive' and 'unfeminine. '"
"He left you?" Blitz's voice had gone deadly quiet, all his usual golden retriever energy transformed into something dangerous.
"In the middle of it. Just... walked out.
Left me locked in his apartment because he 'didn't want me wandering the streets in that condition.
' Like I was some kind of rabid animal that needed to be contained.
" The words came out flat, matter-of-fact, but I felt all five of them tense around me.
"His roommate found me twelve hours later, had to call campus medical.
They sedated me through the rest of it."
"That's—" Nova started, but I wasn't done.
"The worst part wasn't even the abandonment.
It was after. He told people I'd been 'crazy' during heat.
That I'd attacked him, demanded things no proper Omega would want.
Made me sound like some kind of deviant.
And people believed him, because why wouldn't they?
He was Rex Hamilton, upcoming streaming star with his moody acoustic covers and his careful image.
I was just another Omega who couldn't control herself. "
Ghost's hand found mine, his fingers interlacing with mine in silent support.
"That's when I went back on suppressants.
Stronger ones. Enough to kill any heat response completely.
And I built my entire brand on not needing what Rex couldn't give me.
At first I just built it on being questionable.
Was I Omega? Was I Beta? Who could say? If I was Omega, I was one who didn't need an Alpha's help, who was better off alone.
" I laughed, but it came out cracked. "And then when I came out as Omega my mom called.
First time since she'd left. Said she'd seen my content, that I was 'making the same mistakes' by being so public with my Omega status.
That I'd end up just like her. Humiliated and abandoned. "
"She abandoned you first," Milo said softly, and the understanding in his voice nearly undid me.
"Yeah. She did. To protect me from this, from needing anyone, from the possibility of public humiliation.
And I spent years believing she was right.
That needing someone meant losing yourself.
That biology was the enemy of autonomy." I looked around the nest, at these five men who'd spent days proving that wrong.
"I came off suppressants when everything happened with Kara, but really, I think I was testing myself.
Seeing if I could handle being... whole. Turns out I couldn't. Not alone."
"You were never meant to handle it alone," Nova said, his accent thick with emotion. "None of us are."
"But Rex—"
"Was a pathetic excuse for an Alpha who wouldn't recognize a gift if it bit him on his pretentious acoustic-guitar-playing arse," Nova interrupted, and the vehemence in his voice made me blink.
"You trusted the wrong person," Ghost said quietly. "That's not your fault. His failure, not yours."
"But I built everything on not trusting anyone after that," I admitted. "And now here I am, literally surrounded by Alphas, having just begged for your bites while in heat. Everything I swore I'd never do."
"You didn't just beg," Crash pointed out with characteristic honesty. "You demanded. Very different energy."
Despite everything, I laughed. "Oh good, so I was an aggressive disaster. That's so much better."
"You were perfect," Blitz said firmly. "Every single second. Even when you hated us for saying no."
"About that..." I started, then stopped, not sure how to continue.
"We have our own fears," Nova said quietly, and something in his tone made me look at him properly. "About overwhelming you. Trapping you. Being everything the forums warn Omegas about."
"You're nothing like—"
"Aren't we?" He met my eyes steadily. "Five Alphas who scent-matched you in public, took you to our house, locked you in our nest for three days? On paper, we're every Omega's nightmare."
"My mother's certainly," I admitted. "She's probably already planning her 'I told you so' speech for when this falls apart."
"If," Milo corrected gently. "If it falls apart."
"When," I insisted. "Everything falls apart. People leave. That's what they do."
"Rex left," Ghost said quietly. "One Alpha. One failure. Not a pattern, just a data point."
"My mother left. My father left. Rex left." I counted them on my fingers. "That's a pattern."
"We're not them," Crash said simply, and the certainty in his voice made me want to believe him.
"You don't know that. You can't. It's been three days. The hormones, the sex high, it's all—"
"Biochemistry," Nova agreed. "But also choice. We choose to stay. Every day, every moment, we'll keep choosing to stay."
"Even when I'm not in heat? When I'm just regular Callie with her trust issues and her need for control and her inability to let people close?"
"Especially then," Blitz said. "That's the Callie we want. Not just the heat-drunk Omega who needs us, but the savage independent creator who built an empire on not needing anyone."
"That doesn't make sense," I protested.
"Doesn't it?" Milo asked. "You're choosing us despite everything telling you not to. That's not weakness, Callie. That's the bravest thing I've ever seen."
Tears were streaming down my face now, and I didn't even try to stop them. Three days of biological intensity had stripped away every defense I'd built, leaving me raw and exposed in ways that had nothing to do with the fact that I was still naked except for someone's shirt.
"I don't know how to do this," I admitted. "How to be yours without losing myself."
"Then we figure it out together," Nova said simply. "Day by day. Choice by choice."
"What if the internet's right? What if this is just hormones and proximity and really good marketing?"
"Then we'll have had three incredible days," Ghost said, and the pragmatism of it somehow helped. "But I don't think that's all this is."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I haven't let anyone touch me since my first pack died," he said quietly, and the admission hung in the air like a physical presence.
“Years of nothing. No casual contact, nothing.
But you... you walked into that convention room and my body remembered what it was like to want to belong to someone. "
"We all have our damage," Nova added. "I've been so focused on control that I forgot what it felt like to let go.
Milo stress-bakes when he can't fix things.
Crash literally cannot sit still when he's anxious.
Blitz has been performing 'himbo' for so long he forgot that he's actually brilliant. We're all broken in our own ways."
"So we're trauma bonding?" I asked, trying for humor but landing somewhere closer to hope.
"We're bonding," Milo corrected. "The trauma's just seasoning."
"Seasoning." I looked at him incredulously. "You did not just compare our psychological damage to seasoning."
"Good seasoning enhances the natural flavors," he said with a perfectly straight face. "Too much and you ruin the dish. Too little and it's bland. We've all got just enough trauma to make us interesting without being toxic."
"That's either the worst or best analogy I've ever heard," I said, and realized I was actually smiling.
"Both," Crash decided. "It's both. Like us. We're going to be both amazing and terrible and everything in between."
I looked around the nest at five Alphas who'd just spent three days proving they could handle me at my most vulnerable, who'd refused to take advantage even when I'd begged them to, who were sharing their own fears as freely as they'd shared their bodies.
"I still don't know your middle names," I pointed out weakly.
"We told you those already," Nova said with fond exasperation. "During the height of your heat, so you probably don't remember."
"Tell me again?"
And they did, going around the circle. James, Gabriel, Theodore, Luis, and Wolfgang ("Still embarrassing," Blitz muttered). Somehow knowing those small details made them feel more real. More permanent. More frightening.
"I want to try," I heard myself saying. "To see what this is without the heat. Without the pressure. Just... us."
"That's all we want," Nova assured me. "A chance."
"But I need to maintain my own space too. My own life. My brand—"
"We wouldn't want you to change that," Milo interrupted. "Your independence is part of what makes you... you."
"Even if I use our relationship for content?" I challenged.
"Especially then," Crash grinned. "Think of the views, Callie. The drama. The engagement metrics."
"You're all insane," I decided.
"Probably," Nova agreed. "But we're your kind of insane."
And maybe that was the point. Maybe that was enough, at least for now.