Chapter 6
SIX
Tessa
The applause was a physical weight, a tangible thing that had density and mass. It wasn't sound anymore; it was atmospheric pressure, crushing the air out of the room, pressing me flat against the floorboards of the stage.
They were laughing. Thousands of people, their mouths gaping black holes, their eyes serrated edges, all laughing at the wet, shameful stain spreading across the front of my gown. The smell of it, slick, biological, and humiliating, was choking me.
"Get off!" I screamed, the sound tearing ragged and raw from my throat. I lashed out, my fist connecting with something hard, a shoulder, a chest, a wall of authority. "I’m trying to leave! Don’t touch me!"
"Secure her arms," a voice barked. It was cold, sharp, and smelling of aged bourbon and crisp winter air. It was the scent of expensive control, of a high-end study while a storm raged outside. "She’s going to hurt herself. Daniel, pin her legs."
"No!" I thrashed, my heels scrabbling uselessly against the slick, polished wood. "I didn't mean to! It just happened! Please, just let me go!"
Shadows loomed over me. Massive, blocking out the blinding white glare of the spotlights. They weren't teachers. They were security. They were the muscle sent to drag the trash off the stage so the ceremony could continue.
One of them, the largest one, settled over my lower body.
He was heavy, a mountain of immovable force, smelling of warm spiced chai, sandalwood, and fresh bread.
It was a deceptive scent, pretending to be comfort, the olfactory equivalent of a weighted blanket, while he trapped me.
His large hands clamped around my ankles, not hurting, but absolute.
"I’ve got her," the mountain rumbled. The voice vibrated through the floor, through my skin, deep into the marrow of my bones. It was a voice made for reading stories, but right now, it was writing the end of mine. "Tessa, stop fighting. We’re trying to help."
"Don't look at me!" I wailed, throwing my arm over my eyes, trying to claw my way into the dark. "Please, God, don't look."
"We aren't looking at you," the sharp voice, the bourbon voice, snapped, closer now. "We are looking at the readings. Her temperature is one hundred and four. If it hits one hundred and five, proteins start to denature. Peel her. Now."
Peel her.
The command hit me like a slap.
"No, no, no—"
Hands were on me. Everywhere.
They weren't gentle. They couldn't be. I was a wild animal caught in a trap, snapping and biting at the metal teeth. Fingers hooked into the collar of my oversized sweater, my armor, my shield against the world.
Rrrrip.
The sound of the wool tearing was deafening. The cool air hit my damp skin like a chemical burn, stripping away the only thing protecting me from their gaze. I gasped, arching my back, my spine bowing off the cold floor.
"Get the leggings," a third voice said. This one was different. It was rougher, darker, smelling of burnt sugar, dark chocolate, and graphite. It sounded like the scratch of charcoal on paper, gritty and addictive. "She's burning up from the inside out. The fabric is trapping the heat."
"Don't strip me!" I sobbed, kicking out. My foot connected with the graphite one, but he didn't even grunt. He just caught my calf in a grip that felt like steel wire, his fingers long, dextrous, and calloused from years of gripping a stylus. "I'm the Valedictorian! You can't do this!"
"You're dying, Tessa," the bourbon one said, his face swimming into view above me.
He wasn't a security guard. He was… blonde.
Golden hair, neatly styled. Piercing icy-blue eyes that assessed everything for risk.
It was Anders Svinton. The Class President.
He had returned to punish me for ruining his perfect schedule.
"And I am not losing my investment to a fever. Simon, the pads. Now."
My leggings were dragged down. The friction of the fabric against my sensitized skin was agony. The humiliation was total. I was naked, exposed, a writhing mess of biological failure on the floor while the authorities watched.
"Applying cooling tech," the graphite one, Simon, muttered.
I braced for the pain of a blow, but what came was worse.
Something freezing, impossibly, violently cold, slapped against the inside of my thigh. Then another against my stomach, right over the cramping void of my womb. Another at the base of my throat.
Hiss.
The sensation wasn't relief. It was a shock to the system so profound my vision went white. The cooling pads, Designation-Adaptive Tech, whispered a rational corner of my dying brain, didn't just cool; they reacted. They sucked the heat out of the skin with a chemical hunger.
"Ah! Ahhh!"
My body, starved of touch for years, starved of anything but cold keys and colder screens, didn't know how to interpret the input.
The nerves fired all at once. The extreme cold registered as a burn, but the pressure? The pressure felt like hands.
The withdrawal had stripped my nerves bare. The heavy suppression I’d lived on, the Omegablock XR-9, had hollowed me out, leaving a screaming, empty void in my center. Now, that void was being shocked awake.
The spice one, Daniel, shifted his weight, his forearm pressing down across my hips to keep me from bucking the pads off.
The pressure of his arm against my lower belly didn't hurt. It grounded. It pushed against the empty, cramping ache where the heat was trying to ignite.
I stopped screaming. A low, guttural noise tore out of my throat, half sob, half moan.
"She's seizing," Simon said, his voice tight with panic. I could feel his dark gaze on me, intense and observant, cataloging every tremor. "Anders, she's twitching."
"It's the thermal shock," Anders replied, his hand pressing a cold pad firmly against my sternum. His palm was warm on top of the gel, a confusing mix of fire and ice that made my head spin. "Hold her steady."
But I wasn't seizing.
I twisted my hips, grinding my pelvis upward against Daniel's heavy forearm.
The friction sent a bolt of lightning straight down my spine. It was agony. It was ecstasy. It was the only thing in the world that felt like it might plug the hole where my dignity used to be.
"Please," I gasped, my head thrashing side to side on the concrete. The smell of rotting blackberries, old parchment, and brine coming off my skin was suffocating, thick and heavy, the scent of a library left open to a storm. "Please, it hurts. It’s so empty."
"We know," Daniel soothed, his voice a low, resonant rumble near my ear. It was the voice that launched a thousand audiobooks, designed to disarm. "The medicine is working. Just breathe."
"No!" I clawed at his shirt, gripping the soft flannel that smelled of safety. "Not that. The… the ache. Push down. Harder."
I bucked my hips again, wild and desperate, seeking the pressure. I squeezed my thighs together, trapping Simon’s hand where he was trying to adjust the femoral pad.
Possible realization dawned on them in a wave of scent.
The smell in the room changed. The sharp, acrid tang of their fear spiked with something else. Something muskier. Heavier. Dark chocolate melted into a bittersweet syrup. Bourbon warmed in the glass, intoxicating. Bread rising in a hot oven.
"She's…" Simon’s voice cracked. He tried to pull his hand back, but I whined, a high, keen sound of loss, and clamped my legs tighter around his wrist. The roughness of his calloused fingers against my sensitive inner thigh made my toes curl. "Anders, she's reacting to the stimuli."
"She's delirious," Anders stated, though his voice was strained, tighter than a piano wire. I could hear the crack in his rigid armor. "This is a biological misfire. Her system is confusing pain signals with—"
"I don't care!" I sobbed, arching my back, forcing my chest up against Anders' hand, desperate for the contact, for the weight, for anything to stop the sensation of floating in the void. "Don't stop. Don't look at me, just… make it stop."
I was grinding against them now. Shameless. Animal.
The hallucination had shattered. The graduation stage was gone. I knew, with a terrifying, fever-bright clarity, that these weren't security guards. They were Alphas.
Three of them.
And I was an Omega in the middle of a withdrawal storm, naked on the floor, surrounded by their expensive, intoxicating scents.
"So empty," I wept, the words bubbling up from the bottom of the well. "It burns. Why won't you help me?"
I reached down, my hands clumsy and desperate, trying to shove Daniel’s arm harder against my cramping womb. I tried to drag Simon’s hand higher, towards the slick, molten heat that was killing me.
"Jesus Christ," Daniel breathed, his heavy body going rigid above me. "Tessa, sweetheart, don't. You don't know what you're doing."
"I do!" I screamed, the anger flaring hot and bright. "I am dying! I am hollow! Fill it! Fix it!"
I writhed, snake-like, twisting in their grip. The cooling pads were slipping, sliding on the slick sweat of my skin, losing their purchase.
"Restrain her properly," Anders ordered. His voice was a whip-crack, the tone of a man used to producing outcomes, but I could hear the tremor in it. "If those pads come off, her temperature spikes again. We lose her."
"I can't hold her like this with her… with her moving like that," Simon hissed, his scent filling the room. "It feels like taking advantage."
"It is medical triage!" Anders shouted, losing his composure for the first time. "Grab her wrists! Pin them above her head. Daniel, lock her legs down. Do not let her create friction."
"No!" I begged as Simon’s long, ink-stained fingers wrapped around my wrists. He dragged my arms over my head, stretching me out, leaving me completely open. "No, please, I need it. I need the friction. Don't stop!"
Simon leaned over me, his dark hair falling into his eyes, his face a mask of tortured conflict. He pinned my wrists to the cold concrete. He looked down at me, not at my face, but at the way my body was arching, slick and pale and desperate. His eyes were black holes, devouring the sight of me.
"I’m sorry," Simon whispered, his voice rough. "We can't, Tessa. You're sick."
"I hate you," I hissed, baring my teeth, tears streaming hot into my ears. "All of you. You just watch. You always just watch."
Daniel moved then, shifting his monstrous weight until he was straddling my thighs, effectively pinning my lower body to the floor. The pressure was immense, crushing, and completely immobilizing.
It should have been terrifying.
Instead, my traitorous body slumped, a jagged whimper escaping my lips. The weight. The sheer, immovable mass of him. It compressed the empty ache, soothing the frantic nerves for a microsecond. The scent of yeast and spice enveloped me, promising a safety I didn't deserve.
"Shhh," Daniel hummed, placing a large, warm hand over my erratic heart. "We've got you. We aren't going anywhere."
"Make it stop," I whispered, my voice breaking into a thousand pieces. I looked up at Anders, the King in the Charcoal Suit, standing over me with the cooling pad in his hand. I saw his eyes, blue ice, but burning with a terrified fire. "Anders. Please. Rule 45. Medical emergency. Take care of it."
Anders froze. His jaw worked, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He smelled like a storm warning, ozone and regret. For a second, I saw the boy who had sat behind me on the stage, the one who had frozen when I fell.
He dropped to his knees beside me. He didn't touch me with his skin. He reapplied the gel pad to my stomach, right over the cramping knot of my womb, holding it there with the force of his guilt.
"Hold her," Anders commanded, his voice devoid of air. "We ride it out."
I screamed again as the cold hit, struggling against the artist’s hands and the giant’s weight, grinding myself against the unyielding stone of their restraint, burning alive in the ice, waiting for the fever to break or the fire to consume me whole.