22. Rafe
Chapter twenty-two
The autobody shop doesn't really have a break room, per se. It's a room to take a break in, that's for sure, but it is not a relaxing space. The black leather couch is ripped and cracked all over, the metal folding table is rusted and piled high with papers, and the floor is sticky in a way that does not feel natural, even for a place like this.
Slime leans against the wall, his tattooed arms crossed over his chest, and his heavy boot propped up on the wall behind him. His jeans are stained and ripped, and his shop shirt is covered in grease.
This man is not Simon. Simon was a tight-laced, studious kid who liked to stargaze and read. He was always so quiet and unassuming.
I search the handsome man in front of me for the one I grew up with, who still makes my chest ache when I think about him. I'm not sure if any of that Simon, my Simon, remains. The man in front of me is Slime.
"Cyrus is in a rough place, man," I tell him, resting my elbows on my knees. "I don't know how long we can go on like this." Things are strained between the two of us. It's almost as if we've silently and unanimously decided not to talk about what happened between us, yet it always feels like it's on the tip of my tongue.
"Yeah, I get it, but listen. Y'all have yet to accept that we can't just apologize and move on." His hazel eyes flash with anger. "Of course, what we did had consequences. We don't even know the extent of it, but from what Cyrus said last night, it's not fucking good."
Guilt chews me up like a rabid beast. What Jordan hinted at shows that our actions directly caused a dark spiral that shaped her adulthood. "How do we even begin to get her to talk to us? To work through this?" The words come out choked, guilt trapping them in my throat.
"I don't know, Rafe," Slime sighs. He throws his head backward, banging it against the wall. "If I did, I'd be on my knees in front of her right now. But I tried that once already, and you saw how that ended."
"Yo, Slime," Nitro says, poking his head in the doorway. "Some lady here said you gave her an estimate for her car. Brought some Alpha with her to go over it."
"Ugh, alright, yeah." He pushes away from the wall and raises an eyebrow at me. "Wanna come watch me work?"
"Not particularly," I reply, pulling my phone out and scrolling through social media. I've found her social media profiles since discovering that Jordan goes by a different name publicly. Admittedly, they're very locked down, but staring at that small square picture provides me with some comfort. I've felt like I've been spiraling since I scented her. She's all I can think about, her scent lingering in my nose and my body aching to hold her.
"Rafe…" Slime says, backing slowly into the room. "You need to come watch me work, alright?"
I look up from my phone to see the stricken look on my packmate's face and slowly rise to my feet. "Sure thing, man. What's up?"
He shakes his head and motions for me to follow him into the lobby. Sitting in rickety wooden chairs are a Beta woman with mousy hair, a cute button nose in jeans and a black t-shirt, and an Alpha who looks enough like her that it's clear they're family.
Something about the Alpha feels familiar. He's well dressed, in the type of clothing I'd see around the office, with sandy blonde hair and deep green eyes. He takes up so much space, tall and broad-shouldered but not beefed up like Cyrus. No, most of the space he occupies is his presence.
"Absolutely not," the Alpha snarls, rising to his feet. "We're leaving. Athena, call a tow. We're going to another shop."
"Icky, what's going on?" the Beta woman asks, pulling on his sleeve to get him to sit.
"What's wrong is that this asshole is one of the ones who hurt Jordan!"
Oh, well, that is a coincidence indeed.
This is the Alpha. The one Jordan is bonded to.
Our missing packmate.
No wonder he feels so familiar to me, like deja vu, but in person form.
"Vick," Slime says, taking a slow, gentle step forward.
"Icarus," the Alpha spits. "Only Jordan calls me Vick."
"Icarus," Slime amends. "Obviously, none of this was planned, but we'd be remiss if we didn't take this opportunity for what it is."
Well, there's my Simon. I doubt Slime regularly drops words like 'remiss.'
"I have no desire to spend time with you, Simon. Jordan wants nothing to do with you or your pack, and neither do I." He grabs the woman by the arm and pulls her from the chair. "We're leaving, Athena."
She digs her heels into the concrete floor and glares at the Alpha. "Not until you tell me what the hell is going on, big bro."
Brother. That makes sense. I'm on the peripheral, unnoticed by those participating in the stare-down in the lobby, as I lean against the door frame and look at the man who's supposed to be my packmate—the man who is bonded to my Omega.
"What's going on, ma'am, is that Icarus is my packmate, bonded to my Omega, and is keeping her from me." Slime's voice is calm, even, and gentle when he addresses the Beta.
She stares at him with confusion, chewing on her lower lip. "Ya, you're part of that pack that broke Jordan's heart and pushed her away, right? The ones that have been stalking her?"
"Stalking is a bit of an overstatement, isn't it?" I finally interject myself into the conversation.
"And who the hell are you?" Icarus glares at me with a bit of shock, having just noticed me.
I take a step forward and hold out my hand. "Rafe Stargazer."
"Oh, why am I not surprised," he groans, throwing his hands up. "Why are you assholes everywhere?"
"Because we're pack!" Slime shouts, finally losing his cool. "We've found each other, and now the universe is pulling us together because we're supposed to be a pack."
"The universe can fuck off. Being around you hurts my Omega, and she's my top priority." The Alpha runs his fingers through his hair, pacing across the small lobby. His sister is glaring at all of us equally, tapping her foot and clicking her tongue as the three of us trade glares.
"Look, Icky, yeah, this whole thing is messed up. And you know I love Jordan. But if these guys are your pack…"
"Athena, stay out of this. It's more complex than you understand." There's a significant age difference between them, and I can immediately tell his patronizing tone hits a nerve.
"Oh, is it too complex for my itty bitty Beta brain to understand, Icarus ?" She pokes a finger into his broad chest, wrinkling her nose. "I may not be an Alpha or an Omega, but I know pack dynamics. Especially dysfunctional ones. You forget I had a pack before their Omega demanded they get rid of me."
Well, that is brutal. I kind of want to know her story. What kind of pack would drop a member so easily? It's precisely the fate we were trying to keep Jordan from having.
"You will continue to be drawn to these other Alphas because it's your destiny just as much as Jordan is. And if they're her destiny, too? You all need to figure it out because otherwise, you'll all be hurting." She shoves her fists into her slim hips. "You're staring down the barrel of scent sickness."
Slime takes several steps closer to the pair, his eyes wild. "What do you mean hurting? What's scent sickness?"
"Oh, do tell them, Icky. Part of me wonders if you've even mentioned it to Jordan yet."
The Alpha with the unfortunate nickname scrubs his hands down his face, shoulders drooping. "I haven't told her. I didn't want to add to her stress. I'm figuring out a workaround."
"One of you want to tell us what's going on?" I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. "Because it feels like you two need to share with the class."
Icarus slumps down in the worn chair and buries his face in his hands. "There hasn't been much research on it, but some studies report adverse health effects in unbonded Omegas who find their scent matches and don't spend significant time around them." He sits up and leans back, adjusting the collar of his shirt before continuing. "Our scent is driven by pheromones, which is a combination of our unique distant shifter ancestry, our genomes, and that strange magic that seems to pull us together. Alphas produce pheromones in spades when around their Omega, which obviously increases tenfold during a heat. It's not actually the knot that satisfies a heat, did you know that? It's the pheromones. Otherwise, how would female Omegas be satisfied through their heat with a female Alpha? Pheromones happen to be at their peak when an Alpha's knot is expanded, so as a society, we've made the correlation that the need for sexual stimulus and pheromones during heat means an Omega needs a knot when, in all actuality, they would be-"
"Get to the point, Icky," the Beta woman, Athena, chastises. "You don't need to show off that you're a doctor. It's grossly obvious."
"Fuck, fine. Basically, there have been several studies showing that an Omega's body gets almost addicted to an Alpha's pheromones if they're a scent match. So to be without them can throw them into withdrawal." He awkwardly pulls at the cuffs of his shirt, looking anywhere but Slime and me. "With the same symptoms of drug withdrawal."
"Hold on," Slime snarls. "Do you mean to tell me that you keeping Jordan from us actively hurts her?"
"There is no way to tell if she'll be affected! It's just a hypothesis right now. The phenomenon is still being studied. There is the possibility that my scent alone will be enough to stave off the sickness."
"No, don't even attempt to hedge it like that. You're a doctor," I say, gesturing at his sister, "your sister just said as much. Tell us, Doctor, do you believe there is veracity to this theory?"
A bell dings over the door as another biker comes in, grunting a hello at Slime and heading onto the shop floor, oblivious to the tension between all of us. Eventually, Icarus closes his eyes and sighs, resting his hands loosely in his pockets.
"While not every Omega is susceptible to it, enough are that it needs to be monitored."
"That settles it, then," Slime says, clapping his hands. "We're coming over for dinner."