Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Rich, creamy coconut fills my senses as I slowly return to my body.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I didn’t dream about Ethel. Maybe it’s because I know what happened to her now. It’s possible I was dreaming of her as a way of processing the trauma of seeing her die.
Or maybe it’s because we were only together for six days, and I’m out of memories.
A familiar tone overshadows the soft beeping noise that woke me. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
My eyes flutter open. My brother, Icarus, sits beside my bed, a laptop resting on his thighs. “I’m okay,” I say through a dry throat. A weight on my stomach and a shifting sensation behind me have my body sinking into the bed, the scent of coconut growing stronger.
Atlas.
“He’ll wake up soon,” my brother says, clearly noticing where my attention went. “He insisted on being in here with you.”
“Are the others here?”
“No,” he says firmly. “Atlas came without them. I get the feeling they didn’t know he left, if the way his phone has been blowing up is any indication.” He closes the lid of the computer and sets it on the small table beside my bed. “He chose you, Athena.”
“He needed treatment.” I can’t let myself believe he came for me, or my heart may break when I learn otherwise. He won’t choose me over his Alphas, men he’s known for way longer than me, and I wouldn’t ask him to.
I’m not a priority.
“He needed his Omega.” My brother’s voice is firm, and my eyes jerk to his at the strength of his tone.
He never talks to me this way. “Take it from someone with a bonded Omega. He needs you as much as you need him. There is no precedent for what you two have gone through, but I do not doubt that fact remains the same.”
“He’s right.” The sleepy voice of my bonded Omega startles me, and I turn onto my side to see him better. Atlas’s handsome face is slack as he wakes up from the sedative, and I can’t stop myself from cupping his stubbled cheek. He nuzzles my hand, purring softly. “I missed you.”
His strong arms band around my waist and pull me flush against his body. All the tension leaves me as I sink into his touch.
“They’re fucking idiots,” he says as he buries his face in my neck, inhaling me. “I told them as much dozens of times before I left.”
“You came for me?” I run my fingers down the back of the blue t-shirt that he’s wearing, part of me unbelieving that he’s actually here.
Is it possible he chose me? That he left the Alphas behind to be with me?
“Of course I did.” Atlas pulls back a little and presses his forehead to mine, lips a hairsbreadth apart. “I will always find you. We traveled to hell together. There is nowhere you could go that I will not join you. I love you, Athena. You are a part of me. I am nothing without you by my side.”
Tears pool in my eyes at his admission. I believe him with the entirety of my being. Even if I couldn’t feel his sincerity flooding our bond, I would know what he says is true.
Because I feel the same.
I want to tell him how I feel. To kiss him, to touch him, to confess my love.
“We need to talk about the disassociation,” Icarus interrupts our moment in the way only an older brother can. I groan, pulling away and fighting not to roll my eyes.
“Does that need to happen right now?” I ask tensely.
“Yes.” His tone brooks no argument, and I groan loudly, sounding like a bratty teenager. “With you both here, it may be best to have you speak to someone about the episode. Atlas, have you noticed Athena leaving her body? As if she’s asleep in her mind, but her body is awake?”
Atlas pulls me closer to him, every line of his body pressed tightly against mine protectively. “Yes. A few times. Why?”
“Because I believe Athena is experiencing a split from her Omega as a way of protecting her from trauma. Have you noticed any disconnect between you and yours?”
I try to remember if I’ve noticed anything strange with Atlas and his Omega nature, but I can’t think of anything other than his bouts of anger and refusal to accept his designation change.
“Besides the fact that it wants to take over, making me nest and present and whine?” His tone drips with condescension. “Or perhaps you mean how everyone treats me like I am a weak, simpering little thing that needs protecting now?”
I wiggle around to face my brother, pressing my back into Atlas’s front. Icarus is resting his elbows on his knees, resting his chin on his hands.
“Being an Omega does not make you weak. It may change the way people see you, but that is their bias shining through. You spoke to my Omega, right?”
“Yeah, Jordan told me all about her struggles presenting late and how that changed her place in society,” Atlas responds. It feels like forever ago that she and Will came over to talk to us about what we went through.
“Then she also told you that you can’t let it ruin your joy over the positive changes in your life.”
“Joy?” I scoff. “What do we have to be joyful about? We were kidnapped and experimented on. You don’t know what we went through.”
“I don’t,” he concedes, leaning back to ruffle his hair. It’s the same color as mine, though curlier, as he keeps it shorter. “No one will ever fully understand what you two went through but each other. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to share it.”
“If you’re saying that we need to go back to those morons,” Atlas begins, fingertips digging into my soft stomach.
“I’m not. I’m telling you to talk to someone. Athena, your dissociative episodes can be dangerous. I need you to speak to someone about how you can merge with your Omega. I’m not saying this as your brother, but as a doctor.”
“You’re a research physician,” I remind him. “Not a psychiatrist.”
He pushes to his feet, and I regret my words immediately.
Hurt colors the face that I have always looked to in times of crisis.
“Fine. I’ll find you a psychiatrist to tell you the same damn thing, Athena.
I may have chosen research over treatment, but that doesn’t mean my training was any less rigorous.
I did my residency, and more than anyone else at this hospital, I understand the unique genetics of this situation.
But if you cannot trust me to have your best interest in mind, then I’ll find someone else. ”
“Stop, Icky, I’m sorry.” I struggle to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. “I’m just feeling defensive. That’s not your fault. I’m sorry for lashing out.”
His shoulders slump, and guilt swims in my stomach. I was gone for weeks, and he spent the whole time blaming himself. And then when I get back, I’m fucked up, and he’s trying his best to help both me and Atlas, and I throw it in his face.
“What do we need to do?”
I squeeze Atlas’s hand so tightly my knuckles turn white.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to lay my trauma out on a silver platter for a doctor to pick through like hors d’oeuvres at a charity ball.
But this is what needs to happen.
After Atlas and I went home with Icarus, my brother told Jordan what was happening, and she arranged an appointment for us with her therapist, Dr. K.
I don’t expect we’ll see Dr. K for long, but she will at least be a stopgap who can refer us to someone for long-term treatment. That’s one thing all of us can agree on.
Healing will not be quick and easy for Atlas and me.
Atlas pulls me into his lap, rubbing his hands down my leggings-clad thighs. “It’s going to be good,” he whispers in my ear. “This is a good thing.”
“You say that now. How are you going to react when she tells you to embrace your inner Omega?”
He winces, fingers tightening on my legs. “Then I’ll listen, if it means you’ll listen to her as well.”
The throbber on the laptop screen stops spinning, and it flashes black before an older Beta woman fills the screen. Her grey hair is in a braid that hangs over her shoulder, and she’s dressed in a navy blue floral blouse.
She looks a bit like an art teacher, which immediately puts me at ease. I worried this would feel clinical, but I should’ve known better.
Jordan wouldn’t have been seeing Dr. K for years if she were stuffy.
“Hi, Athena, Atlas,” the doctor says kindly. “I’m glad to have you here today.”
“Thanks for seeing us on such short notice,” Atlas says, taking control of the meeting without needing me to ask him to. “We appreciate it.”
“I always keep a few slots open for emergencies. Would you like to tell me why you scheduled this appointment?”
As Atlas gets the doctor up to speed on our time in captivity, my mind wanders. I haven’t given myself time to process the revelation of what happened with Ethel and its implications.
Until that dream, I was convinced that Ethel was taken to the treatment room and never returned to me. I knew she didn’t survive the warehouse because there was no way they would have released her, but there was a distance between me and the truth.
Now I know that wasn’t the case. We were taken there together, hooked up to the machines at the same time, and I watched her die.
I watched her die, watched the machine suck the life out of her.
We locked eyes as I watched hers grow glassy and dim.
The needle deep in her hip fed a tube with a yellow fluid running through it.
Another was buried in her chest, this fluid milky and red, and the two combined in a beaker that was fed into a centrifuge and shaken until solids separated from the liquids.
And then the solids were collected, added to a thick base, and injected into my veins.
I had forgotten it all. If Icarus is to be believed, the Omega part of my body that was activated took over, hiding those memories from me, as a way of protecting me.
But that protection is gone.
And all that is left is the chilling realization that the Omega within me isn’t mine at all.
It’s Ethel’s.