58. Jeremy
Chapter fifty-eight
Jeremy
Willow takes a deep breath and looks directly into the camera, eyes filled with pain.
“Fifteen. A wonderful, wild time to be alive. Like most teenagers, I spent my time at school with the normal complaints about too much work while reveling in informal art studio spaces and lunches on the top oval. My wonderful friend group enjoyed hunting digital pets, road trips to the ocean, and eating pizza under the stars. Resigned to be betas since we hadn’t revealed a different designation, we thought we’d stay friends forever. ”
She pauses, collecting her thoughts, and I smile, picturing my omega as a care-free teenager. I already know from our few talks that she grew up in a foster home, which was a neutral environment for her. But at least school provided a good experience.
For a while.
Willow continues, gaze steady into the camera. “One morning, I woke up in night-sweats, my scent so thick in my nose I showered twice. Convinced I was imagining things, I went to school as normal. Except every alpha head turned as I walked past.”
She rolls her bottom lip between her teeth, her scent in the room spiking with the memory.
“April 22, I became an omega.” She holds out on hand to examine her fingers. “My nails grew faster, my voice softened, and my hair suddenly went from wild and unmanageable to luxurious and smooth, as if I had keratin treatments every night.”
“The bonus gift?” Her sad smile tugs at my heart.
“Heightened sense of smell. I recognized every person in a room before laying eyes on them. Alphas set my stomach aflutter. Hot dreams, slick . . .” Willow winces and clasps her knee tight enough to wrinkle her dress. “Overnight my body turned upside down.”
Our bond tingles with her unease. I dig my fingers into my jeans, remembering that same confusing discovery, although mine happened when I was thirteen. Like my voice box deepening and hair growing in new places, it was as if the ground kept shifting underfoot.
“And then they looked my way.” Willow’s voice breaks a little.
I squeeze my fist, aching to run to her side and offer her support. But all I can do is sit by the cameras and keep listening in silence.
“Sixteen-year-old Drew Summen, the drummer in the school band, seventeen-year-old Phil Kalar, captain of the basketball team, and eighteen-year-old Bryson Ilvine, a brooding, motorbike riding god of Cleveland South Senior High School.”
I cross my arms over the tight sensation in my chest. My omega struggles to say their names, the words clearly leaving a bad taste in her mouth. I wish I could drag them out and make them pay, but even if I could, that wouldn’t change the past.
“Now that I think back,” Willow continues. “I can’t recall Bryson being good at anything. But to high school girls, he had the looks and the raspy adult voice to make all our butterflies flock out of control.”
Joel and I exchange loaded glances across the camera gear. A muscle ticks in his jaw. He’s working very hard to keep his emotions in check, but they’re simmering in the bond with dark intent.
Willow sucks her cheeks in for a moment, gathering her strength. When she speaks, her voice rings hollow, as if she’s speaking about someone else’s life.
“He took my virginity on a cold autumn night in the back of a borrowed car. They paraded me around, calling me their “omega chick” and saying betas weren’t worth my time.
One by one, my friends stopped wanting to hang out, and I thought it was my fault.
Turns out, the three alphas were telling them I didn’t want to see them. ”
She stops, such a tortured look in her eyes I can barely stay in my seat. The bond throbs with mental pain, her rising anxiety setting my teeth on edge.
Moisture glints in Willow’s eyes as she adds, “If any of my friends see this, I want you to know it wasn’t my choice to cut you out. I take responsibility for letting it happen, but that was never what I wanted.”
The bond twists. Alessandro rocks forward, one hand on his stomach and his face marred with nausea. We’re all reliving the nightmare with her, and from the way Willow’s emotions spiral, I can tell we’re getting to the worst of it.
“By the time I was seventeen, I was bonded and living in their apartment. That’s when the abuse started.
They encouraged me to drop out of school, to stay home, and play homemaker to their perverted needs.
Degraded, treated like a sex toy, and isolated from friends and services, my life became a living hell.
They even determined what I was allowed to eat. ”
Her breath shudders and she digs her nails into her thighs.
“And I believed that was love.”
A lump lodges in my throat, and I shift uneasily on the stool. Fuck, how am I supposed to listen to the shit she went through and not comfort her? Joel squeezes both hands into fists, equally upset. A tear trickles down Alessandro’s cheek, the alpha so frozen in place he looks like a statue.
I drag my attention back to Willow’s story, wishing she didn’t have to tell it. Wishing none of it was true.
“My story doesn’t end there. You see, it wasn’t just about being isolated and treated like a sex toy.
” She lifts her chin, valiantly pulling herself together despite trembling all through the bond.
“What really broke me was the way they wore down my sanity. I learned years later in therapy that it’s called gaslighting, but at the time, all I thought was that I couldn’t do anything right; that I was a no-good omega.
The meals I cooked, the coffee I served, the sex we had, cleaning the house.
Even the way I went into heat. They criticized everything, criticized me. When I was eighteen they took . . .”
Willow’s voice breaks. She swallows hard before swiping at her cheek.
“. . . they took my nest away. Said I had to earn it back. Cut my favorite cushions to shreds and hung my c-cashmere b-blanket on the . . . banister upstairs.” Her bottom lip quivers. “I wasn’t allowed upstairs because that was the boys’ zone.”
I jerk in shock. They did fucking what exactly? Rage boils through my chest, and I can’t be sure where it originates, because all three of us alphas are steaming with livid pheromones. Stripping an omega's nest? Desecrating a church would hardly be more unholy.
And to take her blanket away and hang it where she would see it? Cruel beyond words. No wonder Willow always flinched when I moved her blanket. Even the way she asked so hesitantly if I liked her nest when she first saw it hits differently now.
A sob lodges in my throat.
Willow flashes me a tiny, lop-sided smile, and it breaks my heart even more.
She’s trying so hard to be brave and finally tell her story.
Joel jerks, a muscle in his jaw ticking sharply.
Has he seen it too? The way she feels the need to cling to that sequin blanket of hers?
All this time she’s still been trapped in that terrible past.
No wonder she fought us.
I reach out and grab Joel’s rigid fist. Right now, we need to feed her strength and calm so she can get through this.
Willow takes a few deep breaths and returns to the camera.
“I’ll never forget the first time they left part way through my heat and told me to finish it by myself.”
Willow drops her gaze, studying her hands. “I thought . . . I believed them when they said I was flawed. Too needy, my heats too demanding.”
Her delicate throat spasms, a faint outward sign of the trembling in our shared bond.
“They told me that because I wasn’t good enough to satisfy them, they needed to fuck other women.
Omegas.” She rocks back and forth in her seat, wincing.
“I felt it every time, in the bond. Every day, they compared me to the women they were meeting, told me how glamorous, or well-spoken, or smart they were. It all seemed to prove there was some kind of deficiency in me.”
I shake my head vehemently and she catches the movement. Although she doesn’t look my way, a ghost of a smile flickers over her face.
“I know that’s not true now, but back then, they were my entire world, and they had me in the palms of their hands.
“The other omegas, they . . . well it broke me. Especially when they started dating one lady. And that was when they banished me to the basement. I couldn’t resist the alpha domination in the bond, and I had no one to check in on me by then, since everyone had been driven away.
All their friends just laughed and called me the hag under the stairs. ”
A growl simmers in my chest, and I grind my palm into my sternum to keep the sound from breaking loose.
The bond boils with our combined alpha disgust, and Joel’s arms tremble from how hard he’s gripping his chair.
If it’s this hard for us just to hear it, it must have been torture for a gentle omega with no one to turn to.
“Willow, if this is too hard—” I whisper into the silence.
Willow holds her hand up. It hurts, but she’s simply trying to keep her emotions at bay long enough to tell her story. She straightens her spine, deep breathing.
“When I was twenty-two, the Ilvines came home one day and told me to pack my bags and move out; they were bringing in their new omega, and I wasn’t to be around. But, and here’s the kicker, they refused to sever our bond. That was the first time my life ended.”
She rubs my bite mark on her wrist, and our bond tingles. But I know it’s the empty one underneath that she’s thinking about.
“I lived in my car for eleven months. Twice I went through my heats on my own, using a rag stuffed up my lady parts in place of a knot. That was before I discovered heat suppressants. But pills couldn’t stop the livewire of a bond living in my chest.
“Every time my supposed pack fucked another person I lived it, felt their ruts crawl inside my own skin.” Twinkles of light catch on her collarbone, revealing a dew of sweat as Willow grips the sides of the bucket seat.
“And then they bonded her. I had another omega I never wanted, never even met, living in my soul.”
Willow shudders, her thin shoulders heaving.
“I called my pack for days after, begging them to end our relationship properly. They laughed me off. The final time I called, they . . .” Her head falls back and she stares up.
I don’t want to hear what those motherfuckers did, but I grit my teeth and wait for the knife plunge.
“. . . they jerked off to my pleas.”
Those no good, mother-fucking bastards! I jump up with my hands balled, knocking the camera right over in my haste.
“Fuck,” I mutter, diving for it and setting it upright.
It’s still running so I wave both hands toward Willow in apology, along with a thumbs up to show it’s still recording.
I sit gingerly, glancing around. Tears flow freely down Alessandro’s face, but somehow, he doesn’t make a single sniffling noise.
Our bond aches with the combined agony.
We all knew, from her hesitancy and the way she asked for permission for the most ordinary things, she’d been treated badly. But the truth shakes me to my core.
Willow blinks hard, fighting her own tears. “I learned, with great difficulty, to shut that bonded part of myself down, to move through my day like it wasn’t screaming in my head.”
She looks down, playing her fingers across her lap for a moment. “I worked cash jobs, washing dishes and picking fruit. Moved my way across the country from Ohio to Texas. Got arrested for sleeping in my car. Kept doing it anyway until I could afford a place to live.
“When I got the keys to my first rental, I vowed that I’d never again put myself in such a vulnerable position. The first seeds of Boss Omega had been planted. I researched how people get wealthy without family money. Read three hundred books on self-improvement.”
Wow. I nod to myself, thoroughly impressed. Alessandro moves for the first time, turning to meet my gaze with raised brows. I bet we haven’t read three hundred books in all our lifetimes combined.
Willow pauses for a drink of water, but her silence brings me no joy. She’s steeling herself in the bond for more difficult territory, and it makes my knees weak to think there could be something worse.
“I started taking action. But every day, I lived with those alpha voices in my head telling me I was worthless, that I should stay in the kitchen. With the bond screaming at every moment that I was replaceable. That all I was good for was spreading my legs.”
She looks up, straight into the camera. “The same thing so many of you have told me in the comments.
“I secured a full-time job, doing administration for a local orchard. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to build a routine.
I put savings aside and invested those in the stock exchange.
In the evenings, I worked on digital templates which I sold online.
I put that money into affiliate funnels.
The proceeds got invested into income-producing shares.
“And then my life ended for the second time.”