42. Flatline
Flatline
Kelya
Tony convulses on the shaggy rug. I hold him tight, finding it funny that our roles are reversed. I hold him tight, not wanting him to hurt himself as he processes what he just did. What he had the power to do. It’s something no one, not a chemical or procedure, can even do—eradicate a bond.
He’s incredible.
My man. My alpha.
But for a small moment, I was so fucking scared. I felt myself slip away, and everything became cold. I fought my way back to him.
Tony finally calms down, but he’s absolutely unconscious.
I prop his head up with a pillow, remove his glasses, and then sit next to him, feeling out my bond.
It’s just him. I didn’t realize how intense the feeling I had with my nest was until it was gone.
Like losing a limb you never should have had.
I touch the Livingston mark, and it’s nothing but an old wound now. It will eventually heal, but may leave a scar. I reach up to my new bite. It doesn’t hurt at all, but it’s very sensitive.
His phone keeps ringing in his pocket, so I pull it out. It’s Matty.
“Hello?”
“Oh my god, Kelya. I’m with Ash in the hospital. He flatlined for seven seconds. He fucking died, but then came back. It was out of control. But you’re fine! Right? You’re fine?”
“Fuck, I’m fine, but what happened to Ash!?”
“His machines went haywire; his heart stopped, but by the time the code team got here, he was gasping for breath. When he came back, he was shouting your name.”
“But he’s ok?”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. He’s alive.”
Oh my god, Ash. All my energy went into imagining killing Hollis and Noble, and I seemed to forget about Ash entirely. I grab onto my chest, grateful that he’s fine, and unbonded.
A broken bond can kill an alpha or omega, but only harm a beta. I immediately wonder how bad it was for Noble and Hollis. What if it killed them? I don’t have the urge to hunt them down and stab them in the stomach, but I wouldn’t be mad if this somehow broke them.
“Kelya, what happened?”
“Tony bonded me, and it severed…everything else.”
She makes a shocked noise and then laughs.
“Damn. Tony didn’t think that was real. I didn’t think that was real.”
“It’s real. It’s insane. There’s nothing there. No bond with my nest. No bond with the alphas or Ash. Just Tony and me now.”
She laughs again and retells everything to Ash.
I stroke Tony’s face. He’s so damned handsome. And completely mine. I look around again, still too worked up to really get a picture of this place. It’s Acadian style. Very southern. The furniture is arranged oddly, but all great pieces.
“So, everyone is ok?” Matty asks me, done talking with Ash.
“Tony passed out. But yeah, we are good. His dad was here.”
“Ugh, Chief Racine?”
“That’s the guy. I think it went well.”
“That’s great. That’s good. They haven’t talked in a long time.”
“I could tell. Do you know anything about Hollis and Noble?”
“Yeah, I overheard that one of them coded, too, and they needed to restart his heart. The other one had a seizure. Ash had it the easiest…though that’s not saying much. Do you want me to find out more?”
I look inwards and discover I don’t really care anymore. All I care about is moving on. I don’t fucking care about those assholes. My only feelings about it are worried that they will hurt another woman.
“Matty, do you think Tony’s bite made it so Hollis and Noble can never bond ever again?”
She’s quiet for a moment. I can feel her weighing her thoughts.
“I’m not a scientist or a bond specialist. That being said, if Tony’s bite caused Ash to lose his heartbeat and stop breathing, obliterating your bond to him from hundreds of miles away, then maybe all they say about bloodhounds is true.
If Hollis and Noble live, I’m sure they’ll be forever changed. ”
When I pulled that trigger, all I was thinking about was stopping Roman.
I was thinking about that omega they had in their house, the one that chose the dark, coyote-filled desert over them.
I was scared that if he wasn’t put down, he’d keep harming people.
If those alphas live through this, I want them to be castrated.
If I’m wrong, and they recover, I will rip out their teeth.
“I thought you were going back to Virginia?” I hope Matty doesn’t hear my violent plan.
She waffles at my question, maybe even pretending she didn’t hear me. Then she has to attend to her baby, so she ends the call, asking me to have Tony call her back.
That was weird. I wonder why she’s there with Ash…
I look back down at my alpha. He’s out cold.
I stand up, feeling odd. Itchy. Needy. Empty.
What is this feeling?
I walk around the house, smelling the old pack’s scent and seeking Tony’s, which is nonexistent. This place should smell like him.
It reminds me of him.
The kitchen is beautiful. It has a glass roof and so many cabinets. I walk around, passing my hand over the countertops, tabletops, walls, banisters, and doorframes. There’s still so much leftover from the other pack.
I’m filled with a ton of energy, so I get to work.
I pack everything and pile it in the garage. It takes hours. I’m able to slip into a meditative state while I do it all so it barely feels like work.
I’m feeling odd.
I save the nest for last. I stop and drink another protein shake, and then finally make my way to the nest.
My heart pounds as I ascend not one, but two, sets of stairs.
It’s on the second level. The closer I get, the stronger the omega’s scent.
Tony is going to flip when he smells this place.
If it’s obnoxious to me, I can’t imagine what he will go through.
Lemon and poppyseed permeates even through the door.
Yuck.
That’s gotta change.
At the top of the stairs, there’s just a dark landing with a low ceiling. It feels congested. I push down the handle and enter the room. Morning light filters through the skylights and windows. So much fucking light. The ceiling has to be 7-feet tall and all windows.
It’s like a bird’s nest on top of the house.
I’m on top of the world, perched and nestled.
When I walked into my nest in Saint Kane, I felt a deep relief. Here, I feel my heart pounding, filling my body with every chemical it can. My inner omega needs to fix.
I walk around, opening the heavy curtains that don’t match the space at all, and avoid the mess with big steps. So many damned ugly pillows and discarded clothing items. Blankets and stuffed animals.
I go back out and get garbage bags, then return to shove everything inside. Each lemon and poppyseed item I hide away gives me a small bit of satisfaction. I slide the curtains off the rods and fold those into bags, too. I work until the sun has fully risen.
I pile everything up in the garage, then come to the nest with scent-blocking spray I found in a cabinet. Every last corner gets sprayed down. The scent remains, so I pull the mattress out and through the house, depositing it on the giant pile.
When I come back in for water, I see Tony still hasn’t moved. I doubt he’s slept since before he ran through the desert like a monster.
My savior.
I go back to the car and get all the clothes and things he had in the backseat and carry them up to the nest. I build up something decent in the corner, getting lost in the motions of it. The lemon and poppyseed scent is finally gone, but it’s missing something though.
It’s missing a cypress smelling alpha.
I frown. There’s no way I can get his sleeping body up the stairs and back in here.
Frustrated, I take his car keys and leave.
I’m wearing his shirt and my ruined pants, but I have his wallet and my phone in the car while I head to the store to get everything we need.
I get a cart of groceries, another cart of towels, bedsheets, and pillows, another just of clothes.
At another store, I load up on toiletries.
Expensive shampoos. Nail clippers. Red nail polish. Razors. Everything.
When I get home, the man is still asleep.
That’s fine. He can wake up when everything is ready.
I spend the day putting things away, showering, changing into fresh clothes, making things into a nice home, and finally listening to my music. Loud. He has a speaker system in the house that I’m now madly in love with. But nothing wakes him.
The A/C is working great, but there’s a thickness to the air I haven’t felt for a while.
It coats my skin and hair. My curls are curling.
My skin feels soft. I lay down next to Tony and brush back his hair with my fingers.
I don’t want him to get too hot or too cold, so I put a thin blanket on his legs and hope that’s good.
After a small nap, I make myself dinner and watch him from the countertop as I eat my turkey sandwich.
When is he going to wake up and scent my nest? I’m starting to get irritated.
As the night comes, my skin is getting hotter and hotter.
My desire to retreat into the nest comes so naturally that I don’t question it until I find myself standing in the middle of it.
Oh my god.
Did I just nest somewhere new?
It wasn’t even fucking hard at all in the end, was it? This is how it’s always been for omegas—an instinctual desire to create a little space for themselves to retreat to. Find solace in. Call their own.
I did it, and it was as easy as water.
My breath shudders, and I look towards the sky, blocked by Spanish moss-covered trees.
I don’t want to go back to my old nest at all. There’s no feeling of being spread thin. I’m contained. Here. In this nest. For now.
I could nest somewhere else if I wanted.
Maybe I’ll be like some omegas and make a portable nest, one with little objects I carry around with me. How fun would that be?
I crawl into the little pile of Tony’s clothes, along with new pillows and a blanket, and curl into everything.
I’ve got all sizes and textures. Down pillows with green damask covers.
Square pillows covered in faux fur. Little cotton pillows for shoving under my chin.
I pull up a soft yellow blanket and throw it over my head.
As I drift to sleep, I realize this will be the last time I go to sleep before my heat.