Chapter 36
Joon's hands flew to cover his mouth in horror as realization dawned on his face. "Indi, thats not—I mean it's not—"
I blinked, watching the way the omega's body trembled, his usually sweet fruity scent going overripe and alcoholic in the tense silence between us.
He bonded another alpha. Marcus. Not you.
Someone else.
Maybe this is what my dolls felt like. Wholly realized people with wants and needs, trapped inside of a vessel that didn't offer the luxury of being able to communicate with them.
My emotions tangled together like the cord of a pair of headphones, too fast for me to understand how it happened, and too complex for me to work out with any real sense of clarity.
"I'm sorry," I said after several beats of Joon stammering, my voice thick with restraint against the wave of anger making it hard to think straight. "Can you run that by me again?"
His dark eyes widened in horror. "I..." Joon started, trailing off as they stared, lips moving without sound.
Fear. I recognized the look well, but I’d never seen it pointed towards me. Not from Joon.
"Did something happen with Marcus?" I prompted, half-heartedly hoping that I'd misunderstood him.
After all the time we spent together, surely Joon wouldn’t have bonded another alpha… Right?
We were waiting until he was ready. Talking it through.
It wouldn’t make sense for him to let Marcus of all people to bond him. They barely managed to say a couple sentences to each other without devolving into an argument.
Not to mention the alpha pushed Joon at every opportunity to bond.
Oh.
I took a single deep breath, trying to quiet the horrible ringing in my ears.
Maybe, he’d misspoken.
Yeah, that had to be it. Clearly, when Joon said bond, he meant that they’d figured out a way to relate to each other. To get along.
But even as I desperately tried to come up with an explanation that didn't make me want to explode with anger, I knew that wasn't what Joon meant.
Not with the way that the omega's scent had transformed from a lovely fall orchard to the rotten tang of a bottle depository.
His lips trembled as their eyes darted between mine and the stairs.
"I, uh..." he stumbled out, wringing his hands anxiously. Another time, I would’ve taken them in my own, told Joon that it was going to be okay. But not now. Not after he’d betrayed me like this.
"Well... last night I got up to go to the bathroom, and I heard Marcus in his room sounding like he was in pain, so I went in…”
I wondered, briefly, if I'd fallen asleep at my desk. I’d been up late, and I’d been working myself pretty hard lately between trying to make time for Eva and making content.
Maybe, this was some kind of sick trick of the mind.
A manifestation of my worst fears come to life.
Somehow, a hyperrealistic nightmare was more believable than my skittish boyfriend deciding to create a permanent link between him and my best friend…
Already praising my own cleverness, I pinched my arm.
"And… well… he was in rut…” Joon went on, his eyes finding the floor.
Ouch. I pinched my skin again, and again. It hurt, but nowhere near as much as the fact that Joon wouldn't look at me.
"Why didn't you tell anyone?" I asked, the hollow note in my voice entirely foreign to my ears. "He could’ve really hurt you."
I wasn't even sure if that was true. Marcus was pretty gentle for his size, and rut or not, I trusted him with Joon.
At least, I did.
And how fuckin' wrong I'd been.
"I should’ve," Joon admitted. "But I got caught up in the moment. And one thing led to another and… we bonded."
"Bonded," I repeated, my jaw flexing. "I see. He bit you?”
I’d kill him. I wasn’t sure how, given he was about twice my size. But Marcus Pond was dead fuckin’—
"No! No… I bit him. But Indi—" Joon said, making a step forward like they were fixing to grab onto my arm.
"Don't." I put my hand up to silence him, the sound of his voice only serving like sandpaper against the thin wall of my patience as I stepped away.
How quick had I been to believe the worst of my packmate to try and explain this away? But really… This was Joon’s choice.
Marcus hadn’t taken advantage of my boyfriend. My boyfriend decided to take a step with an alpha in a way that he’d chosen to avoid with me.
It wasn't that Joon couldn't have a bond, it was that he didn't want one. At least not with me. And what was worse, Marcus wasn't even alpha enough to come tell me about it himself, he had his little omega liar do it for him.
“How long has this been going on, really?”
"What? Indi nothing is going on with me and Marcus, well, not nothing—I’ve been trying to get to know him for months, for you! This was all a big mistake, I–I–I didn't mean to!" He was shouting now, moving forward to make another attempt to grab at me.
I took another step backwards, and another, backing up until my heel hit the bottom stair.
"Don't fuckin’ touch me right now, Joon,” I warned, my skin feeling cold.
“Don't you have an alpha you actually want to go celebrate with?
" I turned, storming up the steps to the first floor with Joon's heavy footfalls echoing behind me, following the whole way as I bypassed the kitchen and headed for the second floor, straight into Marcus' room.
Logic had left the party sometime before I'd crossed the threshold.
Anger and hurt had tied themselves so tightly together that my hindbrain had kicked itself to life, my instincts pushing me into the alpha’s overly neat space.
Joon had often made a point to make a mess of Marcus’ kitchen, but the thing that the omega forgot was that he was used to people touching his equipment because of the restaurant.
If you really wanted to fuck with Marcus, really wanted to do some damage to the alpha—you touched his VHS collection.
"I played fuckin’ buffer between you two for the better part of a year,” I snarled, my fingers hitting the first tape at random, pulling it from the shelf and letting the hard rectangle of plastic slip from the cardboard casing to hit the floor with a clatter and a bounce.
“He treats you like garbage! You can't even fuckin’ be in the same room for more the fifteen minutes without arguing! And that's who you want as your fuckin’ alpha?”
“Indi, please—I swear, it’s not like that—”
“Alright, cool, I get it. Fuck me, right? What happened to ‘I don't want to get that deep again?’ What happened to ‘if it would be anyone, it'd be you?’"
“It was an accident!”
“Right! You just accidentally bit him hard enough to break the skin! God, you must have the strongest jaw muscles of any man alive, Joon!”
If my packmate was going to go around and break things he had no right breaking, I was going to do the same. It wouldn’t fix me and Joon’s relationship. And it certainly wouldn’t make things right between me and Marcus, but I felt so out of control that I just needed to do something, anything.
"Indigo it was really was—I didn't—it wasn't on purpose! I would never do that to you on purpose! I meant it, if it was going to be anyone, it was supposed to be you! It was always going to be you! I don’t want a fucking alpha! I don’t want a bond!” His hand caught my sleeve, and I shook the omega off.
Perhaps I understood the villains in horror movies more than I thought I did. Because now that I was faced with my own point of origin, I sort of agreed with them. It was the moment of no return, and I was nowhere near stopping.
My fingers closed around another cardboard case, yanking it from the bookcase to fling it to the floor. And another. And another. The sound of them hitting the hardwood or the edge of the rug mixing with my furious, panting breaths.
"You wont even fuckin' tell me why! But who cares, right? Turns out you do want an alpha, you just don't want that alpha to be me!"
"I was force bonded!" Joon screamed at me, pawing at the back of my sweatshirt like someone with the upper body strength of a jack rabbit had any chance of stopping me. "By an alpha that—by an alpha that—he didn’t even want me!"
There were so few tapes left on the shelf, it looked like a BlockerBuster closeout sale. I turned away, fixing Joon with a look of disgust.
“Funny. Seems like you have a type.”
I regretted the words the moment they were out of my mouth, but it was too late.
Joon’s face scrunched up with hurt, the omega’s eyes filling with tears. “How could you say that?” he whispered, taking a step away from me like I’d struck him. “Indigo–”
"Thats enough," Marcus said in a low growl, the wave of burned sugar and rotted milk hitting my nose making my stomach turn.
“Joon, I—”
“I said, that’s enough,” the other alpha snapped, taking a step into the room without so much as a glance at the carnage of his prized collection, his attention entirely on my omega.
Not mine. His.
He wrapped a protective arm around Joon’s waist as he reached him, distrust in his mossy eyes as he looked at me like I was a danger. It was the final straw.
“You deserve each other,” I hissed, shoving past them into the hall. “A fuckin’ omega who can’t commit, and an alpha who isn’t worth staying for.”
Joon sobbed, the noise licking a line of fire up my spine as I stormed for my room, taking the closest door—my office.
I slammed the door shut behind with me so much force it rattled the walls, Polina’s clear plastic case tipping off of the shelf. Just barely, I managed to catch her before she hit the ground, turning the box over in my hands with a sniff.
Tears obstructed my vision, making the doll’s painted porcelain face swim blurrily, but one thing was clear: she was disappointed.
I was too.
“I know,” I mumbled, righting myself with a sniff.
Like a picture, she was silent, but Polina didn’t need words to make her feelings known. The judgy look in her eyes enough to prod at the festering wound my hurt and anger had left behind as I sat her back onto her shelf.
“I wish I didn’t say that either.”