Chapter 5 #2
I could never just avoid "some" of them. They were a pack, where one went, the others followed. If I ran into Tae-min at a shop or Min-jun at a crosswalk or Jae-won in a conference room, the bond would trigger regardless of my feelings about it. The pack mark ensured that.
Breaking one bond would affect all five, the pack connection meant they were intertwined, their souls woven together in ways that single-mate bonds could never replicate.
If I tried to sever my connection to Hwan, the trauma would ripple through to Jin-ho, and from there to the three I hadn't even met yet.
My mother had barely survived breaking one bond with one alpha who wasn't pack-bonded to anyone.
Five pack bonds.
It would be suicide. Instant, absolute, unsurvivable suicide.
That option was never on the table, my omega said quietly. You knew that. Deep down, you've always known that. Five flowers meant five bonds meant completion or death. There was never a third choice.
I stumbled out of the bathroom before my legs could give out completely.
The fever that had been building all day spiked without warning, a wave of heat that made me grab the doorframe for balance, my vision swimming at the edges.
My mark burned, both colored flowers hot to the touch, throbbing in time with my racing pulse.
Soul sickness, some distant part of my brain supplied. Two incomplete bonds now. It's accelerating everything.
I made it to my desk, some desperate part of me thinking if I could just do something normal, something routine, maybe everything would settle down.
Maybe I could outthink this the way I'd outthought everything else in my life.
I opened my laptop with shaking hands and pulled up a new document, my fingers finding the keys through muscle memory alone.
Writing. I could write. That's what I did when the world felt too overwhelming, I took the chaos inside me and transformed it into words, into lyrics, into something that might mean something to someone someday.
Everything that came out was wrong.
Five threads pulling me under Five voices calling me home
I deleted the lines. Tried again.
Pack-claimed before I had a choice Drowning in destiny's voice
No. That was worse. Too close to the truth I was trying to escape.
They found me anyway Despite the walls I built Five hands reaching through the dark Five reasons why I—
I slammed the laptop shut and shoved away from the desk so hard the chair nearly tipped over.
My notebook, my new notebook, since I'd lost the old one when I'd collided with Hwan, sat on the desk beside me.
Then the new one I was just starting I left back at the conference room.
I grabbed it and threw it across the room without thinking, watching it hit the wall with an unsatisfying thump and fall to the floor, pages splayed open like an accusation.
Everything I tried to write was about them. Every word that came out was shaped by the bonds burning in my chest, by the two flowers blooming on my neck, by the three more that were coming whether I wanted them or not.
Was this what it meant to be pack omega? Was this what "completion" felt like — having your entire identity consumed by the bonds until you couldn't even create something that was purely your own?
I was shaking again.
Not just my hands this time, all of me. Fine tremors running through every muscle, my jaw clenched so tight it ached, tears burning behind my eyes that I refused to let fall.
I paced my apartment like a caged animal, back and forth across the worn hardwood floors, my omega pacing alongside me in some internal space I couldn't see but could definitely feel.
Stop fighting, she pleaded. You're making it worse. We need to calm down. We need—
"I know what you need," I snapped. "You want them. You want me to roll over and present and let five alphas claim me like I'm some kind of—"
That's not what I want. Her voice was sharper now, frustrated in a way I'd never heard from her before. I want to feel SAFE. I want to stop hurting. The bonds are burning because we keep running from them. Our body is fighting itself trying to complete connections we won't let form. If we just—
"No."
—let ourselves rest—
"NO."
—build a nest—
I stopped pacing.
My hands were already reaching for the throw blanket on my couch.
I hadn't even realized I'd moved. Hadn't noticed my feet carrying me across the room, my fingers closing around the soft fabric before my conscious mind caught up to what my body was doing.
I stood there frozen, staring at the fuzzy grey throw like it had personally betrayed me, like it was somehow complicit in my omega's mutiny.
Please, she whispered, and the fight drained out of her voice. Please, just this. Just let us have this one thing. You don't have to let them in. You don't have to complete the bonds. But let us nest. Let us feel safe for just a little while.
"I'm not nesting," I said out loud, to the empty apartment, to myself, to her. "I'm fine. I'm in control."
I wasn't. The blanket was so soft in my hands. Impossibly soft, the kind of plush microfiber that was meant for burrito-wrapping yourself on cold nights, that I'd bought years ago specifically for its texture and then barely used because nesting was what omegas did and I wasn't that kind of omega.
Except I was.
I had always been exactly that kind of omega. I'd just been too afraid, too ashamed, to admit it.
Please.
I was so tired. So scared. So overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours that I could barely remember what normal felt like.
My body was failing. My omega was awake and pressing against walls that had held firm for seven years.
And somewhere out there, three more alphas were waiting to trigger three more bonds that would either complete me or destroy me, and I didn't know which possibility terrified me more.
The blanket was so soft.
"Fine," I whispered. "Fine. Just... fine."
I started gathering. It wasn't frantic this time, wasn't the unconscious midnight wandering that had built the nest I'd made unconditionally before. This was deliberate. Conscious. A choice, however reluctant, made with full awareness of what it meant.
The throw blanket came first, clutched against my chest like armor.
Then the couch cushions — the soft ones from the back, not the decorative ones that were more style than substance.
The hoodie draped over my desk chair, the one I'd owned for years and worn until it was impossibly soft and smelled like me and only me.
Extra pillows from the hall closet, still in their plastic packaging from when I'd bought them on sale and never gotten around to using.
A fuzzy blanket I'd forgotten I owned, shoved in the back of a cabinet, probably a gift from someone I couldn't remember for an occasion that had faded from memory.
I carried everything to my bedroom in armfuls, my omega humming with quiet satisfaction each time I added something new to the pile.
The nest from last night was still there — I hadn't dismantled it, hadn't had time between waking up and running to meetings and fleeing from alphas whose scents still clung to my memories like perfume. Now I added to it, consciously this time, building the walls higher and the center softer.
My omega guided my hands without words, a gentle pressure that said here and yes and perfect as I arranged each piece.
The throw blanket went around the outer edge, creating a soft barrier.
The couch cushions formed a foundation, supportive but yielding.
Pillows built up the walls, creating a protected space in the center.
The hoodie and the fuzzy blanket layered in the middle, creating a cocoon of softness that practically begged to be crawled into.
When I finished, I stood back and looked at what I'd created.
It was beautiful.
Actually, genuinely beautiful, in a way that surprised me given how reluctant I'd been to build it.
A perfect circle of softness and safety, layered in shades of grey and cream and pale blue that shouldn't have worked together but somehow did.
The pillows formed protective walls just high enough to feel enclosed without being claustrophobic.
The blankets created a cocoon in the center, layered and arranged with an instinct I hadn't known I possessed.
My omega practically vibrated with satisfaction.
See? she whispered. This is what we needed. This is what we've always needed.
I climbed into the center of the nest.
The effect was immediate.
My racing heart began to slow, the frantic pounding settling into something closer to normal.
My breathing, which had been shallow and fast since I'd walked through my apartment door, finally deepened, each inhale drawing in the familiar scent of my own space, my own safety.
The fever still burned beneath my skin, and the bonds still ached in my chest, but the edge was taken off.
The desperation that had been clawing at me for hours finally, finally eased.
Safe, my omega sighed, settling into the softness with a contentment that felt almost foreign after so many years of being caged. Den. Nest. Safe.
"Okay," I whispered, curling into a ball in the center of my creation, pulling one of the blankets over me like a shield against the world. "Okay. This helps."
I lay there for a long time, cocooned in softness, forcing my scattered thoughts into some kind of order.
Facts. I needed to focus on facts.
Fact: I had five soulmates.
Fact: They were all members of SIREN, the most famous alpha pack in the country.
Fact: Two bonds had already triggered in less than twenty-four hours.
Fact: Three more were inevitable — not if, but when.
Fact: The pack shared a soulmark, which meant they were biologically bound to each other AND to me.
Fact: Running wasn't a long-term solution.
Fact: Breaking the bonds wasn't an option — not with five pack-bonded alphas.
Fact: I was probably going to die no matter what I did.
That last one hit harder than I expected. I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, pressing my face into the soft fabric, and forced myself to think through the options.
Option one: Complete the bonds. Let them claim me. Become pack omega, bound to five alphas for the rest of my life. Become consumed, maybe. Controlled, probably. Lost in a sea of alpha scent and omega instinct until there was nothing left of the person I'd fought so hard to be.
Option two: Break the bonds. Try to sever the connections before they consumed me.
Die in the process — because if my mother barely survived breaking one bond with one alpha who wasn't pack-bonded to anyone, there was absolutely no way I'd survive breaking five pack bonds.
The attempt alone would probably kill me before I even finished the first severance.
Option three: Keep running. Refuse to complete the bonds, refuse to break them, just exist in limbo. Die slowly from soul sickness instead of quickly from severance.
Every option ended in destruction.
Every path led to losing myself.
Or, my omega murmured, her voice softer now, almost hesitant, every option ends in them. In pack. In home.
"That's not—"
You keep saying what it's not. But you don't know what it IS. You've never let yourself find out.
I didn't have an answer for that.
The nest was warm around me, soft and safe in a way I hadn't felt since I was sixteen years old and our maid had found me building a blanket fort in my closet after I first presented.
I'd been so ashamed then. Afraid of what it meant about me, about my designation, about the future that awaited an omega who couldn't control her instincts.
The nest had helped then, too. Even when I'd been too scared to admit it.
Maybe... maybe I didn't have to fight everything.
The thought slipped through my defenses before I could stop it, and I was too exhausted to push it away.
I reached for my phone, suddenly desperate to talk to someone who wasn't the voice inside my head.
Someone grounded and real and separate from the chaos of bonds and destiny and pack alphas who smelled like sunshine and woodsmoke.
My fingers found Jeni's contact without conscious thought.
Can we meet tomorrow? I need to talk.
I stared at the words for a long moment, watching the cursor blink, before adding:
It's important.
The response came almost immediately, like she'd been waiting by her phone: Of course. Same café? 10am?
The same café. The one outside of which I'd collided with Hwan.
The place where the first bond had triggered and everything had started falling apart.
Also the place where Jeni had listened to me talk about my fears, where she'd held my hands and told me I deserved happiness even if it came in a form I didn't expect.
Maybe facing it was better than running from it.
Yes, I typed back. Thank you.
I let the phone drop into the nest beside me and burrowed deeper into the blankets, pulling the soft cocoon around me like armor. Sleep was pulling at me, heavy and demanding, and for once I didn't fight it. My omega was quiet now, settled, apparently content with the small victory of the nest.
Tomorrow I would talk to Jeni. Tomorrow I would figure out what to do about the three remaining SIREN members who were going to trigger bonds with me whether I wanted them to or not.
Tonight, I will just rest.