Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
KEIRA
I woke up feeling like I was dying.
Not the slow, creeping death I'd watched claim my mother over twelve years — the kind that steals pieces of you so gradually you don't notice you're disappearing until there's almost nothing left.
This was different. Faster. More immediate.
A fever burning beneath my skin like someone had lit a match inside my chest and let it spread, consuming everything in its path until there was nothing left but ash and heat and the desperate need for something I refused to name.
The morning light filtered through my curtains in soft grey streams, painting my bedroom in shades of exhaustion and dread.
Dust motes floated lazily in the pale beams, indifferent to my suffering, dancing their slow waltz while I lay paralyzed in the nest I'd built with my own hands the night before.
The blankets surrounded me like a cocoon — soft and warm and exactly what my omega had demanded — but even their comfort couldn't mask how wrong everything felt inside my own body.
Every muscle ached like I'd run a marathon in my sleep, the kind of deep soreness that went beyond simple fatigue and settled into the very fibers of my being.
My joints protested at the mere thought of motion, stiff and swollen and wrong in ways I couldn't quite articulate, like my bones had been replaced with rusted metal overnight.
My head pounded with each beat of my heart, a relentless rhythm of pain that made me want to burrow deeper into the blankets and never emerge, never face the world waiting outside this small sanctuary of softness.
Two bonds burned in my chest.
Golden amber and violet, pulsing in tandem like twin heartbeats that didn't belong to me, that had taken up residence behind my ribs without permission and now demanded attention I couldn't give.
I pressed my hand against my sternum, feeling the heat radiating outward through my thin sleep shirt, feeling the incomplete connections reaching, reaching, reaching for something I refused to give them.
The sensation was almost physical — two threads anchored somewhere deep in my core, stretching out into the city beyond my windows, straining toward alphas I was desperate to avoid.
Alpha, my omega whispered, stirring awake alongside me like a cat uncurling from a long sleep.
Her presence was stronger than yesterday, more solid, more real, pressing against my consciousness with an urgency that bordered on desperation.
The suppressants were truly failing now — I could feel it in the way she moved inside me, no longer caged but merely.
.. restrained. Temporarily. Need alpha. Need pack. Need—
"Shut up," I mumbled into the pillow, my voice rough with sleep and sickness, the words scraping against my throat like sandpaper. "Just... give me a minute."
She subsided, but I could feel her there — watchful, worried, waiting. A presence in my own mind that I'd spent seven years pretending didn't exist, now impossible to ignore no matter how hard I tried.
I don't know how long I lay there before I finally forced myself to move.
Long enough for the grey morning light to shift and brighten through my curtains, the sun climbing higher in a sky I couldn't see, painting new patterns on my ceiling as the minutes ticked by.
Long enough for the sounds of the city to filter through my windows — the distant hum of traffic building on the streets below, the occasional honk of a horn sharp and irritating, the muffled voices of people living their normal lives while mine fell apart around me.
When I finally pushed myself upright, the room spun.
I grabbed the edge of the nest — the pillows I'd arranged into protective walls, the blankets I'd layered just right according to instincts I'd spent years suppressing — and held on until the dizziness passed.
My fingers dug into the soft fabric, knuckles white with effort, and I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples like a drum announcing my own deterioration.
The world tilted and swayed, and for one terrifying moment I thought I might vomit, might collapse back into the nest and never find the strength to leave it again.
The walk to the bathroom felt like crossing a desert under a merciless sun.
Each step required conscious effort, a deliberate command from my brain to my body: lift foot, move forward, put foot down, repeat.
The hallway that connected my bedroom to the bathroom had never seemed so long, stretching before me like a tunnel with no end in sight.
The hardwood floor was cool beneath my bare feet, a small comfort against the fever burning through me, and I used the wall for support as I walked, my palm leaving damp prints on the pale paint.
When I finally reached the bathroom and caught my reflection in the mirror, I barely recognized the woman staring back at me.
My grey eyes were too bright, almost feverish, the silver tones more pronounced than I'd ever seen them.
They seemed to glow in the harsh fluorescent light, catching and reflecting like something that didn't quite belong in a human face, like windows into a soul that was slowly being consumed by forces beyond its control.
Dark circles bruised the hollows beneath them, purple-black shadows that spoke of sleepless nights and cellular exhaustion that went far deeper than a single restless sleep.
They looked like bruises, like someone had pressed their thumbs beneath my eyes and left their mark there.
My skin was pale — not the healthy fairness I'd inherited from my mother, but a sickly pallor that made the flush of fever across my cheekbones stand out like warning flags.
The contrast was alarming, the white and red painting me as something fragile, something breaking, something that needed help it wasn't willing to accept.
My dark hair was tangled and limp, plastered against my forehead with dried sweat, the teal streaks I'd been so proud of looking dull and faded against the black like dying flowers in a neglected garden.
I looked sick.
Because I was sick.
We need them, my omega whispered, pressing against my consciousness with desperate urgency that made my chest ache with something beyond the physical fever.
Her voice was gentler than before, almost pleading, like a child asking for something she knew she wouldn't receive but couldn't stop hoping for anyway.
The bonds need completion. We're falling apart without them.
Can't you feel it? The sickness in our blood, the weakness in our bones?
This is what happens when you run from your own soul.
"I know," I said out loud, and my voice cracked on the words, breaking apart like my reflection seemed to be breaking apart in the mirror before me. "I know what we need. That doesn't mean I can give it to us."
I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand, the ancient pipes groaning in protest before releasing a spray of water that took too long to warm.
When it finally did, I stepped under the cascade and let it pound against my skin, turning the flesh pink with heat, filling the small bathroom with steam that clouded the mirror and softened the edges of reality into something almost bearable.
I stood there for longer than I should have, letting the pounding water loosen some of the stiffness in my muscles and clear the fog from my head enough to form coherent thoughts.
I had to meet Jeni in less than two hours.
The thought of going out there — into the city that now felt like a minefield, where SIREN was probably going about their day in their expensive dorm somewhere across Seoul, where any one of the remaining three alphas could be around any corner waiting to trigger another bond — made my stomach clench with fear so intense it bordered on nausea.
The streets of Seoul had never seemed so dangerous.
Every café could hide a soulmate. Every crowd could contain a bond waiting to trigger.
The world that had once been my home, my playground, the backdrop of the life I'd carefully constructed, now felt like a trap slowly closing around me with teeth I couldn't see until they bit.
But I needed Jeni.
I needed someone to tell me I wasn't going insane, that the ground really was shifting beneath my feet and I wasn't just imagining the earthquake.
Someone grounded and practical who could look at this situation from outside the chaos of bonds and omega instincts and tell me what they saw with clear eyes.
Someone who knew me — the real me, the person I'd been before the mark appeared and rewrote everything I thought I understood about my own future — well enough to tell me the truth even if I didn't want to hear it.
I got out of the shower and wrapped myself in a towel, the terry cloth rough against skin that felt too sensitive, too aware of every texture and temperature.
The mirror was fogged over, hiding my reflection in a veil of condensation, and I was grateful for the small mercy.
I didn't want to see myself right now. Didn't want to watch my own deterioration in real time like some kind of morbid documentary about an omega who thought she could outrun fate.
My hand reached for my suppressants out of habit before I could stop it.
The little orange bottle sat on the bathroom counter where it had lived for seven years, innocuous and familiar as an old friend.
The label was worn from the over handling, the pharmacy name barely legible anymore, the instructions I'd memorized so long ago I didn't need to read them.
My daily ritual. My chemical cage. I shook one pill into my palm without thinking, the small white tablet sitting there like an old friend I couldn't quite trust anymore — a friend who had promised to protect me and was now showing the first signs of betrayal.
Then I stopped.