Chapter 7 #2
What was the point?
They hadn't worked yesterday. The bond had broken through whatever chemical barriers the suppressants created like they were made of paper and wishes and desperate hope, and my omega had woken up fully for the first time in seven years.
Taking another pill wasn't going to change that.
Wasn't going to put the genie back in the bottle or rebuild the walls that had already crumbled into dust beneath the weight of two triggered bonds.
I took it anyway.
Swallowed it dry, grimacing at the bitter taste that coated my tongue and the back of my throat like a reminder of all the years I'd spent hiding from myself, and waited for the familiar numbing sensation to spread through my body.
The slight dulling of senses. The quieting of instincts.
The artificial calm that had been my constant companion since I was sixteen, the blanket I'd wrapped around my omega nature to smother it into submission.
Nothing happened.
If anything, my omega felt more present than ever. More awake. More aware. She stretched inside my consciousness like a cat claiming a sunbeam, settling into spaces she'd been locked out of for years with an almost smug satisfaction that made me want to scream.
Told you, she observed, and there was something almost sad in her voice rather than the smugness I'd expected, a melancholy acceptance that made my chest tight with something other than fever.
Can't cage us anymore. The bonds broke us free.
The suppressants were always temporary, always borrowed time.
You knew that. Deep down, you always knew.
Fear spiked through me — real, genuine, bone-deep fear that had nothing to do with the bonds and everything to do with losing control of something I'd fought so hard to contain.
I'd spent six years controlling my omega.
Suppressing her urges, ignoring her instincts, pretending she didn't exist except as an inconvenient biological fact I had to manage like a chronic condition that required daily medication.
That control had kept me safe. Kept me independent.
Kept me from becoming the soft, needy, dependent omega that society expected me to be, that my mother had been before she'd torn herself apart trying to escape.
Now that control was slipping like sand through my fingers, grain by grain, impossible to hold no matter how tightly I tried to grasp. I didn't know who I'd become when it was gone completely.
Before getting dressed, I sat down at my desk, the wooden chair hard and unforgiving against my aching body.
The morning light had shifted while I was in the shower, golden now instead of grey, streaming through my windows and painting everything in shades of false hope that felt almost mocking given my circumstances.
My laptop sat where I'd slammed it shut yesterday, closed and silent, a portal to information I wasn't sure I wanted to find but knew I couldn't avoid any longer.
I needed to know what I was dealing with.
Needed to understand exactly how much danger I was in, even if the knowledge terrified me.
Ignorance might be bliss for some people, but I'd learned long ago that ignorance was just another word for vulnerability — for letting the world happen to you instead of preparing to face it head-on.
I opened the laptop with fingers that trembled slightly, the screen flickering to life with a brightness that made me squint, and navigated to a search engine. My keystrokes seemed too loud in the quiet apartment, each tap of the keys like an accusation.
Incomplete soulmate bonds omega symptoms
Multiple incomplete bond soul sickness
Pack bond complications omega
How long can omega survive incomplete bonds
The results loaded, each link a door to a room I didn't want to enter but had to anyway.
Medical journals with dense text and clinical language.
Research studies full of statistics and sample sizes.
Forum posts from desperate people seeking answers that might not exist, their words tinged with the same fear I could feel crawling up my own throat.
News articles about omegas who hadn't survived incomplete bonds, their stories reduced to cautionary tales in local papers.
I started reading.
The first article was clinical, detached, the language of scientists describing a phenomenon they studied but didn't have to live through, observing suffering from the safety of their research institutions.
"Incomplete soulmate bonds trigger a cascade of physiological responses in the affected individual," the text informed me with cold precision.
"The body interprets the partial connection as a wound requiring healing, and diverts resources accordingly.
Initial symptoms include low-grade fever, fatigue, and generalized malaise.
As the condition progresses, patients experience increasing weakness, immune system suppression, and eventual organ failure. "
I kept reading, scrolling through paragraph after paragraph of information that painted an increasingly bleak picture of my future.
"Timeline for symptom progression varies based on bond strength and individual constitution. In single incomplete bonds, symptoms may remain manageable for several weeks before becoming critical. However, each additional incomplete bond compounds the effect exponentially."
My blood ran cold, a chill spreading through me despite the fever that still burned beneath my skin.
I clicked on a study specifically about multiple incomplete bonds, my cursor hovering over the link for a long moment before I forced myself to press down, and felt my heart stop as the data loaded onto the screen in neat columns and terrifying numbers.
"Research indicates that the physiological impact of incomplete bonds follows an exponential rather than linear progression," the study explained in its detached academic tone.
"Where a single incomplete bond might cause manageable symptoms for several weeks, two incomplete bonds can accelerate soul sickness by a factor of four.
Three bonds increase deterioration by a factor of eight.
Four or more incomplete bonds are rarely documented, as most subjects do not survive long enough for comprehensive study. "
I had two bonds now.
Two flowers blooming on my mark, their colors bright and beautiful and terrible against my skin. Two threads burning in my chest, reaching for alphas I'd fled from like they were monsters instead of men.
Three more waiting to trigger.
If the study was right, I was already experiencing four times the normal rate of soul sickness. The fever, the weakness, the bone-deep exhaustion — all of it accelerated, compressed, rushing toward an ending I couldn't escape no matter how fast I ran.
When the remaining three bonds triggered — and they would, I knew that now with cold certainty, there was no escaping a pack bond when all five members shared the same mark and the universe had apparently decided I was their missing piece — the effect would be catastrophic.
Thirty-two times the normal progression.
Or more. The math became meaningless at that point, numbers too large to comprehend.
The numbers just meant fast and unsurvivable.
I kept reading, each word another nail in a coffin I could feel closing around me with every passing minute.
"For omegas specifically, incomplete bonds can trigger irregular or premature heat cycles.
The body interprets the incomplete bond as a signal that an alpha is present but hasn't claimed them, and attempts to 'force' completion through heat.
This biological imperative can override suppressant medications entirely. "
My heat.
I was supposed to have two or three months before my next heat.
The suppressants regulated my cycle with clockwork precision, kept everything predictable and manageable, gave me warning and time to prepare — time to stock up on supplies, time to clear my schedule, time to lock myself away where no one could smell the desperate need pouring off my skin.
Something had felt off since yesterday — a wrongness in my body that I'd attributed to the soul sickness but might be something far worse.
A tightness in my lower abdomen that had nothing to do with digestion. A sensitivity to touch that went beyond the fever. A restlessness that made my omega pace in ways that had nothing to do with anxiety and everything to do with biological urges I'd spent years trying to pretend didn't exist.
I pressed my hand against my stomach, feeling the wrongness there, the building pressure that I'd been trying to ignore like ignoring it might make it go away. If I went into heat with five incomplete bonds, I'd basically be sending up a signal flare visible across the entire city.
Every alpha in Seoul would know. Would smell me on the wind like smoke from a fire that couldn't be contained, would feel the pull of an omega in distress calling for help she didn't want to accept.
And the five who were actually bonded to me — the five whose marks I bore on my skin, whose threads I could feel stretching between us like invisible chains — they'd find me.
No matter where I ran.
No matter where I hid.
The pack bond would call them home, and they would come, and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.
I slammed the laptop shut with more force than necessary, the sound sharp and final in the quiet of my apartment like a gunshot or a door slamming or the sound of hope dying.
My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking, fine tremors running through every muscle as the full scope of my situation settled over me like a burial shroud, heavy and suffocating and inescapable.