Chapter Ten
Sera
Espie's gardenia and clover. Aubrey's cedar and chamomile.
They're not separate anymore.
The scents weave together and hit my hindbrain like a key turning in a lock I didn't know existed. My blood orange lifts toward them. Toward both of them.
Don't.
I lock my jaw and hold still.
Omegas don't scent-match with other omegas. That's not how biology works. That's not how any of this works, but the proof is laced together on the floor, their merged scent filling the room with something that has no precedent.
“They're scent-matched. To each other,” Adrian says slowly.
No one argues. No one can.
“That's—” Kev's voice trails off. He's staring at the omegas, jaw slack. “That's impossible.”
“And yet.” Adrian looks at the omegas on the floor. “Trauma rewires the brain. Rewires biology.”
“Is this — can we help them, or does trying to separate them make it worse? What do they need right now?” Ezra asks.
“There's no one who can answer that. There's no precedent for this. I can't even begin to—” Lex breaks off.
“Fuck precedent.” Kev's jaw is tight. “They're ours. Both of them. We figure it out.”
Those words, both of them, land like a ruling he's already written. No room to argue. No space left for appeal.
I breathe out through my nose, slow and controlled, and lock every muscle below my shoulders.
“You don't get to claim him,” I say, my voice low. “He's mine.”
Kev meets my gaze. Holds. “He's severely traumatized. This is the most alive we've seen him in—” His voice cracks. He steadies it. “You don't get to walk in here and erase that.”
“I'm not trying to erase anything.”
“No.” The anger drains out of his face and what's left is exhaustion, the deep-set kind that lives in the lines around a person's eyes. “You just weren't here to see what he was like.”
That hits somewhere I wasn't expecting. Not because it's cruel. Because it's just true. My throat closes around whatever I was going to say next.
“Good.” He holds my gaze another beat. “Then we understand each other.”
Aubrey's fingers are knotted in Espie's shirt like he'll shatter if he lets go.
Her face is buried in his chest, her whole body curls into him as he curls around her.
A purr starts low. Aubrey's. Rough at the edges.
Espie's answers a half-beat behind. Their scents thicken and desire punches through my body.
My mates are in distress and heat ignites through me like a match dragged across a striker.
I breathe through my nose. The two purrs sync.
They tighten their hold around each other.
His knee slides between hers and she tucks her head under his chin.
I want to put my arms around both of them.
Holding still costs muscle and breath and the inside of my cheek where I bite down hard enough to taste blood. I’ve forced myself under control before. It never felt like this, like I’m dragging against something huge and desperate inside myself.
Stay. Don’t move. Hold.
How am I going to take care of them if I can’t touch them?
Kev's jaw is tight. “They're ours. Both of them. We figure it out.”
Four alphas, none of us scent-linked to each other. Two omegas bound to each other and to different alphas. What the hell kind of pack is that? What is biology even doing?
We're going to have to figure it out together. The alternative is walking away from our mates. None of us can do that. I study the male alphas properly then. Men caught in the same impossible gravity.
Kev stands rigid, jaw clenched hard, hands shoved into his pockets like he doesn’t trust them free. Lex breathes carefully through his mouth, controlled in the way people breathe through pain. Ezra can’t stop wiping his palms on his thighs, every line of his body angled toward the omegas.
Espie's scent is doing this to them. Gardenia and clover, sharp with distress but still mate. Every alpha instinct they have is screaming at them to go to her, just like mine is. Yeah. I know exactly how that feels. Aubrey's chamomile has wrapped itself around my brain and squeezed.
Underneath Espie's gardenia, underneath Aubrey's cedar, the three male alphas are bleeding into the room too.
Oakwood and whiskey. Earl Grey going smoky at the edges with want.
Fresh linen gone acrid with grief. Four alpha scents in an enclosed space, all of us locked down, the air gone dense and pressurized with everything none of us are doing.
Tension grinds through my jaw hard enough to hurt.
The whole room feels stretched to breaking.
Adrian pulls out his phone and murmurs into it.
A nurse appears in the doorway. “Mr. Blackwood? You wanted—” More nurses in blue scrubs crowd in behind her.
They take one look at the omegas, move toward them and Espie screams. It hits me in the sternum, every instinct lurching toward her. Aubrey wrenches her against him, his whole frame curled over hers. Their purrs stutter out. Both of them shake hard enough that I feel it in my own chest.
Kev makes a wounded sound. Ezra's face crumples. Lex clenches his fists. Their mates are screaming and they can't move. The guards who never moved away, tense and ready themselves to launch at us.
“Don't separate them,” I say. “Whatever happens, don't.”
The nurses look to Adrian, who nods.
“Is there somewhere else we can take them?” Ezra asks. “Somewhere calmer? A nesting room, maybe?”
Nesting room. Yes. Soft blankets, amber lighting, everything calibrated to signal safe to a frightened omega. That might work, except the blanket I brought Espie that day—
Adrian nods to a nurse. “Give them nesting room three. It's the quietest. Let's get them settled and then we can run some basic checks.”
“I'll do it.” I step forward. “Espie knows me. She might—” I stop. Might is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. She might not scream. She might let me close. She might — “She's less likely to scream for me.”
Kev's jaw clenches, but he nods. “Go ahead.”
I crouch down three feet from where they're huddled.
Shoulders in. Chin down. Less height, less threat.
Instinct knows how to do this even when the rest of me doesn't. “Espie.” I keep my voice soft.
The fact that it comes out the same now is either professional discipline or the saddest thing about me.
“Espie, it's Sera. We need to move you somewhere that isn't here.”
Her face is still buried in Aubrey's chest.
“I'm not going to separate you. I promise. You can hold onto him the whole time. But we need to get you off this floor.”
Aubrey's arms tighten around her. His eyes are open now, fixed on me.
Awareness. Suspicion. My mate. Right there.
Watching me the way people watch dogs they aren't sure of, not aggression, not submission, the careful motionless calculation of someone who has learned that the wrong move costs everything.
“Aubrey.” I say his name and his whole body curls tighter around Espie. “I'm not going to hurt her. I'm not going to hurt either of you. But this floor is in the open and you're both shaking and we need to get you somewhere more private.”
Just those hazel-green eyes watching me like I'm a predator moving closer.
“Please.” The word scrapes out of me. “Please let me help you.”
Espie lifts her head from Aubrey's chest. Her violet eyes find mine.
“Sera?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“Yeah, sweetheart. It's me. Can you stand up? Can you try for me? We need to get you out of here.”
She blinks. Slow. She takes in the room and her shoulders come up around her ears, chin dropping, whole body pulling inward like she's trying to occupy less space than she already does. Then she nods, just barely, and starts to uncurl.
Aubrey makes a sound. Low, desperate. He rises with her anyway, clumsy and shaking, keeping her tucked against his side.
Ezra takes a half-step forward. “Let me—”
“Easy.” Kev doesn't look at Ezra. He's watching the omegas. “They're responding to Sera.”
I move in slowly, sliding my arm around Espie's waist from the opposite side, taking some of her weight. She tenses, a full-body shudder that travels from her shoulders all the way down, but her feet stay planted. As she rises, Aubrey staggers to his feet, swaying a little.
“That's it. You're doing good. Aubrey, can you walk? Just down the hall. That's all.”
When I start moving, he moves with us, his hand fisted in the back of Espie's gown, his side sealed against hers from hip to shoulder, not a breath of space between them. We shuffle forward together.
Espie eases against my side. Her hair brushes my jaw. Her gardenia soaks into my jacket, into my skin, and my purr starts up low in my chest, instinct getting ahead of me.
The male alphas close around us. Close enough to catch anyone who falls, far enough not to spook the omegas.
Protecting without touching: Kev's hands jammed back into his pockets, Lex with his arms crossed over his chest like he's physically holding himself in, Ezra's gaze moving over Aubrey in rapid clinical sweeps, counting, assessing, the only way he has left to touch him. I know. I'm in the same fight.
We inch down the hallway. Kev's oakwood and whiskey stays close enough that my hindbrain keeps trying to classify him as either threat or pack. Lex and Ezra flank Aubrey on the opposite side while I flank Espie, both of us orbiting our omegas with the same rigid vigilance.
The nurse opens the door to the nesting room. Blankets mounded in soft piles, pillows stacked for comfort. Espie locks up. The sound that comes out of her is torn from the deepest part of her. Pure animal terror.
The blankets. Nesting trauma.
I should have known better. I shouldn’t have listened to my instincts. I thought Espie would be different with Aubrey. Should have known better. Should have—
“No no no no—” The words pour out of her in a flood, tearing at my soul. “I'll be good, I promise. I won't do anything you don't want, please alpha, please—”
Aubrey goes rigid. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. His chest isn't moving.
He's not breathing.
“Get them out!” The roar tears from my throat. Espie lashes out and catches me across the face with her elbow. Pain explodes through my cheekbone. I don't care. “Get them out!”
Kev grabs Espie around the waist, hauling her back from the doorway. She twists in his grip, screaming, beating her fists against his chest.
“I know. I know, I've got you.” Kev's voice is cracked wide open.
Ezra takes Aubrey's face in both hands, tilting his head back, checking his airway. “He's not breathing. Lex, he's not—”
Lex drops to his knees beside them, hands shaking as he presses his fingers to Aubrey's throat. “Come back, Aubrey. I need you to come back. Do you hear me?”
Aubrey's lips are turning blue and he's making a choking sound.
I shove Lex aside and grab my mate's shoulders. “Breathe.” The alpha command tears out of me, scraped raw. “Aubrey, breathe!”
His body jerks. His chest heaves. Air rushes into his lungs in a horrible gasping wheeze, and then he's breathing again, ragged and too fast, and he keens, the sound climbing and climbing until he raises his hands over his head and pulls his hair, and the wail thins out to nothing.
The bark worked. I stare at my hands. The relief hits so fast it nearly takes my legs out, and right behind it, shame. That the first thing my voice ever gave him was an order his body couldn't say no to.
Kev has Espie pinned against his chest. She's stopped fighting, gone limp in his arms, making sounds that are barely sounds at all. Her eyes are open but empty.
“Shit.” Adrian's command snaps through the chaos, directed at the nurses. “Take them to a standard room. Quickly.”
The nurses go ahead and we follow down the hall to another door.
Kev carries Espie. I've got my arm around Aubrey's waist, half dragging him, Ezra on his other side with his arm around Aubrey too, Ezra's wrist warm against mine where our arms cross.
A nurse opens a door to another room and we filter through into it.
The standard room has nothing soft. Nothing that could be mistaken for a nest. Kev tries to set Espie on the bed.
She whines. High and thin, cracking at the edges, reaching for Aubrey. His head snaps up, and he lurches out of our grip.
“Aubrey, wait—” Ezra reaches for him.
Too late. Aubrey is already stumbling toward Espie, catching himself on the bed frame.
Kev steps back just in time as Aubrey grabs Espie and pulls her into his arms. They collapse together in the corner, wedging themselves into the space where two walls meet, fingers knotted in each other's clothes.
“Shit.” Lex's voice is barely audible. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Ezra breathes hard beside me, his fresh linen scent gone acrid. Kev plows his fingers through his hair and turns away.
Adrian ushers the nurses out of the room. “I'll get David Maverick.” I nod as he goes.
“If Turns wasn't already dead, I'd kill him with my bare hands,” I whisper. Wallace is next.
Espie's sobs have quieted to hiccupping gasps. Aubrey is still hyperventilating, but at least he's breathing. Their scents have gone rancid with fear, gardenia rotting, chamomile burning.
This is bad. Catastrophically bad, and there's not a single thing I can do about it. I can only stand here and watch my mates fall apart on a hospital floor.
I catch Kev's eye. Hold it. A second, no more. His scent has gone flat, the whiskey note stripped out, the oakwood gone dry and thin. We're all in hell together.
“I don't trust you,” I say.
“I know.” Kev nods. “I don't trust you either.” His jaw draws taut and releases. “But I trust that you want them safe.”
“They're not going to survive if we can't figure out how to be in the same room without tearing each other apart.” I glance at the omegas huddled in the corner. “They can't be separated.”
“We can't be separated from them—” He stops. Runs a hand through his hair, which he's already made a mess of. “Which means we need to be together. All of us. In the same space.”
I look at him. At the mess of him — eyes red at the rims, hair wrecked.
My cheekbone throbs where her elbow landed. The linoleum is cold through the soles of my boots. My mates’ scents sit wrong in my lungs, sharp with distress.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “I know.”