Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
AVA
I woke up burning.
Not the slow simmer I'd been fighting for days, this was different.
This was a wildfire raging through my veins, consuming everything in its path.
My skin felt too tight, like it belonged to someone else.
Every nerve ending was screaming, hypersensitive to the sheets beneath me, the air around me, the soft fabric of the shirt I'd fallen asleep clutching.
Ethan's shirt. Cedar and books and ozone.
I threw it across the room with a strangled cry, then immediately wanted it back.
What was happening to me?
I knew, of course. I'd known since the moment Ethan told me what they'd done to my suppressants.
Knowing and experiencing were two very different things, and nothing, not my clinical training, not the horror stories I'd heard from other Omegas, not the desperate research I'd done at fifteen when I first presented, had prepared me for this.
My body was on fire. My mind was drowning.
Somewhere in between, the last shreds of my resistance were being burned away.
I stumbled out of the nest, my legs shaking so badly I had to grab the bedpost to stay upright.
The room spun around me. Too hot. I was too hot.
I yanked at my clothes—a sleep shirt and shorts they'd provided, soft cotton that had felt fine yesterday but now felt like sandpaper against my skin.
The shirt came off first. Then the shorts.
Then the underwear, soaked through with slick I couldn't control.
I stood there naked, gasping, trying to cool down.
It didn't help. Nothing helped. The heat was coming from inside me, from some primal furnace that had been banked for six years and was now roaring back to life with a vengeance.
"Okay," I whispered to myself, pressing my palms against my eyes. "Okay. You can do this. You've survived worse. You can survive this."
Had I survived worse? I couldn't remember, couldn't think. My brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton, every thought sluggish and fuzzy around the edges. The only thing that came through clearly was the need. The need for touch. For skin. For Alpha.
No.
I forced myself to move. One foot in front of the other, across the heated floors—too warm now, everything was too warm—to the bathroom.
Cold water. That would help. It had to help.
The shower was one of those fancy rainfall types, with multiple heads and a digital temperature control.
I jabbed at the buttons until water started falling, then stepped under the spray without waiting for it to warm up.
Ice cold. Perfect.
I gasped at the shock of it, my whole body clenching. For about thirty seconds, it worked. The cold cut through the fever, cleared my head, made me feel almost human again. Then the heat came roaring back, twice as strong as before.
I slid down the shower wall until I was sitting on the tile floor, cold water beating down on me, and I cried.
Not the quiet tears I'd been fighting for days, great, wracking sobs that tore out of my chest and echoed off the bathroom walls.
I cried for the life they'd stolen. For the body that was betraying me.
For the future I could see stretching out ahead of me, every choice taken away, every path leading back to four men who'd decided I belonged to them before I'd even hit puberty.
I cried until there was nothing left. Until I was empty and hollow and shaking with cold that couldn't touch the fire inside me. Then I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a towel, and went back to face my cage.
The nest was waiting. It had grown again overnight, I didn't remember doing it, but I must have, because there were more blankets now, more pillows, the walls higher and thicker than before. And the scents...
God, the scents.
Mason's honey-sunshine warmth was everywhere, embedded in the cashmere throw I couldn't stop reaching for.
Ethan's cedar-and-ozone clung to the shirt I'd thrown across the room, calling to me even from a distance.
There were new additions too, a black t-shirt that smelled like pine and woodsmoke and bitter cold, a worn t-shirt that carried notes of dark chocolate and whiskey and something spicy I couldn't name.
Caleb and Leo. I'd added Caleb and Leo to my nest.
When? How? I didn't remember taking anything of theirs.
Didn't remember them coming into my room.
But the evidence was right there, woven into the fabric of the cocoon my traitorous body had built.
I should throw them out. All of it. Strip the bed down to the bare mattress and refuse to nest, refuse to prepare, refuse to give my body what it was screaming for.
Instead, I crawled inside. The relief was immediate and devastating. Surrounded by softness, by warmth, by the mingled scents of four Alphas my hindbrain had apparently decided were mine, the fire banked to something almost manageable. Still there. Still burning. But not consuming me alive.
I curled into a ball at the center of the nest, pulled the cashmere throw over my head, and tried to pretend I wasn't falling apart. A knock at the door. I didn't answer.
"Ava." Mason's voice, gentle as always. "I'm coming in."
I heard the door open, heard his footsteps cross the room, felt the mattress dip as he sat on the edge of the bed. Outside the nest. Respecting the boundary, even now.
"How are you feeling?"
I laughed—a broken, hysterical sound that scared me almost as much as the heat did. "How do you think?"
"I think you're scared." His voice was so calm. So steady. Like he wasn't the architect of my destruction. "I think you're in pain. I think your body is doing something it hasn't done in six years, and you don't know how to handle it."
"I hate you," I whispered from under the blankets.
"I know."
"I hate all of you." I whimpered out.
"I know that too." A pause. "Can I see you? Just for a minute?"
I didn't want to. Every instinct screamed at me to stay hidden, stay protected, stay in the sanctuary I'd built. But some part of me, the stupid, traitorous Omega part, wanted to see him. Wanted to smell him. Wanted to be closer.
I pushed the blanket back just enough to expose my face.
Mason was sitting exactly where I'd felt him, at the very edge of the mattress, his body angled toward me but not encroaching on the nest. He was wearing a simple white t-shirt and jeans, his golden hair slightly mussed, his honey-brown eyes warm with something that looked horribly like love.
"There you are," he said softly, and something in my chest cracked open.
"Don't," I managed. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" He asked, raising an eyebrow at my words.
"Like you care. Like this isn't exactly what you wanted." I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, suddenly aware that I was naked underneath the towel. "Like you didn't plan this down to the last detail."
"I do care." He didn't deny the rest of it.
"I've always cared, Red. Even when you were a skinny little kid following Ethan around asking about black holes and quantum entanglement.
Even when you were a teenager who used to blush every time I walked into a room.
Even when you ran away and broke all our hearts and spent three years pretending we didn't exist."
"I wasn't pretending." My voice cracked. "I was surviving."
"I know." He reached out, slowly, giving me time to pull away. His hand stopped just short of the nest's edge. "But you don't have to survive anymore. You can live. You can thrive. You can have everything you've been denying yourself, if you'd just let us give it to you."
"I don't want it." I told him, the desperation was in my voice.
"Your body says differently." His eyes dropped to where my hand was clutching his cashmere throw.
The one I'd brought from my apartment, the one that had always smelled like something I couldn't name, the one that apparently smelled like him because they'd sent it to me years ago. "Your nest says differently."
I wanted to argue. To tell him that biology wasn't consent, that my body's responses didn't override my mind's refusal. Ihat just because I was physically preparing for them didn't mean I wanted them. The words wouldn't come. Because some of them, too many of them, would have been lies.
"I brought you breakfast," Mason said, pulling back. "And water. You need to stay hydrated." He stood, crossing to the desk where I now noticed a tray waiting. "Can you eat something for me?"
"I'm not hungry." True. The fever had killed my appetite. The thought of food made my stomach turn.
"Try anyway. Just a few bites." He picked up a piece of toast and held it out toward me like I was a wild animal he was trying to tame. "Please, Red."
I shouldn't. Accepting food from him felt like accepting something else, his care, his authority, his place in my life. But my body was weak, getting weaker, and some small rational part of my brain knew I needed fuel for what was coming.
I reached out and took the toast. Mason's smile was like the sun.
I hated how much I didn't hate it. I ate mechanically, barely tasting anything, while Mason watched from the chair by the desk.
He didn't speak. Didn't push. Just sat there, a steady presence in the chaos of my unraveling.
When I'd choked down half the toast and a few sips of water, he stood.
"I'll check on you in a few hours," he said. "If you need anything before then—anything at all—just call out. One of us will always hear you."
"Because you're always watching," I said bitterly.
"Because we're always listening," he corrected gently. Then he was gone, closing the door softly behind him. I lasted maybe an hour before the fever spiked again.