Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AVA
FIFTEEN YEARS OLD
I woke up wrong.
That was the only way to describe it, a wrongness that started deep in my bones and radiated outward until my entire body felt like it belonged to someone else.
I was hot, burning hot, my skin slick with sweat despite the cool autumn air drifting through my cracked window.
My stomach cramped, a deep, twisting ache that made me curl into myself with a whimper.
I was surrounded by softness.
I blinked, trying to clear the fog from my brain, and looked around my bedroom.
Except it didn't look like my bedroom anymore.
Sometime during the night, I had no memory of doing this—I had gathered every soft thing I owned and arranged them around me in a circle.
Blankets. Pillows. Stuffed animals I hadn't touched in years.
The throw from the living room. Sweaters pulled from my closet and wadded into cushions.
A nest. I had built a nest in my sleep.
No, I thought, panic rising in my chest. No, no, no.
I knew what this meant. My mother had explained it to me years ago, her voice tight with fear, her hands gripping mine too hard.
"If you ever wake up like this—surrounded by soft things, feeling hot and strange—you come find me immediately.
Don't let anyone else see you. Don't let anyone else smell you. "
Smell me.
I lifted my arm to my nose and inhaled. Underneath the sweat and the sleep, there was something else. Something sweet and rich and completely foreign. Like burnt sugar and ripe peaches, with an undertone of something electric, something that made the hair on my arms stand up.
My scent. My Omega scent.
I had presented.
"Mom," I croaked, my voice coming out rough and strange. I tried again, louder. "Mom!"
Footsteps in the hallway. Fast. Urgent. My bedroom door flew open, and my mother stood in the doorway, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her green eyes, so like mine, wide with fear.
"Oh god," Elena breathed, one hand flying to her mouth, her face going pale as she took in the nest, took in me huddled in the center of it. "Oh god, Ava, no."
"Mom, what's happening to me?" I asked, my voice cracking, tears burning in my eyes. "I feel so strange, I can't—"
"Shh, shh, it's okay," my mother said, rushing to my side, climbing into the nest without hesitation. She gathered me into her arms, her hands stroking my sweat-damp hair, her scent—roses and something sad—wrapping around me like a shield. "It's okay, baby. I've got you."
"I built a nest," I whispered against her shoulder, shame burning through me. "I didn't mean to, I just woke up and it was here—"
"I know. I know. It's not your fault." My mother pulled back, cupping my face in her hands, her eyes boring into mine with desperate intensity. "Listen to me, Ava. This is very important. We need to get you cleaned up and covered before anyone else in this house wakes up. Do you understand?"
"Before the boys smell me," I said, understanding dawning with sickening clarity.
"Yes." My mother's voice was hard as steel, her jaw set with determination.
"Before the boys smell you." She pulled me out of the nest, and leaving it hurt, a physical ache in my chest that made me gasp and dragged me toward my en suite bathroom.
The water was scalding when she turned it on, steam filling the small space within seconds.
"Get in," Elena ordered, her hands already reaching for bottles under the sink. "Scrub everywhere. Use this." She thrust a bottle of something medicinal-smelling into my hands. "It's a scent blocker. It won't last long, but it should buy us enough time to get suppressants."
"Suppressants?" I repeated, stepping under the spray and hissing at the heat.
"Pills that will stop this from happening again," my mother explained, her voice clipped and efficient even as her hands shook. "That will keep you from going into heat. That will hide what you are from—" She stopped, pressing her lips together. "Just scrub. Quickly."
I scrubbed. My arms, my legs, my stomach, my neck—especially my neck, where I could feel something swollen and sensitive beneath my skin. My scent glands. The place where an Alpha would bite to claim me. The thought made my stomach lurch.
"Mom," I said, scrubbing harder, trying to wash away the wrongness. "Am I... am I going to be okay?" My mother was silent for a long moment. When I looked at her through the steam, her eyes were wet.
"You're going to be fine," Elena said finally, her voice thick with emotion she was trying to hide. "I'm going to make sure of it. You're not going to end up like—" She cut herself off again, shaking her head. "Just hurry."
I didn't ask what she meant. I was too scared of the answer. The scent blocker burned when I applied it, a chemical sting that made my eyes water. When I lifted my arm to my nose again, the burnt sugar smell was muted, buried beneath something sharp and artificial.
My mother handed me clothes, loose, covering, nothing that would cling to my new curves or draw attention. A oversized sweater. Baggy sweatpants. My hair scraped back in a severe ponytail.
"Good," Elena said, looking me over with critical eyes. "Good. Now we just need to get to the car without—"
A knock on the bathroom door. We both froze.
"Elena?" David's voice, muffled through the wood. My stepfather. The man who had given me a home, a family, everything I'd never had. "Is everything alright? I thought I heard—"
"Everything's fine," my mother called back, her voice bright and brittle. "Ava just had a nightmare. We'll be down for breakfast soon."
A pause. Then: "Alright. The boys are already in the kitchen."
The boys. Mason, Caleb, Ethan, Leo. My stepbrothers—not by blood, but by marriage. I'd lived with them for five years now, ever since my mother married David. They were my family.
They were Alphas.
"We need to go out the back," my mother whispered, her hand gripping my arm tight enough to bruise. "Through the garden. We can get to the car without passing through the kitchen."
"Okay," I whispered back, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
We crept out of the bathroom, through my bedroom, into the hallway.
The house was quiet except for distant sounds from the kitchen—the clink of dishes, the murmur of male voices. We were almost to the back stairs when—
"Ava?" I froze.
Mason stood at the other end of the hallway, a glass of orange juice in his hand, his golden hair catching the morning light. He was nineteen now, tall and broad-shouldered, with honey-brown eyes that had always looked at me with warmth and affection.
Those eyes were different now. His nostrils flared. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the hardwood floor, orange juice splashing across his bare feet, but he didn't seem to notice. His whole body had gone rigid, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.
"Ava," Mason repeated, his voice different—deeper, rougher, something primal bleeding through. He took a step toward me. "You smell—you're—"
"Mason, stop," my mother commanded, stepping in front of me, her small body a barrier between me and the Alpha advancing down the hallway. "She's fifteen years old. She's a child."
"She's an Omega," Mason breathed, and the word sounded like a prayer on his lips. His honey-brown eyes had gone dark, pupils blown wide, fixed on me like I was the only thing in the universe. "Our Omega."
Footsteps thundered on the stairs. More bodies in the hallway. Caleb appeared first, his massive frame taking up the entire width of the corridor, his ice-blue eyes zeroing in on me with laser focus. A sound escaped his throat—low, guttural, hungry—that made something deep in my stomach clench.
Then Ethan, pushing past Caleb, his usually controlled expression shattered, his green eyes wild, his hands visibly shaking. "The scent," Ethan gasped, his voice cracking. "I could smell it from the kitchen. I thought I was imagining—"
And Leo, last but not least, appearing at the top of the back stairs, blocking our escape route.
His gray eyes were sharp and predatory, his lips curved in a smile that showed too many teeth.
"Well, well," Leo said, his voice silky smooth even as his body vibrated with barely contained energy. "Look what finally happened."
I was surrounded. Four Alphas, all of them looking at me like I was something precious and fragile and desperately wanted. Like I was prey. Like I was theirs.
"Stay back," my mother snarled, her voice shaking but fierce. "All of you, stay back. She's not ready for this. She's just a child."
"She's ours," Caleb rumbled, taking another step forward, his ice-blue eyes never leaving my face. "She's been ours since the day you brought her here. We've been waiting—"
"You've been waiting for a child to present," my mother spat, disgust dripping from every word. "That's sick. That's—"
"That's nature," Ethan interrupted, his voice steadier now, though his hands still trembled. His green eyes found mine, intense and unwavering. "She was always going to be an Omega. We knew it before she did. We've been protecting her, preparing for this—"
"Preparing to claim her?" My mother's laugh was sharp and bitter. "She's fifteen. She's not ready to be claimed by anyone, let alone four Alphas between four years and seven years older than her, wanting her as theirs when she grows up. You were grooming her. "
The word hung in the air. Grooming. Mason flinched like he'd been slapped, but he didn't deny it. None of them did.
"We would never hurt her," Mason said, his voice rough with emotion, his honey-brown eyes pleading with me over my mother's head. "Ava, you know that. We would never—"
"Don't talk to her," my mother snapped, pushing me further behind her. "Don't look at her. Don't even breathe in her direction."
"Elena." A new voice. Calm. Authoritative. David stood at the end of the hallway, still in his robe, his salt-and-pepper hair mussed from sleep. His dark eyes swept over the scene—his sons, his stepdaughter, his wife—and his expression was unreadable. "What's going on here?"
"What's going on is that Ava has presented," my mother said, her voice tight with barely controlled rage. "And your sons are acting like animals."
"They're acting like Alphas," David corrected gently, moving down the hallway with measured steps. "Like Alphas who have just discovered their Omega."
"She is not their Omega."
"Elena—"
"She is a child, David!" My mother's voice cracked, tears spilling down her cheeks. "She is my child, and I will not let you—let them—"
"No one is going to do anything," David soothed, his voice calm and reasonable. He reached my mother, placing his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. "She's young. Of course she's young. There's plenty of time. Let her adjust. Let her grow into what she's becoming."
"And then?" my mother demanded. "When she's eighteen, nineteen, twenty? Then you'll just hand her over to them?" David's silence was answer enough.
"No," my mother said, her voice cold and final. "No. I won't allow it. She's going on suppressants today. She's never going into heat. She's going to go to college, have a career, have a life—"
"She can have all of those things and still be bonded to—"
"I said no." My mother grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the stairs, toward the back door, toward escape. "Move, Leo."
Leo didn't move. His gray eyes flicked to David, waiting for instruction.
"Let them go," David said quietly. "Let Elena take her to get suppressants. There's no rush." His dark eyes found mine over my mother's shoulder, and something in his gaze made my blood run cold. "She's not going anywhere."
Leo stepped aside. My mother dragged me down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back door. I didn't look back. I couldn't. I felt their eyes on me the entire way, four pairs of eyes, burning into my skin, branding me as surely as any bite.
We drove to a pharmacy three towns over.
My mother's hands shook on the steering wheel the entire time.
She didn't speak, and neither did I. The suppressants came in a little orange bottle.
The pharmacist, a Beta woman with kind eyes, explained how to take them, what side effects to expect.
My mother listened intently, asking questions, taking notes.
I just stood there, numb.
When we got back to the house, it was quiet. Too quiet. My mother walked me to my room, stood guard while I dismantled the nest, each soft thing removed felt like losing a piece of myself—and then sat on my bed while I took my first pill.
"This will stop the heat from coming," Elena explained, her voice soft now, exhausted. "It will suppress your scent, your instincts, your... urges. You'll feel more like yourself." I nodded, swallowing the pill dry. It scraped down my throat like a stone.
"Ava." My mother took my hands, squeezing tight. Her green eyes were fierce and wet. "I need you to promise me something."
"What?"I asked, my voice trembling.
"Promise me you'll never stop taking these pills," my mother said, her voice urgent.
"Promise me you'll never let yourself go into heat.
Promise me you'll leave this house as soon as you turn eighteen, go to college somewhere far away, build a life for yourself that doesn't involve—" She gestured vaguely, encompassing the house, the boys, everything. "—this."
"I promise," I whispered.
My mother pulled me into a hug, holding me so tight I could barely breathe. "I won't let them have you," she murmured against my hair. "I won't let anyone have you unless you choose it. You deserve better than being someone's possession."
I believed her. I believed that she would protect me, that the suppressants would work, that I could escape this house and these boys and this terrifying new reality. I was wrong.
That night, I wrote in my diary. Just a few words, my hand shaking too hard to write more:
They looked at me like I was something to eat. Like I was already theirs. Mason dropped his glass. Caleb made this sound—like hunger. Ethan's hands were shaking. Leo smiled like he'd won something.
Mom says the suppressants will make it better. She says I can have a normal life. I don't think anything will ever be normal again.
I didn't write about how my heart had raced when they looked at me. About the way something deep inside me had responded to their hunger with a hunger of its own.
I didn't write about how, for one terrifying moment, I had wanted to go to them. That was the secret I would carry for years. The shame I would bury so deep I almost convinced myself it didn't exist.
But they knew. Even then, they knew. And they’d never stopped waiting.