9. Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Seb
We’re almost halfway home when I remember to charge my phone so I can check for calls from the clinic or Rollie. I get several notifications as soon as I turn it on, but before I can check them, Bram’s number comes up on my caller ID.
Weird. Bram has to know I’m with his mate and that we’re on our way to his place. What could be so important that he needs to tell us right this second?
Knowing my brother, I assume he wants us to grab some last-minute ingredients for dinner and figured Ty must be driving. Which he is. But the car has Bluetooth, so calling me instead of his mate still seems odd.
“Hello?” I say, apprehension prickling my skin.
“Hi, Sebastian.” Bram says. His use of my full name sets off all my internal warning alerts even before he gets super campy with the next sentence out of his mouth, drawing out his vowels for the first three words before blurting the rest in a rush. “Um, soooo…slight change of plans about dinner.” He sounds…weird. like, he’s forcing a chipper tone to disguise whatever news he doesn’t really want to be giving me. That’s not a good sign.
“Is everyone alright?” I ask, because that’s the only thing I can think of that would upset my brother. My mind races with all the terrible possibilities, visions of carnage dancing in my mind’s eye. Not the kids. If something happened to them, Bram would have called Ty, not me. And he wouldn’t be coherent enough to play coy about it. Ty shoots me a quizzical look. I glance at him, then put the phone on speaker and drop it into the cup holder so we can both hear my brother.
“Yes?” Bram asks. “Mostly. I mean. No one is going to die or anything. The babies are napping and Myra is playing Minecraft with Cory in the den.”
“Who isn’t going to die, Bramble?” I grind my teeth, which isn’t even nearly as satisfying a way to show my frustration as it is when I’ve got a beak to grind and clack at him. He has to realize that there is a world of misery possible between the lines of what he’s not saying.
Is he calling about Winny? My heart sinks to my toes, our clutchmate has been through enough shit to last a lifetime. I’m trying not to jump to conclusions even as a slideshow of all the terrible things that could have happened to our moms and other siblings flashes through my mind.
I close my eyes and rub them until I see flashing lights. It doesn’t stop the mental reel from spinning, each member of our rave flitting through my thoughts until the reel spins to a screeching stop on Rollie’s face. Not him.
“What happened, bird, you’re scaring your brother,” Ty prompts his mate, low voice gruff and reassuring.
“Oh, no, it’s not bad. Per se. Just. Um. Unexpected? We’re going to have to reschedule dinner I think. I just got a call from Harvey, and you should probably call Rollie on your way home.”
I want to reach through the phone and shake answers out of my infuriating brother. “Bram, focus. Tell me what’s going on.”
“He’s in heat,” Bram blurts.
That doesn’t make any sense. None at all. Rollie can’t be in heat. Unless he took something? Why would he do that without talking to me first? For some alpha?
He hasn’t been seeing anyone, as far as I know. He’d have told me if he was. We tell each other almost everything. Not about where the HRT comes from though. Or details about where I go when I can’t drown out the voice of my own self-hatred. We don’t talk about the types of alphas I look for at my worst. The ones who make my inner raven want to take to the sky and find our flock for a safety that the worst depths of my human side’s psyche doesn’t believe I deserve.
“No. He can’t…that can’t…I can’t…” I can’t actually finish the thought, the words choke me as I swallow them down. Bram babbles something absurd. False reassurances that everything will be fine once I talk to Rollie. I snort derisively.
I can’t talk to anyone when it feels like I’m choking on air. This doesn’t make any sense. Unless Rollie took a heat inducer to lash out at me? Except he wouldn’t do that and even thinking it is grasping at straws because all the other possibilities scare me too much to consider.
I can’t think logically about this. Fear tosses me along in an ocean of pain. If this is his way of telling me he’s done with my shit, then Rollie might as well have tossed my heart in a blender. It’s so far out of character I can’t really bring myself to believe he’s finally realized that I’m never going to be good enough for him and moved on. But the alternative that he’s spontaneously developed a heat seems equally impossible, so I don’t know what to believe. At least if he took something to induce a heat, then he’s not sick.
“Seb?” Ty glances at me, concern furrowing his brow. I’m glad my brother has Ty. Bram deserves the world, and Ty will happily give it to him. But in this moment, it just hurts to know I’ll never have a mate who loves me. Someone who cares so deeply about my entire family that he looks at my clutchmates with that much kind compassion.
“Mm?” I try to sound normal. Like everything is fine. It’s not fine.
Either Rollie is seriously ill because of the medication I gave him under false pretenses. Or I finally pushed him too far. My head is spinning either way. The only anchor tethering me in the storm of emotions is that this feels like a total vindication of the taunting inner voice that always spurs me toward my worst impulses.
The seductive voice of the void, telling me I’m not good enough. Whispering that I should just give up. Rollie would be better off without me. He’s probably figured out that I’m garbage. Too useless for anyone to want me. I did something awful to the shifter I love and nothing is ever going to be okay again if I can’t fix this mess.
I can’t breathe. My seatbelt is choking me, so I take it off. Better, but I need out, need open skies and the wind under my wings. I scrabble at the door handle, heedless of the fact we’re on the interstate going over seventy miles per hour in heavy traffic.
“What are you doing?” Ty asks, voice stone-cold calm. I shake my head and curl my fingers around the latch.
I can’t breathe. I need to get out. Fly away from my life. Forget all this anguish at the bottom of a bottle and wake up in bed with some alpha I don’t remember. Or never wake up at all; that’s the quiet part I never let myself finish. It terrifies me how much a part of me wants it. Ty hits the automatic locks before I can get the door open. I tug on the latch and slap at the lock, nowhere near coordinated enough to actually get the door open.
“Whoa! Seb, stop that right this instant.” Ty’s voice booms like the one time we were walking to the park, and he yelled for Myra not to step into an intersection as a car ran a red light.
I flinch from his intensity and hunch low in my seat, reflex telling me the angry alpha beside me is a threat. Marin used to yell like that if I stepped out of line too. I’m trembling and even more desperate to shift and fly away, but I’ve only ever heard Ty raise his voice out of worry when someone he loves is in danger. He pulls into the breakdown lane and hits the hazard lights as we roll to a gentle stop on a straight stretch of road.
“Do not try that again, Sebastian. Understand?” Ty turns to look at me, angling himself away from me to look as unthreatening as possible as he does. I make myself look at him.
I nod woodenly and slouch deeper into my seat like a sullen teenager after being told off. I do not want to piss off the big loving bear shifter alpha, but as the adrenaline rush from the news about Rollie and Ty yelling fades, it’s easier to believe that Ty would never hurt me.
No, more than that, Ty will go out of his way to make sure I don’t hurt myself. The exact opposite of my type when it comes to alphas. I almost snort at my terrible judgment. Almost. It’s the furthest thing from funny.
“What is it? What’s going on?” Bram squawks through the phone. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Seb. It’s just, Rollie seemed really freaked too. Harvey couldn’t reach you so he had to call me to come get Rollie from work. I guess he was too out of it to get home on his own and didn’t seem to realize why. Did you give him something? Could he be having a reaction? I don’t want to meddle, so I wasn’t planning to say anything, but he mentioned something about you getting him hormones? If you two were planning to share a synthetic heat, then it seems like you got the timing or dosage wrong. Or maybe it was a bad batch?”
“Bram, Seb needs a minute to process the news. I’ll make sure he gets home safe, okay?” Ty plucks my phone out of the cup holder, turns off speaker mode to exchange a few more reassuring words with his mate, then tells Bram he loves him before hanging up.
“Okay. First things first.” Ty hands my phone back to me, scrubs a hand over his face, then meets my gaze. “Are you a flight risk?”
I shake my head mutely.
“Okay. Can you tell me what’s going on with you?”
I can’t, so I turn away and stare resolutely out the window at the trees lining the highway. I’m breathing more evenly now at least; no longer hyperventilating as I teeter on the edge of a panic attack.
“Can I talk about it then?” Ty asks.
I nod cautiously.
“Whatever is going on between you and Rollie is none of my business, but Rollie adores you. Bram says he was asking for you. Only you. Winny brought him home and made sure he ate, hydrated and got into bed with a second dose of suppressors for when you get there, so he can be lucid for you two to talk this out properly. But if you have any doubts about what he would want if he wasn’t in heat or if you don’t want to spend it with him, we have a guest room with your name on it for as long as you need it.”
This isn’t entirely mine to tell, but I don’t know how to explain the depths of my despair over the situation without sharing all the reasons why it’s so upsetting. And my family all knows that Rollie was assigned beta at birth, so I’m not outing him by talking about this. I shake my head, I’m tempted to just swallow it all down, deal with it the same ways I always have. Except I might not survive coping with losing Rollie with my usual methods.
I take a fortifying breath. And then another one. Trying to force the words into some semblance of order. “You don’t get it. Rollie can’t be in heat.”
“Why not?” Ty’s tone is neutral.
I groan. “Because he lacks the organs to actually have one?”
Ty shakes his head at me. “Because he was assigned beta?”
“Yeah.”
“But he’s on omega hormones now?”
“Yeah.”
“So, his prescriber didn’t mention whether this might happen?” Ty asks.
“No. Um. He doesn’t have one. I, uh, I might have been sharing my prescription with him without telling anyone. And now he’s having a heat and he shouldn’t be and I might have really fucked up this time. I don’t know what to do. He kissed me last night. Told me that if we could, he’d give me his heat and his kits and I—I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve him.”
“Is that what you told him? That you don’t want to be his mate?”
“No. Worse. I came in my pants from making out with him, lost my nerve, and flew off to let a stranger fuck my brains out.”
“Ah. So. Do you think he took a heat inducer to manipulate you into something?” Ty suggests, tone so bland I can’t be entirely sure whether he’s seriously suggesting that or if the question is meant to show me how absurd the possibility sounds when spoken aloud.
“No!” I snarl at Ty, taking out the visceral reaction on him and instantly ashamed of myself for it. “Rollie wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, then it must just be one of those things. Sometimes HRT causes breakthrough heats. It doesn’t have to mean he’s ovulating, or even that he can ovulate.”
I snort at that. “Doesn’t matter, considering I can’t exactly knot him.”
Ty arches a brow at me. “Last I checked, I’ve got three—going on four—cubs to teach where babies come from and you aren’t one of them. I’m not here to tell you to be safe or suggest what you should do. But Bram will end me if I let you leave this car without doing everything in my power to make sure you’re going to come home safe to us. Can you promise me that you’re not going to make bad choices if I let you out here?”
I sigh. “Can you take me home? I should probably call Rollie first so we can talk before I get a whiff of him in heat.”
Ty nods approvingly and gestures toward my phone. “That sounds like a good plan. Buckle up.”
Ty watches as I fasten my seatbelt and I take a moment to compose myself.
“Bram isn’t the only one who would never forgive me if something happened to you,” Ty says, just when I have a handle on my emotions.
“Winny?” I guess, even as his actual meaning dawns on me. Aw, Ty cares. I knew that, but I can’t help teasing him. “My moms? Your children? Bryony, Elric, and Cory?”
Ty laughs. “All of the above, but I meant that I care about you, Seb. Not just because my mate loves you with his entire heart, either. All you pushy birds seem to have nested in my heart too.”
“We do that. Very insidious.” My attempt to brazen out the awkwardness with humor falls flat, but it still makes it easier to pull myself back together after coming so close to shattering completely. I play at being a cocky little shit often enough that it feels natural. Like I’m back on solid ground.
“Mhm. Call Rollie.” Ty nods toward my phone again, then he eases the car back onto the highway. It’s just as well that we’re far enough from the city that the traffic is lighter here. We’re under twenty minutes from Four Corners now, so I don’t have much time to procrastinate about making this call.
I swipe through my notifications first. Several missed calls from my family and Rollie’s cell and the number saved as his work line. Wow, Bram wasn’t lying when he said they tried to get in touch with me while my phone was dead.
The work calls were probably from Harvey. There’s a slew of messages from the wolf.
Rollie: Rollie is safe in the break room at the market, but he needs a ride home from work. Everything is fine, but he’s going into heat.
Rollie: This is Harvey, by the way. We’ll keep calling until we find someone he trusts to get him home. I know things are awkward between you and the pack, for good reason, but Rollie asked me to call you, so I’ve been trying to get in touch.
Rollie: Answer your phone! Rollie: He’s going into heat and he needs his mate. If you get this, call him back. I think your voice would help calm him down. This is Lou, his favorite coworker, BTW.
Rollie: Harvey told me not to be rude, but he had no idea he was in season, what the hell? You better take good care of him!
Well shit. Rollie really is in heat. It still doesn’t feel real. A few minutes ago, I was bursting to tell him that I did it. I took the job, and I lied about him being my mate so we can finally see a shifter specialist about our respective hormones. The pride of being able to provide for him properly mingles with my guilt that I might have left it until too late.
All of my reasons for not working at the zoo seem so petty and childish now that Rollie might be sick from the medication he trusted me to get for him. Every excuse I gave Bram about not wanting to work among static humans and how degrading it felt to show off my bird form for gawking visitors stems from the toxic baggage of my past. A blend of my self-hatred and just how deep under my skin the alpha who I thought would be my future got with his ideas about what an omega can and should be. Marin saw me as broken when I couldn’t give him the family we both dreamed of and a part of me still agrees.
Part of me still wants to punish that broken part of me that will never fit the idealized version of me that my ex put on a pedestal and promised the world. So I said no to the opportunities Bram gave me. Not because they were beneath my pride, but because I knew what Bram would never accept about me. I don’t deserve good things. Certainly not a cushy job that brings more to the rave than I take from our pooled resources. What I deserve doesn’t matter, Rollie deserves to spend his heat feeling cherished and adored. I can give him that. Even if letting him go afterward will break my heart.
I dial Rollie’s cell. It rings for a long time. Long enough to feel like an eternity as tension coils through me. Is this how he felt when he spoke with me the night I called him to say goodbye and he saved my life? It’s awful. I hate not having any control of the situation. I’m so scared and determined to do whatever it takes to make sure the person I adore above all others is alright.
The fact I’m not an alpha and servicing him through a heat feels perilously close to him telling me that’s how he sees me. That what he wants from me is to revel in the parts of my body that make me wish I could shed it.
I was born with the requisite anatomy until my body got its wires crossed a few years after my heats started. Most people don’t argue that omegas with creep aren’t real omegas. No amount of saying I’m still an omega even without my heats and fertility helps with the dysphoria when I get a whiff of alpha musk emanating from my scent glands though. Nothing really helps with how broken I feel when I can’t slick up properly no matter how turned on I am, but sharing the prescription omega hormones I need to keep my condition stable gives me the illusion of control over it. And it means that my dysphoria has a purpose, a reason for the suffering and loss.
The only thing that matters for now is taking care of Rollie. Not just because I love him. As a best friend and my chosen family and so much else besides that. I love him as the mate I know I won’t ever deserve to share my life with. This impossible heat is my fault, and if fixing the situation hurts, it’s nothing less than the penance I deserve. I just need it to not be a harbinger of some worse health concern that my stumbling efforts to help him have caused.
I can’t help the nightmare slideshow of all the frantic online research I did about weird heats when my creep symptoms first started. All the terrible possibilities that loom over us now because I thought I could help him. This isn’t the same as that. We can fix it. My own impotent terror doesn’t matter as long as Rollie is alright.
“Seb?” Rollie fills my name with galaxies of longing, vast as the starry sky. His need calls to me with the same intensity as the night sky too. His voice lands on my ears like a soothing balm to all my worry, anger, and fear.
“Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay, baby?”
“Mm, no. Need you.”
“I know. Bram says you’re in heat?”
“Yeah. It’s not like last time.”
“No? What do you mean?”
“No. Hurts more. All crampy and I didn’t get slick. We need lots of slick. Need your knot in me. Want you to breed my pussy and fill me up with kits. Eggs? Dunno. Want your babies.”
My heart might just break if he keeps asking for that. It’s impossible and I want it so bad. If this was the first time I was hearing him express that desire, there’s no way I’d go to him until we could have a proper lucid talk, but we have both fantasized about sharing a real heat like this with each other. And there is no chance I can knock him up, so that’s not a concern we need to have a serious conversation about. I might smell like an alpha lately, but I’m not one in any sense of the word. Certainly not in any way that makes a pregnancy between us remotely viable.
“I know, baby. I’m going to take care of you. You sure that’s what you want? Can you take a suppressor so we can discuss it when your brain isn’t totally focused on being horny?”
“Took a dose already. Don’t like it. What did I tell you yesterday?” Rollie asks.
I rack my brain for the relevant conversation. “That you want to give me your heat?” I guess.
“Yeah. Still want to,” Rollie says.
“You didn’t, um, take something to uh, induce a heat?” I check, knowing the answer, but needing to be sure.
“You think I’d do that without telling you?” Rollie snaps.
“No.” I know he wouldn’t, he’s the last person who would lie or manipulate me with something like this. “Sorry for even suggesting it.”
He sniffles and tries to muffle a sob. Fuck me for making him cry. “You can say no if you don’t want me.”
“I want you. I want your heat, Rollie. I just don’t want you to regret giving it to me,” I say.
“Never. Only thing I regret is not asking you to be my mate ages ago,” Rollie says.
That’s…that has to be his heat talking, but if it will make him happy, I’m open to discussing that kind of roleplay. Once he takes a suppressor to be sure he understands it can’t be real. At least, not until we can have a proper talk about it. I’m sure he’ll change his mind once the heat pheromones fade.
“Okay, we can talk about that when I get there. Get yourself ready for me? There are a couple of bottles of slick in the hall closet next to the laundry detergent and the towels.” I glance over at Ty and he rolls his eyes as taps the Bluetooth earbuds he got from Bram a while back. I mouth an apology.
“Do what you gotta do and don’t mind me, I’m just listening to this music really loudly until I can drop you off.” Ty waves away my sorry.
“Mhm? You gonna be here soon? Need you so bad, Seb,” Rollie pleads over the phone. So I do my best to put Ty out of my mind.
“Soon baby. You want me to stay on the line so you can tell me how you’re stretching that tight little hole for me?” I ask.
“Yeah. So tight. Might need my hands free…ungh, oooooh. Mmm. Like that,” Rollie grunts. With his phone on speaker I hear all kinds of evocatively filthy sounds.
“What’s that, baby?” My mouth is dry listening to his voice breaking in pleasure. My dick reacts to the sounds of his clear enjoyment.
“Knotting plug. Mmm. Hits the spot.” He grunts rhythmically, like he’s fucking himself with the plug shoved in deep. “Oh, mmm, Seb! Mate, I’m gonna come. Can’t…need to so bad. Need you.”
“Do it, baby. Come for me,” I encourage him. Judging from the incoherent moaning and slick sounds of him fucking himself faster, he obeys. Damn, I want to be there with him right this instant. I glance at the speedometer, and the reminder that music to block it out or not, my brother-in-law totally just sat next to me while I basically had phone sex is awkward.
Ty notices me craning my neck over the console to look, and gives me a knowing smirk. “Driving as fast as I safely can, Seb. Tell Rollie to take a blocker so you can have a talk with him at least semi-lucid before you go barging in, yeah?”
I nod, swallowing hard at the assumption that I’ll be sharing Rollie’s heat. Because everyone in our family already sees us as mates and of course I’m the one Rollie wants with him for this. I give Ty a thumbs up and talk to Rollie again. “You still there? That was so good, baby. Did it feel good?”
“Mhm.” Rollie pants into the phone for a minute then moans. “Want to do it with you inside me.”
“I know, baby. Me too. But this is important. Rollie, baby, can you take the blocker Winny left now? So we can talk a bit when I get there?”
“Do I have to? I know it’s not real. You aren’t my mate for real. But you’re the one who wanted to pretend.”
“Huh?” I rack my brain until it dawns on me that I did tell him my plan to claim him as my mate for the zoo job benefits.
“For work? So, can’t we just pretend to be like any other omega mates and enjoy our heat together?” He sounds so lost and hurt and my knee jerk reaction is to agree to whatever he wants. But Rollie hates lying and I will never knowingly dangle his dreams in front of him just because I want his heat more than I’ve allowed myself to want anything good for far too long.
Taking advantage of this unexpected heat is not something I can forgive myself for. We need to have a clearer conversation about the things that changed last night. He’s said he wants to share another heat with me in the past, but that was before our kiss and my clumsy fake mates idea and just, so many things we need to discuss like rational adults but can’t when he’s in heat.
A suppressor isn’t going to give us enough time to really delve into all of that, but it should at least clear his head enough for him to consider if anything has changed for him. I need to be sure he understands his options. My brain is eager to remind me of a litany of reasons he’ll realize I’m not good enough for him if I give him a real chance.
I lick my lips. “Yes, Rollie. You need to take the medicine so we can talk. I need to know you really want to share your heat with me and it’s not just the hormones talking, baby.”
“Okay. Not gonna change my mind. Hurry home?” Rollie sounds adorably vulnerable and plaintive as he begs me to come home to him, the heat lowering his usual inhibitions. “I’m taking the meds. Want a knot. Will you stay on the line until you get here?”
“Yeah, I’m listening. I’m here. And I’ll be there as fast as I can, love.” I promise, staring at the traffic and willing the miles to pass faster.