Chapter 23 A Good Little Omega
A Good Little Omega
One year later
Iwoke up groggy again. Why did I always feel so terrible these days? I mean, I knew why, but this was over the top.
No matter how much sleep I got, no matter how much Sanguis Vita I drank, I was tired. Lethargic.
And, strangely enough, kind of horny.
It was like the day or two before a heat, but my heat never came. I could still think, I could still speak, but an undeniable ache throbbed between my legs that only Victor could help, and it had been like this for weeks.
I turned over to see if he was up for another round, but his side of the bed was cool and empty.
It wasn’t sunset already, was it? Had he actually left without saying goodbye?
I started to get up, but a sharp pain on the left side of my lower abdomen caused me to pause and wince. Had I pulled a muscle or something? Maybe from when I’d tried to be on top a few hours ago. Victor had been a little rough in taking back control.
Hushed voices outside the room kept me from investigating further.
There was someone else here.
“… how many did you take?”
I paused. It sounded like he’d been drawing my blood. He’d done that whenever he’d needed to leave for a few days for a meeting or whatever. But he hadn’t mentioned anything about it to me yet, and he hadn’t had to put me under in secret to do it before.
“We retrieved seventeen…”
Seventeen? Pints? Over how many days?
That must have been why I was so tired.
But still, he didn’t need to be so secretive about it.
“Just take care of her for the next few days. She’ll likely feel some cramping and bloating, and I’d advise against anything too strenuous.
If you can avoid feeding that would be best, otherwise up her intake of water and Sanguis Vita.
Oh, and you can stop administering the Ovessra and start her on antibiotics… ”
Ovessra… that sounded familiar.
“Actually, doctor, what if I kept her on the Ovessra?”
“Pardon?”
“The side effects have been… pleasant. For both of us. I would like her to stay on them.”
I felt the panic creeping from my gut to the top of my head. What the hell had he been giving me?
“I can’t say I’d recommend it, as it’s not meant to be used long term. There haven’t been enough studies…”
“Let’s just keep her on it for a little while longer, hm? You can come back to check on her again in a few months, and if it’s caused any harm, we’ll stop.”
This doctor had examined me before by the sound of their conversation, but I didn’t recognize his voice, which could only mean I’d been put under. I was too light of a sleeper otherwise.
The pain in my abdomen pulsed again, and I couldn’t keep the small whine from sounding in my chest.
“She’s waking up, you need to leave.”
“Victor?” I called, scrambling out of bed and trying to catch him in whatever lies he would likely try to weave. But the front door closed before I could exit the bedroom. He stood in front of me, fully dressed, with a glass of Sanguis Vita in hand. “Good evening,” he said, handing me the drink.
“Who was here?” I asked, my voice trembling. I held onto the door jamb for support.
“Drink,” was his reply. He walked past me and opened the curtains, revealing the burgeoning night sky. “And that was no one for you to concern yourself with.”
Like he ever had anyone in here that didn’t concern me. I looked at the glass in my hand. How many years had I been drinking these, never questioning their contents?
“What’s in this?” I asked, afraid to take a sip. Had it tasted different recently?
His lips flattened, his eyebrows coming together. “Sage, I don’t have time for this. Just drink it.”
He walked past me, heading towards the nightstand on his side of the bed. He grabbed his watch and his phone, not bothering to look at me.
“What’s Ovessra?”
Now I’d done it.
He quickly cut the distance between us, grabbing me by the hair on the back of my head to force me to look up at him.
“Why are you always questioning me?” he hissed.
Tears stung the corners of my eyes, and I blinked, feeling them begin to escape down my cheeks.
“Why are you always keeping secrets from me?” I whispered.
With a heavy sigh, he let go of me and took a step back, adjusting his tie. “I understand you must be bored. What else do you have to do while I’m gone but dissect my every word, every touch, every glance?”
Then he smirked, as though I was just some desperate, lovesick, empty-headed omega with no life outside her alpha.
I slammed the glass down on the dresser, not caring when the thick, viscous liquid splattered and spilled from the impact. “Because you set that system up!”
His eyes widened in anger, his jaw set tight. But I continued anyway. “You took away everything from me and then you punish me for relying on you. Tell me what you did to me!”
I could see his tongue moving along his teeth under his lips as he breathed in deeply, trying to keep himself from lashing out. “I think we need to come to some sort of understanding. I thought we had after…”
His eyes wandered down to the scars on my neck and arms, and I covered them as best I could, feeling self-conscious. I hated the constant reminders of Kain Ulfic’s attack, and that even with all of his power, he wouldn’t allow me a charm to glamour them away.
He took my hands and held them in his own. “I need you here. Safe. It’s the only thing that allows me to breathe easy when I’m working. I thought I could be enough to keep you happy, but I suppose you probably do need some sort of variety in your life.”
My heart fluttered as he brought my hands to his lips, then my wrists to his nose as he breathed me in deeply. I hated this man so much, and yet even the smallest, intimate acts could flip my stomach and make me swoon. It wasn’t fair, because it made it so easy for him to manipulate me.
“Now that I think about it,” he continued, “we haven’t really gotten to know one another, have we?” His nose traveled along my arm until it found its way to the crook of my neck, where he remained, his teeth scraping the delicate skin and sending shivers down my spine.
Damn him, I couldn’t think like this.
“I… I don’t even know your favorite color,” I replied with a short breath, preparing myself for his bite.
He chuckled darkly. “Why, it’s green, of course.”
His teeth sank into me, the powerful vampire venom flooding my veins with a powerful aphrodisiac, designed by nature and their god to keep their thralls still and desperate for more. I moaned, my nipples hardening, my core heating and feeling terribly empty.
“And I don’t know what Ovessra is.”
With a snarl, he pushed me back, and I was thankful for the bed behind me, cushioning my fall. He was on top of me immediately, my blood framing his lips.
“You haven’t had your heat in a year,” he hissed, like I had purposefully willed it away.
But with that one accusation, I finally remembered what Ovessra was.
“So you thought forcing me into a chemically induced heat was the solution?” I asked, baring my own teeth, blunt as they were.
“It’s not my fault you’re broken!” he replied. I knew he meant the words to hurt, and they did, but not as much as they enraged me.
Because it was his fault. Yes, my heart problems were congenital. But my body’s refusal to go into heat? It wasn’t a coincidence that happened after his wedding.
Then there was the weight loss, hair loss, the depression… everything else that was wrong with me was a direct result of him forcing a mate bond that didn’t want to exist.
My voice was a whisper, but it still carried all the weight of my intentions. “Then just let me go.”
His hand found its way to my neck, where it constricted just enough to warn me that it would be no struggle for him to kill me once and for all. “I have claimed you, mate. For better or worse. And I’m trying to make this work. The same cannot be said of you.”
“Because I never claimed you. I never agreed to any of this. You chased after me, you took me, you bit me.”
He let me go and then sat up, still straddling me, as he quickly took off his tie and opened the first few buttons on his shirt, pulling it down to expose the spot where his neck met his shoulders.
“Do it, then! Claim me as yours, and perhaps we’ll finally put an end to this misery.”
I scoffed, trying to scoot my way out from under him. “If anything, it will just compound it. Face it, Victor. There is something wrong with us.”
With him, with me… both or either. But it was definitely fucked up.
It was mind-boggling that he still couldn’t see how dysfunctional we were. Was the extra boost in strength he got from our mate bond worth all this pain between us? Didn’t he want to sleep with someone more willing? There was no way my vagina was that special.
With a growl, he finally stood. “If that’s truly what you think, see what happens when I don’t come home.”
He grabbed his jacket and stormed off, slamming the front door so hard it shook the bed.
* * *
True to his word, he didn’t come back the next morning. Or the morning after that, or the one after that.
Someone came by to collect my blood, my meals and Sanguis Vita were brought up as usual, and cleaners silently took care of any housekeeping. But otherwise, I was completely alone, with nothing other than my cat, Ember, to keep me company.
I didn’t miss him, though. No, I was spectacularly stubborn.
When I was five, I had been determined to learn how to ride a bike, and didn’t want to wait until the weekend when my parents had the time to teach me. So one day after school, I just rolled my bike to an empty parking lot and taught myself.
I’d been there for hours, long after it had gotten dark, and it had all been worth it, because I arrived home on two wheels, scratched, scuffed, and bloody, all by myself.
So spending a few days with just Ember? Yeah, I could do this.
“We don’t need him. Do we, Ember?”
He purred in response.
* * *
One week later
The sound of the faucet dripping in the bathroom echoed through the apartment, so loudly I thought my eardrums might shatter.
But the silence after I’d fixed it was almost worse.
“Okay, Ember,” I said, my voice sounding strange. Had it always carried that nasally edge? “From now on, the half-bath is going to be closed.”
The apartment felt bigger than it ever had, and I started counting steps every time I moved, almost to test the space and see if anything had changed.
Thirty-five steps from the bed to the couch in the living room.
The living room was twenty-five steps across, eighteen the other way. The bedroom was ten by fifteen. The bathroom was five by seven.
A doctor came every dawn to withdraw my blood, but they wore a mask and refused to speak to me. Their handling was rough, too, as though Victor had made sure I would find no sympathetic allies.
It was now my sole job to be alive so he could be alive.
The scars on my arms would itch sometimes.
* * *
Three weeks later (I think)
Do it, then! Claim me as yours, and perhaps we’ll finally put an end to this misery.
I repeated his words, over and over. Why hadn’t I just bitten him?
Maybe it would have been the answer to everything. Maybe the claim, his blood in me for once, would be enough to right the wrongs, to fix the bond. Maybe that was what made a mate bond different from a normal claiming by an alpha.
Do it, then! Claim me as yours, and perhaps we’ll finally put an end to this misery.
“Yes,” I whispered, crouched by the window. The sun was starting to rise, and my heart raced. Sunrise was when Victor came home. Was he coming home today?
I thought I heard footsteps, and scrambled to my feet, almost falling when stars exploded in my vision. I was weak, barely eating. Barely sleeping, even though I spent most of my time in bed.
I stood at the door, smoothing down the white lacy thing he’d bought me for his wedding night. He’d liked this one. Maybe he’d notice, maybe he’d finally come back.
But it was just the sound of the guards changing shifts.
I hugged myself, imagining it was his arms on me again.
Witches weren’t meant to be alone.
Oh Hecara, I couldn’t take much more of this.
* * *
What even is time anymore?
I lay motionless on the bed as my blood was drawn.
“Please.”
The sound startled me, and I looked around to see where it had come from. But the doctor didn’t seem to have noticed it.
He finished up quickly, ripping the needle out of my arm without any care or a bandage, and I touched the spot, collecting the drops on my fingers.
“Please.”
The doctor turned around, just for a second, and I realized the sound—raspy, dry, forgotten—was my own voice.
“I’m sorry. Tell him I’m sorry.”
He looked at me for a moment longer, gave the tiniest of nods, and left.
There was nothing to do but sleep, but it had gotten to the point where I couldn’t tell the difference between being asleep or being awake anymore. Both were filled with nightmares, but at least in the ones with Victor, I wasn’t alone.
It felt so real when the bed dipped with his weight, and I felt the cool skin of his palm on my cheek. “Oh my darling, look at you. Have you been eating at all?”
A sob caught in my chest. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, I’m here. Trust me, it’s been a very rough time for me, too. I don’t ever want to have to punish you like that again.”
“Please don’t leave me,” I cried, tears running down my cheeks. I wanted to sit up, but I could hardly move. “I’m sorry, I won’t ask you anything, ever. I’ll be good. I promise.”
He shushed me as he lay beside me, bringing me into his chest.
“You will be good, won’t you? My good little omega.”