Chapter 4
Drake
I wake up feeling like hammered shit.
My head is pounding and my mouth tastes like something died in it. Every muscle in my body aches like I went ten rounds with a freight train and lost.
Post-rut.
I know the feeling. I've had enough of them to recognize the specific brand of exhaustion that comes after days of biology hijacking your brain and body.
But this one feels different. Heavier… like I swallowed lead and it moved into my chest and decided to stay.
I force my eyes open. The room swims into focus slowly. The unfamiliar ceiling and walls.
Wait.
No.
Familiar.
My room.
I'm in my own bed. The one I haven't slept in for a while because I’ve been too wrapped up in Marie to leave hers.
The blue comforter I picked out three years ago is tangled around my legs.
The dresser with the chipped corner from when Eli and I tried to move it without help sits against the far wall.
Alone.
I'm alone.
The sheets smell like me and sweat and the faint ghost of citrus that's been my scent since I presented. No jasmine and vanilla cream. No Marie.
Her heat must have broken and I must have crawled my pathetic ass back to my room.
I sit up slowly. The world tilts and my stomach lurches. I press my palms against my eyes and wait for my brain to come back online.
It takes longer than it should.
Fragments surface through the fog.
Marie's heat. Days of it. How many days? Three? Four? More? Time stopped meaning anything after the first twelve hours.
Her scent was everywhere. Filling the room, my lungs, and every thought in my brain until there was nothing else.
Her body under mine, the biological pull so strong I couldn't think past it. Her heat amplified everything. I couldn't question it. Couldn't do anything except respond to the omega in heat who needed an alpha and I was an alpha and that's what alphas do.
Ragon ordered us to stay even when we surfaced long enough to mention Vee. He wanted us to stay and take care of Marie, despite what she'd done. Despite how she'd lied.
Drake, stay with her. She needs you.
Drake, don't leave. The heat isn't done.
Drake, one more round. She's asking for you. We'll get to Vee later, I swear. We'll fix it.
I did everything he said. Everything she needed. Everything my biology screamed at me to do.
Ragon used his alpha bark. Even when we went for supplies, he’d bark that we had to return right away. Told us Vee was fine, she wasn't in heat, Marie was. Vee could go a few days without attention.
Hell, she'd already been going months without it.
The video footage plays out again in my head.
The zoo footage.
My stomach drops.
Oh god.
The footage.
Vee didn't push Marie.
Marie lied.
And I believed her. We all believed her. We punished Vee for something she didn't do and I stood there and let it happen. I didn't push back. I just accepted that Vee would do something like that because Marie said so and Marie was my scent match and scent matches don't lie.
Except she did.
The guilt is harsh and unyielding. I let it come.
I swing my legs off the bed and sit there with my head in my hands, trying to breathe through the nausea.
She lied and I bought it. Scent-drunk and stupid and so wrapped up in biology that I didn't even question it. I just believed her because she smelled right and she cried pretty and every instinct I had said protect her, believe her, choose her.
How many other times did she lie?
The memories come back sharper now that the rut fog is lifting.
Her crying in the hallway when I spent too long talking to Vee in the kitchen. "I just feel so left out. Like I'm intruding. Like she doesn't want me here."
Me pulling away from Vee to comfort Marie instead. Wrapping my arms around her and telling her she belonged. That Vee would warm up; it just took time.
Vee watching from the kitchen doorway with that carefully blank expression she'd been wearing more and more.
Marie looking sad when Vee baked. "I wish I could do something special like that. Something that makes everyone happy. But I can barely even make toast without burning it."
Me telling Vee maybe she should give Marie some space in the kitchen. Let her feel useful so she can find her place.
Vee's face when I said it. How her shoulders came up. The way she said "Of course" in that tone that meant absolutely not of course but I'll do it anyway because I have to.
Her half-truths about feeling unsafe. About Vee glaring at her when no one was looking. Or small slights that I never actually witnessed but accepted as fact because I was fucking smitten and surely Vee was just being difficult because change is hard for territorial omegas.
And the kitchen. God, the kitchen. During the heat.
I came out for snacks. I strolled out like it was halftime and I needed chips.
Vee was at the counter, her hands were shaking and I asked "how're you doing" like I was making small talk at a bus stop.
She said she was fine. She wasn't fine. I could see she wasn't fine and I didn't stop because Marie was waiting, the rut was pulling me back and stopping meant looking at what I was doing. I didn't want to look.
I kissed her temple while I was covered in Marie's scent.
She gagged. Physically recoiled from me.
And I still left. I told her "We'll focus on you after" and walked back down the hall like that meant anything.
Like "after" was a real thing I was offering and not just a word I used to make myself feel less guilty about leaving.
Nobody barked me back to that room. Nobody ordered me. I had a choice and I chose a quick exit over my omega who was shaking in her own kitchen.
That one is mine. Not Ragon's. Mine.
Her face stayed with me though. Even through the rut haze, even with Marie's scent drowning out everything else.
Vee's expression when I pulled away. How she whispered "please" like she was asking me to either stay or stop existing near her and either one would have been better than what I actually did.
It kept surfacing between waves, in the brief windows where my brain came back online, I'd see her face and the guilt would cut through the fog.
That's when I started pushing back.
I told Ragon I needed to check on her. He said she was fine.
I said I didn't believe him. He barked me back into the room so hard my knees almost buckled.
Eli tried the same thing an hour later and got the same treatment.
Even Jasper, hand on the doorknob, that stubborn look on his face—Ragon cut him off cold.
Leave now and you're out, you never get to bond in. Jasper stood down.
We all stood down.
But I need to be honest about the order of it. I chose wrong first. I walked past Vee in that kitchen and chose wrong when nobody was making me. The bark came later, after I'd already failed her on my own.
God. Five years. Five years with Vee and I threw them away because someone smelled right and cried pretty.
Biology didn't make me forget her.
I let it. I used it. I chose the easy high over everything I'd actually built with Vee and called it fate because that was easier than calling it what it was.
A choice. My choice. Every single time.
I drag myself out of bed. My legs barely hold me. I have to grab the dresser to steady myself.
I smell like Marie even if my bed doesn’t.
That jasmine and vanilla cream soaked into my skin. It’s under my fingernails and in my hair. Days of it cling to me like a second skin.
I can't even make out Vee's scent on me anymore.
It's gone, scrubbed away by someone else's pheromones. Someone else's claim.
I'm disgusted with myself.
The nausea surges again and I barely make it to the bathroom before I'm sick.
I kneel on the cold tile and heave until there's nothing left. My body trying to purge things that can't be vomited away.
When I finally stop shaking, I sit back against the wall.
I need a shower. I need to scrub off every trace of her.
But first I need to know where Vee is.
I need to see her. Talk to her. Apologize.
I need to fix this.
I haul myself up and stumble out of the bathroom and down the hallway. My body moves on autopilot. Zombie mode.
Voices drift up from the kitchen, low and tense.
Ragon. Eli. Jasper.
I make my way downstairs. Each step feels like moving through mud. My muscles protest and my head pounds.
When I reach the kitchen they all turn to look at me.
Ragon looks like he hasn't slept in days. His hair is a mess, the longer strands falling out of the tie at the back of his neck. His scent is acrid with anxiety and what smells like barely controlled rage.
Eli looks pale and exhausted. There are dark circles under his eyes and his usually neat hair is sticking up like he's been running his hands through it.
Jasper's expression is carefully neutral but I also see the pity there.
"What's going on?" My voice comes out rough. Scratchy from disuse or dehydration or both.
Ragon's jaw tightens and his hands flatten on the counter. "Alex took Vee."
The words don't make sense at first.
My brain stutters trying to process them.
"What?"
"Last night. Alex and his pack. They took her."
My lungs cave.
Actually cave. The air goes out of me and doesn't come back.
"Vee's gone?"
Horror sets in. My brain is trying to catch up but it keeps slipping on the information. Vee. Gone. Taken.
Ragon nods once, sharp. "She went into heat. They took her right in the middle of it."
Everything goes white for a second.
Heat.
Vee was in heat.
While we were with Marie. While I was locked in a room for days doing exactly what my biology told me to do and Vee was alone and scared and going into heat without her pack.
Oh god.
"Why didn't you stop them?" The words come out too loud. "Why didn't you go check on her? Why didn't you—"
"They're her scent matches."
Silence.
The kitchen goes completely still.
The refrigerator hums. The clock on the wall ticks and somewhere outside a car drives past.
Eli's face drains of color. "What?"