Chapter Three #2
“I am sure. I have seen a few of these situations recently. With just the right timing, development can be frozen, and as long as a cycle isn’t allowed to complete, the development in the young woman is static. When she completes a cycle, her body will reset, and her development will finish.”
She bit her lip. “I am not due for a while.”
Dr. Oriel nodded. “Right. That is why I am here. I am working with omegas of this nature, and I have a protocol. The idea is to start a heat artificially, and then your body continues the process with only the occasional supplement until your body is under its own control.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“The option remains open to you. Don’t worry. When you are ready, you can call me.”
“Is there another way? Like eating high fibre or something?”
Dr. Oriel shook her head. “No. The slow stall of your system needs to be started again.”
Dex looked at her. “What happens if I don’t?”
Etienne said, “Then, we wait.”
Tosh nodded. “We wait.”
“I need to think about it and definitely have to wait until I don’t have holes in my torso.”
Dr. Oriel nodded. “Do you want to have an IUD installed?”
“I will table that for later. I do figure that there is something you might need to know for my file.”
“What is that?”
“My birth father was an Elite. After he fathered me and got someone else pregnant, he disappeared. My mom was never married to him, so my dad just slid into the vacancy. Proud father of two omegas and a girl. I was the free gift with purchase.”
Etienne froze under her. “You are an elf?”
“Half.”
Tosh grinned. “Well, that explains so much.”
She looked at him. “What does it explain?”
He crouched near her, grew eight inches taller, and turned solid black, with black hair. His eyes remained icy green.
She whispered, “Contacts?”
He grinned. “Yes. My eyes are red.”
She nodded. “Pointy ears.”
“Correct.”
“I thought you hung out in twos.”
“Not all of us. I was a spare. I am glad for it. I have been staying in your orbit and hoping you would see me. I have seen you dance, and I want to get you in my arms and moving to the music.”
She blinked. “Oh. I don’t dance outside of practice anymore.”
“But you will. That is my fondest wish as one of your alphas.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Slow your jets. Right now, the only things alphas are useful for are a very comfy chair.”
Dr. Oriel smiled. “Good attitude. Here is my card. I came here as a favour to my ex-teacher. Dr. Aquilar is impressive. He’s interested in the details.”
She felt Etienne’s fingers in her hair, and he chuckled. “Your ears are pointed. That’s cute.”
Tosh nodded. “It also explains your issue with your hair. It doesn’t hold dye because it doesn’t want it.”
She scowled. “Why is your hair black?”
“Because my parents had black hair.” He grinned, and she saw teeth that normally weren’t obvious.
She looked at him and reconciled the current image of him with the affable goof that she worked with. “This will be difficult.”
He smiled. “It is my goal that it will be easy once we are acquainted.”
Dex stared at his familiar grin. “Oh, fuck. Shut up.”
He laughed. “There you are.”
The doctor nodded and gave Dex a lollipop.
Dex made a happy sound and put the sucker in her mouth.
Dr. Oriel grinned. “I love that sound. Okay, Dex. I will see you when you are ready.”
Dex mumbled around the candy, “Pervert.”
The good doctor laughed and left. Silence fell in the room, and Dex was still seated on Etienne.
He wrapped his arms around her carefully in a light hug and pressed his lips to her shoulder. “Why don’t you want to start treatment?”
“Because I have holes punched in my torso, and having a heat is fairly uncomfortable. I don’t want to start something physically taxing without being in one piece first.”
He nodded. “Sensible.”
“I also don’t want to be emotional when dealing with Dad. And Mom.”
Tosh frowned. “And your mother?”
“She has known since day one and literally stood next to him as he punched, kicked, and hit me. She didn’t cry, didn’t try to stop him. Didn’t say a word. She just watched.” She looked at Tosh. “Are elf omegas tougher?”
He nodded slowly. “They are. When did your hair change?”
“Eleven. The medication started after the endless ovulation testing.”
Tosh nodded. He had switched to normal when the doctor came in, and now he grinned. “What do your feet look like?”
She went still. “Why?”
He reached for the fluffy hospital socks. “Just curious as to how casual your dancing is.”
She kicked her feet, and Etienne snickered. The first sock came off and then the second, and Tosh held her feet in one hand. “Aw, they are so cute. Pretty tough. Lovely shape. No corns or bunions.”
She blushed and covered her face. “Weirdo.”
“You know how fun it is to compare feet.”
“No. I don’t. I sneak off to a studio across town to practice under an assumed name.”
Tosh wrapped his hands around her feet. “Well, you don’t need to do that anymore.”
“The dipshit is probably out on bail, and I can tell you he holds a grudge.”
Etienne said, “We are not going to leave you alone until he’s in custody. Permanently.”
“Don’t worry about it. If he comes for me again and I am not surrounded by electrical equipment, his heart is just going to stop.”
Etienne said, “What if you are seen?”
“No one sees my lightning unless I want them to see it. It is more like an excited static charge. My half-sister has the full array of charges to use and some other stuff.”
The heat from Tosh’s hands was working into her soul when he said, “What other stuff?”
“Green stuff.”
“Oh, my. That is very interesting.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Is it?”
“Yes. She sounds like a druid, but they are very, very rare.”
“Why?”
Tosh shrugged. “They don’t normally survive the making. Where is she now?”
“Safe. She’s safe.”
“She was not safe before?”
“She was not. The divorce just came through, but I don’t think he’s going to let go.”
Etienne asked, “Divorce?”
“She’s a beta on paper. Neither of us had any changes until we went to a competition across the country.
There was someone there. The lightning started after that.
She got married after high school and had a husband for a while.
Then she found out he was collecting other women, and then he started to do it in front of her.
And then he used his fists. She left and has been hiding for nearly a year.
Now, she has to figure out her next steps. ”
Etienne asked, “You are in regular contact?”
“Yes. My brothers aren’t, but that’s fine. She has her own brother, and he’s taking care of her as much as he can.”
Etienne asked, “Is there more to the story?”
“Yeah.”
Silence stretched.
Tosh chuckled. “Tell us.”
“In a minute. They are coming to change my IV.”
The nurse came in, smiled, and moved to hook up the new saline bag to act as a carrier for her pain meds.
After her vitals had been checked, the nurse smiled and left.
Dex sighed. “Anyone else thinks it’s weird that I can be sitting on one guy with another holding my feet, and the nurse took it as normal?”
Etienne laughed softly. “The omega ward has seen much stranger behaviour between the alphas and their treasures.”
“Okay. That’s enough.” She pulled her feet away from Tosh and tapped Etienne. “Let go. I have seen you with your treasure. It definitely wasn’t me.”
Etienne froze.
Tosh looked at her. “He just went grey.”
“Yeah, seven years ago, just to drive home a point, he used his master key to open my workshop and fucked his current girlfriend on my workbench. There were new cameras aimed into the shop and stains I had to deal with in the morning. He repeatedly called her his treasure on the video because when he spoke to me and turned down the overture I hadn’t made, he said no alpha could find a treasure in a woman like me. ”
Etienne said softly, “I am sorry.”
“You want to prove you are sorry so I will believe it? Clean my workshop by hand.”
“Dex...”
“That’s my criteria. You gave me extra work. It made me late. My dad put me through the drywall at his home because I was late... You figure out cause and effect.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Why did you do it? I didn’t give a frosty fuck about what your parents were angling for. You acted like I was humping your leg on stage.”
“I... At the time, I was fixated on appearances.”
“I look the same now as I did then, just with paler hair and less bruising.”
Etienne whispered, “Less?”
“Yup. If someone grabs you by the neck and slams you into a wall, they aren’t that concerned about you hitting a stud. I had to go in and get my shoulder relocated and had several scans done for my injured skull. I knew when I saw that hand coming at me that I was going into the wall.”
“I didn’t know.”
“It’s a fucked-up situation, and it is where I live. I got punched unconscious when he found out that Dr. Aquilar was trying to set us up as well. I told him that nothing was going on, that you had no interest in me, but he just continued to hit me until everything went black.”
Tosh said, “Why didn’t you use lightning?”
“Mom was always there. I didn’t want to kill her as well, and she wasn’t going to inherit. I would have to support her, and that wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. I would recover from the beating. I always did.”
“They got worse the older you got?” Tosh asked.
“Yeah. My phone has images of most of the bruising over the years. I reported it to the police and child services several times, but he is a convincer. He loved that he was able to get them to believe I had somehow managed a man-sized handprint on my own features.”
“Tosh, take her. I am going to be sick.” He handed her off carefully and actually threw up in her bathroom.
Dex looked at Tosh. “Do you have an idea?”
He shook his head.
The toilet flushed, and water splashed. Etienne came out. She knew that face. “You spoke to John, and he gave you information he needed you to know.”
He nodded. “You know?”
“I know that expression. That is how they always look when they hear and believe the truth. I am guessing he said I was a nasty little gold digger who chased every swinging dick in town?”
“With less subtle terms.” Etienne was grim.
She snorted. “Yeah, that’s his favourite move.”
“Will it work on me again?”
“No. Why?”
He slumped. “I believed it. I believed it until you said the word convincer. That, mixed with what I have learned in the past few days, snapped the image I had in my head.”
He crouched and reached for her, but she flinched. “I am sorry, Dex. Why the flinch?”
“You just told me that you had believed I had fucked my way through the ballet company. I really don’t want you touching me right now.”
He grimaced. “Not the ballet. The donor society.”
“Oh, that is so much worse. Most of those guys are over fifty.”
“It isn’t unheard of.”
“At the time John shared that tidbit, I was eighteen or nineteen. Tell me that doesn’t make you flinch a little.”
He winced. “Said like that, it does seem ridiculous that I would believe you had been making the rounds for a decade.”
Her eyes bugged out. “Oh, wow. He really wanted you away from me.”
Tosh asked, “When was your last relationship?”
“I haven’t had any. The slightest hint and I would be on the way to the hospital.” She looked at Tosh. “If you are concerned, Dr. Oriel has the confirmation.” She bit her lip. “Can you stand me up and help me get to bed? I think the handoff popped one of my stitches.”
Tosh rose to his feet and waited until she grabbed the pole. He moved her carefully to the bed and set her down. He eased her gown up and nodded. “Yup. Two of them are bleeding.”
Etienne growled and then paused. “Growling doesn’t freak you out?”
“No, why would it? Attacks are silent. They are hands reaching and a sudden impact and pain blooming.”
Tosh reached out and pressed the call button.
She waited, and less than three minutes later, a nurse came in. Dex said, “I moved wrong and blew two stitches.”
The nurse came in and nodded. “I will just take a look.”
The gown went up, and she tutted. “I will have someone come in and fix those. Can’t have a pretty thing like you scarring.”
She got another lollipop.
Dex smiled and then looked at Etienne the moment the nurse was gone. “What the hell is going on? No one treats me like a defeated toddler. What’s going on?”
He smiled slightly. “This is how omegas are treated in high-stress moments. They are kept happy and calm, and that—in turn—keeps their alphas happy and calm. All for the price of a lollipop.”
She looked at the red lolly and put it down. “Bleah.”
Tosh smirked. “Don’t you like it?”
She rubbed a hand over her face. “I hate the red ones.”
Tosh and Etienne laughed.
She looked at the wounds with the tiny stitches. “I have had wounds before. These stitches are teeny. What gives?”
Etienne held her hand as she kept poking at the red slashes.
“They are getting a plastic surgeon up here to fix the wounds. My father is obsessed with omegas, and when my mother said you were one and that she saw us together, he tried to make it happen. He would have had one of his cosmetic team standing by the moment they took all the tubes out of you.”
She shuddered. “That’s an image.”
He nodded. “Isn’t it just?”
Tosh held her other hand.
“I am not running away. You don’t have to hold onto me.” She looked from one of them to the other. “What if I want to watch something on my phone?”
Etienne smiled. “We will bring it up on our phones, and you can watch it there.”
She looked at him. “Children’s ballet finals five years ago.”
He sighed and said, “You are punishing me?”
“Yup, and you still have to scrub my department by hand.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “Or you can forget all about me, and then the scrubber need not touch your hand.”
Etienne shook his head. “Nope. I have caught your scent and touched your skin. I am happily enthralled.”
Tosh grinned. “I just like watching you bend over your workbench.”
“Weirdo. But you are good at distracting little girls.” She turned to Etienne. “He’s very pretty. He has it on a sweatshirt.”
Tosh chuckled. “I actually do.”
She looked at them and their focus, and she shrugged. “Does anyone know about my dad yet?”
Etienne sighed. “He’s made bail, and the restraining order hasn’t gone through yet.”
“Delightful. Do you know what kind of power backup the hospital has?”
Etienne frowned. “No. Why?”
“Because he’s going to come here to punish me for not letting him beat me in front of the contract partygoers.” She smiled. “He’s going to come to kill me. And he’s going to charm his way right to me. Give me my phone or hold it up to my face. I need to call my half-sister.”
Tosh grabbed her phone and held it up while still holding her hand, and she used voice command to call Wizard. The alphas around her lifted their brows, but they kept quiet as she spoke to her half-sister and got the response she was hoping for. Wizard was coming to the hospital.