Violet
After making the protection jar and cutting the ties between Logan and I, I genuinely felt better, and I’d hoped that once I laid down with Skye, I could sleep. But, while Skye snored, his belly pressed into my side, I watched as the dark of night was replaced by a golden dawn.
My eyes burned as I stared at the ceiling, I couldn’t remember the last time I actually slept, excluding the times I passed out in random places.
Skye shifted, one hand settling instinctively over his stomach. His breathing evened back out, deep and steady.
Good.
Careful not to wake him, I slid out of bed and tiptoed down the hallway. If someone didn’t take my phone, I could have googled everything I needed to know from the comfort of my nest, but, according to Vinny, I was a second class citizen who couldn’t be trusted with electronics or autonomy.
The second I got my phone back, I was going to fight with him again, this time just for fun. Plus, when we argued he paid more attention to me, and I liked that.
My first step was the coat rack by the door. I wasn’t leaving, but Vinny kept the key to his office in a brown canvas jacket I’d never seen him wear. I suppose if someone were to break in, they wouldn’t think to search that.
After grabbing the key, I headed toward the west wing of the house, the one no one ever really entered, and I let myself into the office.
The walls were beige, and the furniture a dark mahogany, the only sort of color came from the maroon and gold rug in the center of the floor. The irony that I, of all people, ended up knocked up by someone who feared fun was not lost on me.
I shut the door softly before tiptoeing over to his desk, sure everyone was asleep, but the small action helped me feel safer.
Sinking into the brown leather chair, I opened his laptop and wiggled my finger back and forth on the touch pad.
The computer awoke, but left me on a login screen, one I didn’t have a password for.
Fuck.
For a moment, I froze. Vinny was a man who didn’t seem to care about much, at least not in the bone deep way everyone else in the pack did. He was very angry, and it was hard to picture anything in his life being valuable enough to make a password.
So I tried the basics.
Password1!
Nothing.
1234567890
Didn’t work.
000000
No dice, and a little warning popped up to tell me I had one more chance, and if I failed, the computer would be locked for fifteen minutes.
My shoulders stiffened, fingers still resting on the keys, I exhaled slowly and rested my fingers on the keys. Okay. If Vinny did care about something enough to make it a password, it wouldn’t be clever. It wouldn’t be cute. It would be simple
I typed:
ROSSI
Enter.
The screen unlocked instantly, opening to a website full of guns–long guns, handguns, things with attachments I didn’t recognize and prices that made my stomach drop. None of them looked particularly legal, but I didn’t have time to judge his shopping habits.
Instead, I double clicked the search bar at the top and got to work.
Pregnancy bond rot
Bond rot unmarked omega pregnancy
Bond rot symptoms omega
And everything of the sort I could think to google.
Page after page loaded. Some of them were personal anecdotes on public forums, rambling posts from omegas who were scared and angry and looking for validation.
Some were PSAs wrapped in thinly veiled propaganda about the declining birth rate and how stubborn omegas refusing the bond were apparently to blame for everything wrong with society.
I skipped those immediately.
Others were medical journal clinical and mercifully uninterested in assigning moral fault. I felt the safest with those.
Bond rot is a physiological response to prolonged exposure to alpha pheromones in the absence of a completed bond. In pregnancy, the condition progresses more rapidly due to increased hormonal demand.
I frowned but kept scrolling.
Common early symptoms include fatigue, appetite suppression, nausea, headaches, body pain, and difficulty sleeping.
My mouth twisted. That all just sounded like what I lived with thanks to fibro, plus I had an alpha, she just didn’t get me pregnant. I couldn’t have bond rot. That was just ridiculous.
I kept scrolling anyway.
As bond rot progresses, symptoms may intensify and include immune suppression, fever, pregnancy complications, and cardiovascular strain.
My nose wrinkled, that felt rather dramatic. Maybe I’d been wrong about this being an unbiased source and it was propaganda too.
In untreated cases, bond rot can be fatal.
I snorted quietly.
Fatal.
Yeah, there was no way. If unbonded pregnancies ended in death, like half the omegas in this world would have been gone a long time ago.
Bond rot had to be some made up disease created with the goal of controlling unbonded omegas. When I looked at it that way, the idea of bond rot was amusing, which is why I kept reading. No other reason.
Temporary symptom relief may be achieved through direct inhalation of the unbonded alpha’s pheromones.
I paused. Well, if that were true, I’d crave being around him–which I didn’t. I just liked his attention because I liked attention in general, not because I wanted to breathe in the scent of coffee and cinnamon, it was just a nice bonus.
I continued scrolling.
In very early stages, complete removal of the omega from the unbonded alpha’s environment will reverse symptoms and prevent the bond from decaying further.
…. Was that why Skye wasn’t sick? Or did Vinny get him pregnant too? I hadn’t really bothered to ask, it didn’t really seem important.
But now—
No. I shook my head at myself.
If Logan were here, he’d tell me I was being dramatic. Paranoid. Easily manipulated by bad information and fear tactics.
And for the first time in my life, he’d probably be right.
This was stupid. I was fine. Tired, yes. Pregnant, yes. But fine.
I tried to keep reading, hoping I’d stumble across something so absurd it would finally snap me out of it.
Then—
“Violet?” Vinny’s voice carried down the hall.
My heart lurched and I immediately closed the internet browser, fully intending to slam the laptop shut and pretend I’d never been in here at all.
But then I saw his home screen and froze.
It was a photo, and judging by the clothing and lack of crows' feet on Vinny’s face, it was an old one.
He looked young, maybe twenty at the oldest. His arm was slung around an omega with auburn hair and blue eyes so bright they practically glowed. They both smiled at the camera.
They looked happy, and not the fake happy you learn to be when forced to be around someone. Real happy, the kind that came from being young, stupid, and in love.
My throat tightened as I stared at her face, at the way she leaned into him like she belonged there without question. Like there had never been fear mixed into it, like nothing about loving him had hurt yet.
Like maybe Vinny hadn’t always been the angry old man I’d gotten stuck with.
“Violet?” Vinny called again, closer now.
I snapped the laptop shut, the soft click sounding far too loud in the quiet room and straightened my spine before smoothing my clothing and forcing my face to be neutral.
The door knob turned and Vinny peered in as if he were invading my space and not the other way around. The second his eyes landed on me, he breathed a sigh of relief and pushed himself into the room.
“I got scared when I went to check on you and you weren’t in your nest.”
Something fluttered in my chest.
You check on me? I signed before remembering Vinny hadn’t been to a single one of the sign language lessons he forced me, Benji, and Skye to attend. He said they were so I could communicate, but if that were the case–
“Well, yeah. You’re pregnant with my baby, why wouldn’t I?” he said.
My brow pinched.
You can understand me?
He nodded. “Just because I’m too busy for class doesn’t mean I’m not learning–and yes that means I know you called me poor yesterday.”
My cheeks burned scarlet.
“Here, get up, I want to hold you.” He stepped closer and opened his arms.
I huffed and looked away, not wanting to admit how badly I wanted to melt into his stupid, sexy, tattoo covered chest.
Being an omega wasn’t fair.
And, when I didn’t get up, Vinny plucked me off the seat as if I were a misplaced stuffed animal, he then sat and forced me onto his lap. And I… Well, I hid my face in the crook of his neck and inhaled as deeply as I could.
Instantly, the twisted nausea mangling my stomach faded, and I chalked it up to a placebo effect.
“You in here looking for your phone?” he asked.
I nodded, slightly shocked he wasn’t mad at me for breaking and entering.
“Figured,” he hummed before rolling us forward.
I listened as he opened a drawer and patted around for a moment before pressing something hard into my back.
“You can have it back,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have taken it… I’m sorry.”
…Maybe I was asleep.
Alphas like Vinny didn’t apologize.
“Hey, um–” His body stiffened as he cleared his throat. “I… How was your appointment yesterday? For the baby. We–well, I got distracted, and we didn’t have a chance to talk after.”
… Was he genuinely worried about the baby?
Well, babies.
Should I tell him it’s babies?
I stayed quiet for a long moment, his apology still echoing in my head like it hadn’t quite settled into reality yet. His scent wrapped around me and my body clung to it greedily while my mind scrambled to keep up.
For the first time in weeks, I felt hungry, and not even a little hungry, like if I didn’t eat, I was going to pass out.
I tried to ignore that as I pulled back to look at Vinny. His dark hair was mussed with sleep, and I did my best to straighten it.
He watched me carefully, eyes searching my face.
“Did everything go okay?” he asked again, quieter now. “At the appointment. Is the baby okay?”
Part of me felt a little guilty that he even had to think it wouldn’t be. Then, I remembered that my fertility issues had never come up, so maybe it had something to do with the omega on his homescreen?
I nodded to let him know the babies were fine. I’d been scared when the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat, but she was right, it was just too early for the doppler to find.
His shoulders eased a fraction. “Good.”
I hesitated for a moment before signing, I’ll tell you about it.
His brow lifted. “Now?”
I shook my head.
After breakfast.
That got a small smile out of him. “Benji will be up soon-”
Again, my head shook.
I’m starving, can’t wait.
“... I’ll wake him up early? Or I can make you toast with honey?” Vinny suggested.
I want a date.
Vinny blinked and let out a surprised laugh. “A date?”
I nodded.
“Just us,” he said slowly, as if he was testing the idea out loud.
I nodded again before signing, you like control, I like pancakes.
His smile widened into the warmest one I’d ever seen from him. “All right, a date.”
Leaning in once more, I kissed his cheek to say thank you.
I wasn’t sure how to ask about the omega on his screen, or to tell him about the twins, but all that could wait. The first step was breakfast, and everything else would follow.