28. Thomas
CHAPTER 28
Thomas
This is surreal now, playing my game and knowing who Yfrette is. We’ve started in on a brief quest that we’ll have to pause and save for next time because it’s nearing 2-bloody-a.m. Rather than a kind of giddy, electric thrill of playing with our Omega who’s had no idea who I am these past few years, a guilty discomfort sits heavy in my gut.
Having her delete that message instead of telling her immediately feels like hiding in her closet and watching her undress. Yes, I’ve seen her naked already. But keeping a truth like this is also lying, and I am programmed—created, really—to protect my Omega. Not hurt her.
Will the not knowing hurt her? There’s a part of me that wants this part of her, that has nothing to do with packs and designations and real life. And tonight it hits me how much she needs that, too.
She types another message.
“I need to go soon. Early start. But I want you to know that I appreciate how long we’ve been able to do this, and neither of us has demanded anything of the other. No judgment. Just fun. You could be anyone, but you don’t care what I do with my real life, and that’s beautiful.”
A pause.
“I wish it could always be like that.”
Damn.
I rub my tired eyes and feel the need for a second shower tonight. But I know I must say something.
“I’m actually three antelope in a trench coat.”
“I figured,” she says, with a grinning emoji.
“Real life matters too, though. I come here to unwind, and use it as inspiration for how to get through the demands of the day sometimes.”
“I do too. Does it work for you?” she asks.
“Sometimes. Not always. Today was a tough day for me as well. But I look forward to any time I can just be myself without question, too. So thank you as well.”
“Four guinea pigs in a onesie,” she replies.
I laugh, though I long to say, Don’t you know it’s me? There’s more to Azalaun than this. And more to Thomas than Azalaun.
There’s even more to Kai than you know. And that’s the point.
* * *
The overnight drive down to London takes longer than anticipated due to “significant roadworks,” according to our bus driver. Usually the upside to traveling via tour bus at night is missing out on a lot of traffic. We didn’t actually pull away until after I went to bed, around 2:30, so I missed what the problems might’ve been. And anyway, I for one take the opportunity to never check in on a maps app when being driven to gigs because that stress is not part of my pay check. Or maybe more correctly put, the stress I see my band mates face is a choice, and I choose not to go there.
Currently the bus is at a standstill on the M1, somewhere in the Midlands I reckon. It’s around 5 a.m. and I’ve woken up twice. I roll back over to face the wall, with Holden snoring like a wild boar above me. I’m grateful tonight’s a slightly later sound check, with Jez on at 3:45 and us at 4:30. We check into a hotel for tonight and tomorrow’s London shows, but honestly I’ll probably sleep on the bus right up until then.
At least, that’s what I think, until about 8 a.m. when we finally pull into the hotel car park and the bus shudders to a stop.
“All right there, Thomas?”
Holden’s feet are literally in my face. If I stuck out my tongue it would brush the back of his heel. For a flicker of a moment I consider doing so and freaking him the fuck out. That’s what he’d get for climbing down right by my pillow.
“Yeah, awake now with those rank things by my nose, you absolute anus. Any chance you can shift along?”
“Oh, right, sorry. You don’t like this?” Holden starts swinging his legs back and forth so his left foot nearly smacks me in the face. But my arm snakes out and grabs his ankle and yanks on it, hard. He slides out of the bunk and lands on the floor with a huge crash.
Kai flies up in his bunk with a, “Not today, great, thanks!” and then slowly lowers his head.
“Having a nightmare?” Holden asks him.
Kai rubs his head and gives a groan. “Wish I was. At least then I’d still be asleep. Fuck, what time is it?”
“Just after 8,” comes Nico’s voice from above Kai.
“Best get a move on. Better to give her privacy for when she wants the toilet, eh?” says Holden, grabbing his rucksack and stomping into the bathroom. The sound of the shower comes on and Holden starts singing. The song sounds familiar but I can’t place it.
“Why’s he got to do that?” asks Kai, sitting with his legs off the bed, jabbing a tattooed finger at the bathroom.
I shrug, and Nico replies from his bunk, “Man takes two showers a day, if not more.”
Our last tour was our first with an actual shower on the bus. This bus is an upgrade even from that one, though less room to chill since it has the back bedroom, which we’ve never had before. And Holden is the only one who insists on a shower the second he wakes up. I would in a hotel room, but on a bus I truly can’t be arsed with that. I reckon Holden has some slight germaphobia, but I’ve never said this aloud.
Once he’s out and we’re all dressed, Holden and Nico cram into the booth with their protein shakes, I sit on a barstool at the end of the narrow kitchenette area, and Kai leans against the wall, arms crossed, looking a bit rough.
“You feeling okay?” I ask him. He pinches the bridge of his nose then cracks his jaw in the process of wiggling it back and forth.
“No. I caught a cold from some bastard,” he says, slicing a look around at all of us. “My fucking ears are blocked.”
“Get that steam in ya. You sound like a piece of shit.” Nico necks the last of his protein shake and pulls an apple from a bowl on the tabletop.
“Steam yourself, prick,” Kai grumbles, but it’s Holden’s fist slammed onto the booth table between he and Nico that unsettles me.
“You guys are not going to dance around this topic for one more day. Pull your thumbs out because we need to talk about it!” His voice is a hiss but more for the need to stay quiet, I reckon, than out of true anger. Holden is never angry.
Though his face is on the red side. He slams his other fist down so they’re sitting side-by-side on the table. Nico raises a brow and widens his eyes but keeps them on the apple he’s turning over and over in his hands. Kai lets out a sigh like an old-fashioned train whistle. And I just nod. We all know what he means.
“Look, mate,” starts Kai, tone full of empathy. “I should’ve sat us down last night before we left the venue to have this chat. It’s on me.”
Everyone sits up a bit taller, and Kai leans forward on the tiny kitchenette island. He shoots a glance to her door, but she’s still asleep.
“Let’s get everything out on the table. Are we in agreement that that Omega in there is our scent match? Each one of you has scented her, even through your suppressants. Is that right?”
We all nod, then Kai does too. “And are we all in agreement that with her being in heat—and each one of you helping her through it in the past few days—she is likely aware that we’re a match?”
Nico and I look at each other. Holden’s face, if anything, goes redder.
Kai clears his throat, his voice huskier than usual, so he lowers it. “I take that as a unanimous yes. The problem is, clearly, me.”
I blink at him. “But you said you and she called a truce at that radio interview?”
Kai covers his mouth with his steepled hands. The bags under his eyes are dark. He really needs more sleep before tonight’s gig. London’s a biggie, of course. “I have a confession.” He takes the slowest inhale known to humanity before speaking again.
“During Ten to One , Ash forwarded a message to me that I never shared with you.” Kai looks down at his hands now clasped in front of him, and we’re all gaping. “It came from a guy named Tristan, who was, and is, her ex. An Omega, supposedly, not in a pack. He’s a DJ in Bristol. He told me about her claustrophobia, and her general anxiety, and warned me that she would not be a good choice for the show because that condition was a liability that was going to come back to haunt her, should she start to find greater success as an artist. He didn’t want her to embarrass herself.”
Oh, shit.
“Now, at the time,” he raises a hand as though to stop an expected onslaught of abuse that doesn’t come. “I didn’t know anything about her, and he sounded quite genuine and concerned. He said despite their relationship ending, he cared deeply for her and didn’t want to see her hurt. He said it was up to us obviously what we decided, but he truly believed her advancing in the show could be catastrophic for her mental health.”
“And you thought it was better to crush her dreams before she got the chance?” Holden hisses. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us all this?” He raises from the bench and steps forward, mouth ajar as he stares at our pack leader.
All we knew was that an outside source had informed the show runners that Jesamine Jacobs struggled with anxiety in crowded or small spaces, and the word was the producers didn’t want to risk “a situation.” Really they were probably looking out for themselves and a potential lawsuit, since she had not disclosed her condition. But I thought we’d all received this information at the same time…
“So, what, you leaked this info to the producers who then sat all the judges down to say she was being removed from the show?” I say.
Kai doesn’t look up. “Yeah, mate. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Nico shakes his head. “Shit. Well, you know who you owe this confession to?”
“There’s more, isn’t there?” I say. I knew nothing about Kai receiving this information from an email Ash passed to him, that Ash probably didn’t even read at the time, thinking it was personal. But I’ve known something else for a long time. One drunken night, me and Ash, on a train from Paris to Barcelona. A year after Ten to One .
Now Kai looks at me. Dead in the eye. “You remember that?”
“Fuck yes, I do. Are you gonna tell them?”
“You figured it out?” he asks. “When?”
“When she showed up in Ash’s office three months ago.”
Kai sighs. Holden scowls. “Out with it, Hartley.”
“I knew she was our match, back then. I knew she was our Omega when we first met her. On Ten to One . It was about six weeks before that I’d been told by the doctors that I was seriously allergic to rut suppressants. They’d been causing me debilitating migraines and hives and other shit. They said I choose between suppressants or my career. Because the migraines were blinding. I never wanted to admit either of those facts to you guys for fear of the band breaking apart just as we were getting going. And I sure as hell couldn’t bear telling you our match was an angelic singer-songwriter who could kill us twice as hard as Nyah, right after we’d sworn off any Omega in the business.”
Silence.
One night of heavy drinking after a cousin of mine had died—a cousin I’d grown up with, who’d gifted me my love of music in the first place—Kai took me to the on-board train bar and we ate pizza and drank whisky and by the end of the night, we’d made our greatest confessions.
Me, that I didn’t think I could ever speak to crowds and fans if we ever truly got more than a handful, because of a childhood stutter I now hide extremely well. I hide it so well that even Nico and Holden have never said a word, and I’ve never spoken to them about it. Even Kai was surprised when I told him. It only really comes out if I’m incredibly tired, or emotional. But most people miss it. Still, I have this lingering fear one day it will come out in a televised interview or something on social media.
And then what? That the world will know the truth about me? So fucking what?
But we all have our hang-ups.
And that night on the train, Kai’s was that he’d scented his match, who then of course must be our match. We would all fall for her, if we knew. And he slurred it in a way I was sure he was either exaggerating or would never remember: I can’t tell you who she is or where I met her. But I can say that we can’t have her, even though she smelled like the gateway to heaven and I wanted to stay there. So I pushed her away.
It made no sense to me then. But we were both fucking pissed off our feet. When I recalled the conversation a full two days later, I parked it. If he’d scented her, then he wasn’t on suppressants, but honestly I’d thought he was kite-high and just blowing a story out of proportion to help me deal with my own vulnerability.
This is why it’s hard being a psychology graduate in a band that’s also a pack. Overanalyzing, but then never feeling like I can accept a simple truth or explanation.
“I think—” Holden starts, then stops. “I think what matters here is that you’ve told us.”
“And I’m so sorry. To each one of you. And to us as a pack. I am so, so sorry. I will never get over all the trouble it’s caused us now. And what it’s cost and caused her.” The tone of his voice is low, deep, gruff, grumbly. And a little broken.
Nico’s voice is firm, but quiet. “Dude, you’ve told us now. Now we know. Now we can take steps, make decisions, as a pack . Maybe in a way we haven’t been ever before.”
We stand around, each to his thoughts. And then she opens the door.
Her blue hair hangs down in her face. Along with tartan pajama bottoms, she’s wearing a Fable tour t-shirt, which is most surprising to me—until I notice her eyes are red-rimmed and her face pale.
And I know. She’s heard at least part of this. And maybe that’s what Kai wanted.