36. The Nest
The Nest
Kelya
Ishoot out onto the open road between Vegas and Saint Kane. There are a tragic amount of highway patrol cars, so I have to be vigilant of their presence and can’t speed the whole time.
Every time I feel my hands shake and my feet go cold, I grip onto the ropes Tony tied me up in. But by the time I get to the house, tucked into the rocks and away from civilization, my legs are numb, and my teeth chatter.
I can barely stand up straight.
But I’m here. I’m so fucking close. I throw the car into park and stumble out onto the fancy gravel driveway. The rocks stab into my knees, but I barely register it, busy throwing up onto the cactuses lining the sides.
I crawl up to the house, take the key I stole earlier from Roman, and slide it into the door.
Once inside, I try the security code on the panel, and it works.
They never bothered to change it, thank god.
It smells like rancid meat inside this house.
This large scale, modern, industrial-finished house is absolutely horrid.
I nearly face-plant into a large white platform meant to display art, but it displays nothing.
I catch myself and continue down the hall, moving farther into the house, turning right and then left, descending stairs and working my way into the stronghold.
I hold myself up with the walls and avoid more art platforms and random modern art decorations. Finally, I see my nest.
Mine.
I assume the door will be locked before I get there, so I immediately slam into the door, but when I try the handle, it opens right up.
I slip into the darkness, closing the door behind me. The sound of water and its coolness casts over my skin.
Something inside of me vanishes. Something that had been growing and festering inside, under my skin, between my organs, up my throat, and pressing between my skull and my brain. It leaves like it’s been exorcized.
I didn’t realize it was like I’d been infected with something until it was gone.
It’s dark in here, but I feel my way around, my eyes closed, letting the feelings wash over me like ocean waves.
My hands smooth over the rock walls, and I kick off my shoes, letting my bare feet stand against the cold stone.
Everything is wet with humidity from the natural spring pumping into the small pool at the far end.
My foot hits the edge of the platform bed.
Thank god. I crawl up the mattress with soft white sheets, between the shear curtains hanging from the cave ceiling, and start taking inventory.
The bedding is gone. My flat quilts and knitted blankets aren’t here, but there are some familiar feeling pillows.
But that’s not a problem. My nest is here.
My grotto.
We are in the desert in the American southwest, but this house was built into the hillside of a plateau with a natural spring deep underneath where we pump the water from.
It’s hot, minerally, and misty. My nest was made into a grotto, an artificial cave.
The water laps against the small pool—it’s piped in from the spring deep underground and then cycled out.
I roll onto the large platform bed and pull the pillow into my arms.
My nest.
The pool is shallow. About the size of a large bathtub. It’s 7 feet by 3 feet wide. I can drain it, too. I used to spend all day on Monday, after the Livingstons went to work, cleaning it out and making it nice again.
I would guess they left it here for a while, not draining it. Maybe even the cycle was off, and it started to smell. But it’s definitely been cleaned recently. It’s clear that means they were going to bring me back here…
After they bonded me.
I don’t want a bond. I don’t want to bond with them.
Even if they have this nest for me. My grotto.
My sanctuary. The first time I ever came in here, I realized this is where our souls go to rest when we’ve shuffled off the mortal coil.
The world could be at war on the surface, but here…
I wouldn’t know. In here, there is only respite.
I’ve been to so many places in the last two years and experienced enough for several lifetimes, but nothing comes close to my nest. A tear threatens to escape my eye as I am overwhelmed with an ungodly amount of empathy for everyone in the world, hoping that this is the heaven we’ve been promised after death.
I wish all people could rest underneath a warm plateau, next to a pool of hot mineral water, held together with the silence and reverence of a beautiful space, like how the womb might have felt before we took our first breath.
The end and the beginning converging at once, cradling our weary bodies and promising disconnection from the relentlessly turning world.
My stomach unknots itself. I feel like I no longer need my ropes, so I sit up and take off Tony’s shirt and then my own. Then, like he promised, I’m able to easily unbind myself. It feels just as ritualistic as when he did it.
Each unbinding is a release of everything I felt I needed to keep together.
I coil the rope up and crawl to one of my hiding spots in the wall, opening it up to find it empty. I sigh, my heart a little sad that Roman found my hiding spots where I stored my loot. I put the rope inside and kiss my fingers, pressing the kiss into the rope, then slide the rock back into place.
I also have hiding spots behind the orange glowing sconces and inside the brass chandelier hanging in the middle of the grotto.
There’s a red and yellow Persian rug underneath the bed, and under it are several more hiding spots.
I check a few. All empty. I don’t want to see the rest empty, so I stop.
In just my shorts and nothing covering my breasts, I slip back into the bed, stomach down, and curl into the chilly pillows.
I bunch Tony’s shirt up and press it into my face. I can barely smell the cypress. It sucks to be denied a scent you want so badly.
The doom of the Livingstons returning barely phases me or my inner omega. We are home. Finally.
I must have fallen asleep, because the sound of my nest door slamming open makes me hop completely out of bed and into the back wall.
Roman turns the lights on, seeing me inside, breasts bare and eyes wide.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him without his mask.
He’s a vain man. I can barely tell someone bit the tip off his nose. It does make the cynical look on his face worse, but it’s quickly replaced with cold glee. He’s brought with him a wave of his rotten smell.
“You stupid fucking bitch. We thought you went on the run again and were still in Vegas until I saw you on the cameras stumbling into the house like a drunk teenager. Fuck! You just love making everything more difficult than it needs to be. Your parents were so confused and upset, I had to get them a hotel for the night in Vegas.”
I click my teeth together in a staccato, irritated they are inside my nest. Uninvited. It’s primal for an omega to give explicit invitations to enter a nest. It will make my inner omega come to the surface, and possibly make me have a feral outburst, which I can feel bubbling under my skin.
Hollis and Noble come up behind Roman, and they look scared and sweaty.
“You have nothing to say to me!” he screams, his head becoming very red.
My lips curl, and I bare my teeth at him.
I know it will piss him off, but I AM PISSED OFF! I AM THE ONE WHO IS ANGRY! His rotten scent eeks into my space, threatening to sink into my skin, clothes, and the walls.
“You fucking smell.”
“What did you say to me?” His hands pump in and out of fists.
“It’s not even fucking hard to take care of an omega, and you screwed up so bad it fundamentally changed your physiology! Do you have any idea how badly you have to behave to make that happen?! Instead of figuring out how to make it better, you double-down!”
He’s not listening. His eye is twitching, and he’s imagining hurting me. Roman, you big stupid beast.
Hollis puts his hand on Roman’s shoulder, an attempt to calm him down.
Roman doesn’t calm down though. He is so tightly wound the touch sends him flying like a slingshot towards me. He jumps over the bed, right at me.
His teeth are out, and his intention slams into me before he does.
I know he’s going to bite me.
Bonds are formed in two parts: the bite, which is a question, then the acceptance or rejection from the person being bitten.
If I reject the bond he’s about to lay into me with, his open jaws flying through the air, then we won’t bond, and I’ll have a nasty fucking wound on my neck.
If I accept it, then I’ll officially become a Livingston and be connected to these men.
His large unforgiving hands grab my shoulders, and this is when I decide to accept whatever he gives me.
I can’t leave this nest again.
I can’t go back to Tony.
There’s only one path forward.
His sharp alpha teeth lay into the soft tissue just above my clavicle.
Hollis shouts, and Noble wails. They assume I’ll reject it.
The three of them are bonded, and Roman is their pack lead.
They are already rotting from the inside out—a failed attempt to bond may make them worse.
Actually, it would definitely make them worse.
But it won’t fail.
A request hits my brain with the force of a run-away semi truck flying down a mountain, and I accept it. I let it happen. I agree. I consent to the bond.
It’s painful only until the moment I accept it. Then it’s like nothing at all.
All the Livingstons come into my headspace, like we are more intimate and familiar than we’ve ever been.
I feel Hollis’s horror and Noble’s fear.
There’s the beta’s soft presence. Overtop of all that is Roman’s anger.
I knew he was a volatile man, but this is out of control.
It’s like that volcano I stared into, devoid of man and god. Just the full force of nature.
He pulls his teeth out quickly. He didn’t go that deep, but he drew blood, as you have to do with a bond. The blood stains his lips.
“There! Fuck! You wanted to make it hard, and you got your fucking wish…” His words die off when he tests the bond and realizes it’s healthy. It’s real.
Then his sardonic smile eats across his face. He pats my hair. That nose of his is pretty strange up close. They did their best to fashion him a new tip, and it looks more like he got cosmetic surgery and opted for a thin, cute nose.
No wonder he wears a mask.
“Good Omega. Very, very good.”
He turns to his alphas, and they tentatively return his smile.
“It’s done. The bond is real. How do you feel?”
It’s not lost on me that he cares more for his alphas than his brand new omega.
While they celebrate like men who have just won a gold medal, with hugs and rubbing their foreheads together, I find Tony’s shirt on the ground and pick up the chartreuse silky material, bringing it to my chest. Dr. Soto told me that while Tony helped my symptoms, he couldn’t cure me. I had to choose. I’m a Livingston now.
Call me a coward for choosing to live, even under this oppressive mountain. Maybe I am. I considered death.
Roman turns to me, arms still around his pack mates.
“Well, this day turned around. I’ll have Ash go park the car where it should be and not in the middle of the damned driveway. I’m exhausted and need a fucking drink. Enjoy your nest, Omega. We will see you later.”
I’m surprised he isn’t demanding we seal the bond with sex. But then I remember he has no stamina. He runs hot and burns out quickly.
“Do you have any idea what to do with me now that you have me? Your bite isn’t going to stop the rot.”
He bristles in the bond, which I find funny. Suddenly, he shuts his side of the bond off. So do Hollis and Noble, leaving me alone, both physically and emotionally.
“We have a packet with a detailed plan. If you’re good, we will follow it.” And there it is. If I’m good, then they will take care of me. And who dictates what “good” means? Oh, that’s right. The ones who would rather eat their own hands than admit they need to change.
“You know, despite how much you tried to ruin this, we tried to make it nice. Ash cleaned the nest, and we got you a bonding present.”
I don’t ask what it is. I couldn’t care less.
“You will find it in your bedroom once you finish here.”
He waits to see if I’ll say anything, and when I don’t, he leaves.
I have to shut the door behind them, but when I do, the silence of my nest welcomes me. Alphas tend to their bond marks, with little licks across the surface, which Roman is going to need to do. I shiver thinking about it. I hope he doesn’t.
I drop my shorts, and Tony’s lighter tings against the stone floor as I get into my pool.