7. Six
Six
Cozette
Everything Victor taught me was so beyond wrong, but after a year of him beating his lessons into me, they’ve become hard habits to break. I still struggle most days, but I’m getting better at recognizing my triggers so I can stop falling back into those old habits. And I’m trying to remember that I won’t forget them overnight, if ever. My newfound family helps, though, and I’ve grown attached to Mama Valley. She’s been the main one to be there when I break or slip back into the omega Victor molded, stopping me and reminding me I’m not her anymore.
I hate that omega…
It was embarrassing the first time something triggered me after leaving the hospital, sending me reeling and falling back on everything I’d been taught, right in the dining room before dinner. To make my humiliation worse, the dads were there to witness some of what I’d been taught for the first time with their own eyes, something I’d hoped only Ripley or Mama Valley would ever be witness to. The alphas, seeing how truly shattered I am firsthand proved to me just how wrong Victor was. Their reactions told me if Victor wasn’t already dead, they’d have hunted him down and given him the same treatment I received at his hands tenfold.
I drop to my knees with my head bowed and my hands clutched behind my back at the head of the table when Aeon calls for everyone to come eat. Almost a week has gone by since moving in, and I’d been helping him set the table, slowly getting myself comfortable enough to be alone with each of them. And things had been going okay until this point.
Despite the first few days being normal with nothing much happening, something about his tone today flips that switch back on in me. It’s not until I hear Mama Valley’s choked cry as she walks in that I feel brave enough to lift my eyes just enough to see her and the alphas sat at the table.
Aeon, Shep, and Damien sit stock still in their seats, almost like they’re afraid to make any sudden movements. Their wide eyes are focused on my bowed form, their bodies strung tight with anger as their hands remain on the table where they can be seen, clenched as if to hold themselves back.
Mama Valley rushes to me, falling to her knees in front of me and lifting my head high as she clutches my cheeks with trembling hands. Tears flow from her deep green eyes, and I can see a deep-seated hatred hiding in the dark depths behind the love she feels for me.
“You do not ever get on your knees like this for anyone again. You hear me?”
Her tone is firm, but gentle as she makes sure she gets her point across while also making sure I understand she isn’t angry with me.
“Oh, my daughter, you will hold your head up high like the powerful, strong omega you are from this day forward, and don’t you ever let another alpha push you around or make you feel small or beneath them. You do not bow your head to them when that is their place and something they should and will graciously accept. You hold all the power over the right alphas, sweetheart. Remember that.”
She grips my chin when my lips wobble and my eyes burn, forewarning impending tears, and all I can think is how tired I am of crying.
“There’s no danger here as long as you’re with us, no one that’s going to hurt you ever again unless they want to see just how feral an omega can get when her cubs have been threatened. Understand?”
I can’t speak, my throat tight as I work to force the tears away, so I just nod.
“And from now on the boys will be careful with their tones,” she says as she whips her head around to glare at her mates, making them bow their heads in shame, before helping me off the floor and into the seat at the head of the table.
Her seat.
I shake my head slightly to clear that day away and glance over at Micah. He waits patiently for me to keep going, and I clear my throat awkwardly because I don’t know how long I was lost in thought.
The memory—though embarrassing—is what helps me decide to stop hiding from his gaze while I tell him the rest. I face him fully, shifting in my seat as Mama Valley’s voice echoes in the back of my head, fortifying me—if only a little.
Hold your head high, my daughter.
Never bow to anyone again.
You hold the power.
Trying to hold on to her words of me holding the power, I pick back up, grimacing as I prepare to recount what’s next. The early days where most of my humiliation lies, when he took things I didn’t want to give with force. When he did unspeakable things to my body that left me feeling disgusted and ashamed. When he was still training me and every misstep meant punishment.
I’m about to expose a part of my soul that I would rather forget more than anything. Something I haven’t spoken about out loud to anyone, even the doctors and nurses when I first came into the hospital. But they knew. I could see it in their eyes every time they looked at me after they’d had to examine every inch of me.
I take a deep breath, hoping I don’t see the same pity reflected at me in Micah’s eyes after this confession.
“I hadn’t had more than a kiss or experienced my first heat when Victor came into the picture, and he knew that. The first night he… forced himself on me, he’d taken pleasure in my pleas for him to stop as he stripped me of my clothes, in how I’d kicked and screamed and… c lawed at him to get away. I still see the manic look in his eyes he’d gotten after I’d scratched him so deeply across his face that I’d drawn blood in my nightmares, still dream about how hard it was to breathe when he’d… he’d… flipped me on my stomach and h-he—” I stop, closing my eyes as I struggle to use that dreaded word and try to breathe, try to tell myself that I can do this.
I can get through this.
I have to, because I can’t keep holding everything inside anymore.
“Cozy, you don’t have to—” Micah starts carefully, but I open my eyes again and stop him from giving me permission to quit with a quick shake of my head.
“He bit into the side of my throat at the same time he… forced himself inside of me without warning, trying to put a bond in place right then. But without my bite, it was never fully complete and couldn’t ever truly heal the way it should have. I hated that I could feel just how dark and twisted he was in my soul.”
Deep breaths.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
“It was after that night that he took the only clothes I had, leaving me completely exposed for him and anyone that came around to see, biting me every time he… raped me,” I rasp out as I touch the spot he’d put his first bite unconsciously, hating that word, but knowing that’s what it was. “The more I fought him, the more he enjoyed it, and the worse it got for me until, after a month of being with him, I just stopped, knowing how useless it was. I just wanted the pain to stop. But the longer he had to wait for my heat, the more violent he became.”
I feel like I’m going to be sick from saying all of this out loud, but I fight it down. The urge to scrub myself to the bone so I can rid myself of the memories of Victor’s touch is almost too overwhelming, my insides feeling unclean and disgusting at remembering how badly it hurt every time, my body so often left in shock as it tried to work through the pain he’d leave me in. I had hated how I could feel everything he felt thanks to the one-sided bond he’d put in place.
Just another way for him to assert his control over me.
I could tell the doctors were concerned when I’d confessed to them I still hadn’t had a heat when I was asked for the date of my last one, especially with my age. Knowing that I hadn’t presented as an omega until I was in my mid-twenties only concerned them more. Because, according to them, omegas that present later than average should experience their first heat within the first month of them perfuming.
They ran countless tests while I was in the hospital, but they never could give me a straightforward answer on whether I’d ever get a heat or when it could happen. Just that if or when it happens, it’s likely that my body will be trying to make up for all that lost time. Meaning, my first heat will be longer, more intense, and possibly something I won’t remember much of because of the hormones flooding my body in excess after being suppressed for so long.
So, am I defective? Am I an omega that can’t… do what an omega should be able to do? Is it even something I want to happen after everything I went through at the hands of my captor? Can I allow someone to touch me intimately after what Victor did to me, after what he stole from me?
Before I saw Jeremiah again, smelled his scent and felt his arms around me, I would have put myself in the ‘absolutely not’ column. But the reaction I had to his scent on my clothes the other night wasn’t something I was prepared for either. I had been certain that something in me was innately broken, and that any kind of physical intimacy would either be completely off the table for me or something that would take me a lot of time to work up to. And then he came back for me.
Micah’s tense form catches my attention as I blink away thoughts of Jeremiah. A low growl escapes him before he cuts it off and his lips thin. A muscle in his cheek twitches as his teeth clench audibly, and I recognize the rage blazing in his eyes despite how hard he’s trying to keep it at bay. But I’m not afraid, because I sense that rage is on my behalf, and honestly, I’d rather that than pity from him, even if I don’t quite understand why.
His anger feeds something inside me, something that’s been hidden away for far too long, coaxing it out of me until it finally rears its head, pushing me to keep cleansing my soul of the rot, to free myself of the invisible chains still weighing me down.
“There’s a lot of things Victor told me were my role as an omega, rules I was to follow without question. And since he made sure he beat them into me, I don’t think I’ll ever forget his rules , his… punishments ,” I growl, getting angry as my fists clench and the tips of my nails dig into my palms.
That… That monster took so much from me, so many things I can never get back or truly replace. He stripped me of my dignity, forced me into a role that never felt right, and ingrained a fear unlike anything I’ve ever known in me that I’m struggling to rid myself of. Nothing he told me was true felt natural, and everything he did to me felt wrong.
“Do you want to stop?” Micah asks softly, his voice sounding strained, but I shake my head, letting the anger that’s taken root in my battered soul as I finally purge some of the vile memories imprinted on it guide me.
“He… He’d told me ‘an omega’s only purpose is to serve their alpha, squeeze their knots, and most importantly, never be heard’.”
I swallow the bile that tries to creep up my throat as the taste of ash coats my tongue after repeating those words.
Staring at Micah, but not actually seeing him as I get sucked back, I begin to repeat everything on autopilot.
“I learned to drop to my knees with my hands behind my back and head bowed, mouth shut, just by the tone of his voice after he’d whipped me so bad one night during that first month that I could hardly move for weeks. It was the first time he’d used more than his hand for a punishment. Because I’d spoken without permission, breaking his number one rule when enough time had passed that I should have known better. ‘Be seen, but not heard, Cozette, or suffer the punishment’, he constantly liked to remind me.”
Coughing out a laugh at that stupid rule that I hate so much because he took my voice from me, I dig my nails deeper into my palms, ignoring the sting when they just barely break the skin.
As if everything else he’d already taken wasn’t enough, he had to silence me, but not before beating me into submission until I learned.
“I’d already thought things couldn’t get worse for me when he proved me wrong by doing that, and after that night, I learned not to say anything, because Victor was particularly sadistic, and his punishments were his favorite form of torture. He was always trying to one up the last punishment like it was a… a game or race or… something.”
I almost lose that anger as those memories threaten to pull me under completely, but I hold on to the flame, fanning it higher and refusing to break when every word that leaves my lips makes me feel lighter and lighter as I eliminate some of these heavy burdens.
Micah was right earlier.
He doesn’t get to win anymore, because he’s dead. He’s nothing but a rotting corpse in the ground—bug food—in an unmarked grave, and I’m still here.
I win.
I survived , despite it all.
And I will win back the omega that I was only just learning to be before he broke me and shattered every dream I’d ever had. I’ll fight to bring her back, and every setback will only serve as a lesson, until one day, she’s completely uncaged.
Gritting my teeth at the images flickering to life in my mind, I push forward, continuing to ignore how sick I feel after baring so much of myself to another person.
“I can still feel the metal cuffs around my ankles and wrists, chaining me to the wall so tightly that I couldn’t move. Can hear the whistle of his favorite whip as it swung through the air just before hitting my exposed back. Can feel the sting of the leather and small metal spikes that adorned the ends of the tassels as they ripped open my skin repeatedly until my back went numb. Still hear my screams echoing in my ears until my throat was raw and my voice hoarse. Can still smell the cleaner he used to wash the blood-soaked tassels after he was done. I remember the agony I was in as he threw me in the special cage he’d gotten just for me, nothing inside for me but a bucket with cold, soapy water. He’d told me to clean myself up before I bled all over my new home, then slammed the cage door and locked me in, and I can still hear the metal as it collided together and the sound of the lock mechanism clicking into place. And I remember the way I’d laid on that cold metal floor, naked and shivering with my back torn open, as I begged the gods to just let me die because I couldn’t imagine surviving him another day.”
I gasp as the last word falls from my lips and it suddenly feels like all the air in the room has been sucked right out. My hand comes up to cover my mouth as a sob finally breaks free and my back begins to ache where the worst of my scars reside, those specific details ramming into me from every which way. That sick feeling finally takes root in my belly, the urge to throw up something that can’t be ignored any longer as I’m suddenly right back in that room. Bolting upright from my seat, I rush over to the small trash can by the door, falling to my knees as I lose the contents of my stomach until nothing is left and I can’t do anything else but dry heave as I break down.
I flinch away when a hand is placed on my back, rubbing up and down gently, because, mentally, I’m still there, still in that room. Locked away and completely destroyed. Until the scent of baby powder—the scent of safety—surrounds me, pulling me back to the present where Micah is kneeling behind me, whispering soothing words as I work to calm myself down. I turn to look at him with bloodshot eyes and shaking hands after wiping my nose and mouth with a tissue he passes to me over my shoulder, feeling even more exposed than when I was kept naked as those honey brown eyes rove over my face. They’re filled with so much concern over my well-being, so much anger at what I went through, that it makes my breath hitch and my heart skip a beat.
“You okay?” he asks, keeping his voice low and even.
I nod, sniffling, and try, but fail to give him a smile. He helps me off the floor, leading me back to my chair and telling me to sit before moving over behind his desk. When he comes back, he hands me a small bottle of water, crouching at my feet to keep us at eye level, which I suspect is something he does on purpose, so he’s not standing above me.
“Small sips, okay? Until you’re sure it’s going to stay down.”
I listen, taking small sips of the water to get rid of the acrid taste left in my mouth until the bottle is nearly empty.
“How am I going to talk about the rest that happened if I can’t even get through some of the beginning without throwing up?” I croak out in frustration when I can finally speak again.
“We’re going to take it slow, and just like today, you share with me what feels most important to get out. You did so good today, Cozy.”
I huff, biting the inside of my cheek at his praise because it makes my chest feel funny.
“I threw up in your trashcan,” I tell him flatly, not seeing how he could think I did good.
“This was the most you’ve gotten out in one session since we met, and I’m incredibly proud of you for pushing through those memories to get them out. I could tell you were struggling, but you kept talking anyway, and that’s what matters. Besides, it’s not the first time someone’s thrown up in my trash during a session,” he says, chuckling lightly as he gives me a boyish grin, those dimples of his I seem to be so enamored with making an appearance and making me flush as my lips gingerly tip up in response.
“How are you feeling now?”
I don’t answer him immediately, looking inside of myself to take stock. Other than the fatigue and soreness from being sick and crying, I feel…
“Better,” I finally say, and it’s true.
I feel a lot better, and even lighter than when I’d walked in, something I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t easy reliving those things, but now that I have, I feel like I’ve gained some of that control back, and it’s relieving. Relieving to get some of my burdens off my chest at last.
With my next appointment scheduled, I walk out to meet Mama Valley in the lobby, a little pep in my step for the first time in a long time and a genuine smile gracing my lips.
Maybe, just maybe, everything really is going to be just fine.