Chapter eleven
Lily
The headache creeps in before I’m even awake, a mean little knot right behind my eyes. It’s like someone wedged their thumb back there and started pushing, harder and harder. The pale light leaking through the curtains stings, and I squint, but it doesn’t help. If anything, it’s worse.
I try to breathe through it, lying still, hoping maybe it’ll fade if I’m quiet enough. It doesn’t. It spreads. First my temples, then the back of my head, settling right in and gnawing at me like a rat having breakfast.
This is just how it is now. The headaches started several months ago, right after Dr. Turner flagged my suppressant levels as “concerning.” At first it was just sometimes—a dull ache after a long day, nothing I couldn’t handle with Tylenol and a glass of water.
It’s slowly become more and more frequent. Not to mention the mood swings.
And every time I have one, it’s just a little bit more intense.
It has gotten better since I came here. Just being around the alpha pheromones constantly has kept the pain mostly at bay, but I think the suppressant withdrawal has amplified the touch starvation.
I try to sit up and the whole room rocks sideways. The nausea is instant—a hot, mean wave that makes my mouth taste sour, and I scramble to the bathroom and barely make it. I’m on my knees, clutching the toilet, shaking, and puking up nothing, because I don’t have anything left to lose.
When it finally stops, I just lie there with my cheek pressed against the cool tile. Breathing. Waiting. The pain hums in my skull, unbothered.
This is what happens when an omega’s body starts quitting.
Years of suppressants, keeping my heat cycles locked down tight, and now that they’re wearing off—or, as the registry says, being “tapered off”—my hormones are just doing whatever they want.
No pattern. No rhythm. Some days I’m fine.
Some days I can’t even lift my head. This is the first time it’s been this bad since I came here.
I hear footsteps out in the hall. Then a knock at the door. Garrett’s knock. He always knocks like he doesn’t want to scare me.
“Lily? You okay in there? I heard—“
“I’m good,” I call back, which is hilarious. I’m sprawled on the bathroom floor at seven in the morning, so clearly I am the picture of health.
The door’s locked, but he’s hovering anyway. “You don’t sound fine.”
“It’s just a headache.”
“Can I get you anything? Water? Meds?”
I pull myself up by the sink, rinse my mouth, splash cold water on my face. The mirror is cruel and honest. My skin’s gone gray, dark circles under my eyes, bloodshot.
I unlock the door. Garrett’s right there, leaning against the frame, and the second he sees me his face drops.
“Jesus, Lily.”
“It’s just a headache,” I say again.
“That’s not a headache face. That’s a seriously sick face.
” He reaches out, can’t help himself, and presses the back of his hand to my forehead.
Warm hands, warm skin, and for a second, it’s like the volume on my pain gets turned down.
A little softer, duller. My omega kind of…
uncoils, stretching toward the heat of his hand, toward that honey and sage, desperate for the comfort of alpha contact.
Garrett feels it too. His eyes widen. He can smell it—my scent shifts when the pain lets up.
“Better?” His hand still on my forehead.
“A little.”
He doesn’t move. I don’t either. We’re just frozen there, bathroom door half open, his hand on my face, breathing in each other, and both of us know exactly what this means. We’re breaking Gabriel’s rules. We should stop, but we don’t.
“What’s going on?”
Cyrus. Four strides down the hallway, arms folded, watching everything.
“She’s sick,” Garrett says. “Headache. Bad one.”
Cyrus doesn’t ask if he can touch me. He just does it, hand heavy and warm at the nape of my neck, fingers digging into the tight muscles there. His scent hits me hard and the pain drops again. It’s such a relief. I nearly go to my knees, but Garrett catches me, steady as always.
“Whoa. I’ve got you.”
“‘M fine,” I say, muffled in his shirt. Biggest lie of the morning. I’m wedged between two alphas, both of them scent matches, their hands on me, and for the first time all morning I don’t feel like I’m dying.
I feel… okay. Less like I’m falling apart.
My body soaks up their presence, their warmth, steady alpha pheromones seeping into me.
“She’s not fine,” Cyrus says. He works his thumb into the base of my skull, and the pain… unravels, like he’s pulling it out strand by strand.
“I can see that.” Garrett shifts, helps me back to bed. “Come on. Sit down.”
They settle me on the mattress. Garrett takes a seat right beside me, arm around my shoulders.
Cyrus sits on my other side, hand never leaving my neck.
Between the two of them, their scents tangled around me, the pain drops to manageable levels.
Still there, not as loud. Nausea backs off and my vision slowly returns to normal.
“That shouldn’t work like that,” Garrett says, watching me. “Just touch. That shouldn’t be enough to…”
“It’s the bond,” Cyrus says. Like it’s obvious. “I think it works better because we’re scent matched. I bet Gabriel’s touch would completely erase the pain in minutes.”
“Gabriel’s not going to like this,” Garrett mutters.
“Gabriel’s too stubborn.”
And right on cue, footsteps in the hall. Heavier than Garrett, more deliberate than Cyrus. Gabriel in the doorway, looking at the three of us.
He takes it all in—Garrett’s arm around me, Cyrus’s hand on my neck, me looking like something the cat dragged in—and his expression flickers. Concern. Frustration. That hungry look he gets sometimes. He wants to come closer but he won’t let himself. He could fix this. He knows it. But he doesn’t.
“What happened?”
“Headache,” Garrett says. “A bad one. She was throwing up.”
Gabriel studies me. Really studies me. I see the moment he realizes how pale I am, how thin I’ve gotten, the way my hands won’t stop shaking.
“How long has this been going on?”
“They started a few months ago,” I say, because it’s pointless to lie. Not when my hands won’t stay still. “They’ve been getting worse since I ran out of suppressants.”
“And our touch helps,” Garrett says.
“Seems to,” Cyrus says.
Gabriel stands there a long time, weighing things out. The need against the rule, my health against Miles’s stability, the bond against the promise. He’s doing the math and coming to the same answer he always does.
“Make sure she eats something,” he tells Garrett. “And drinks water. I’ll check on her later.”
Then he leaves. Doesn’t touch me, doesn’t even get close enough for his scent to do anything. He walks away, and the throbbing ticks up again, like my body is keeping score.
***
By the afternoon, the pain’s faded to a dull echo, but something else takes its place.
It starts with restlessness. I can’t sit still. Can’t read or focus. My skin is too tight everywhere, ready to split. I pace my room, then the hall, then the kitchen. Every noise is a tripwire. Bright lights burn. The air is wrong and I can’t get comfortable.
Then I start crying.
Ugly tears. The deep, shuddering kind that shakes your whole body and make your ribs hurt. One second I’m trying to get a glass of water, the next I’m on the kitchen floor, sobbing into my hands.
I don’t even know why. Nothing triggered it.
It just happens. My body or maybe mind says now is the time, everything is too much, and I break apart.
The loneliness, the rejection, the bond yanking at me from every direction, hormones storming through me with no brakes. It’s all of it and none of it.
Garrett finds me.
“Lily—hey. Hey.” He drops down beside me. His hands hover so close I can feel the heat of them. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know,” I choke out. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just—I can’t—“
“Breathe. Breathe for me, okay?”
I try. It’s messy and loud, but eventually the sobbing fades to hiccups.
“This has happened before?” Garrett asks.
I nod. “The mood swings. They started when the suppressants stopped working. Around the same time my doctor told me about being touch-starved. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
Lots of omegas are in the registry for a long time.
But I guess not as long as me. Sometimes I just—I can’t control it.
It comes out of nowhere and I can’t stop. ”
His jaw is tight, eyes angry. Not at me, but at the whole stupid situation. The withdrawal eating me up, the pack that can’t help.
“Does the registry not have alphas on stand by that can help with this? Like the heat stand ins?”
I’m reluctant to answer. It’s a little humiliating. “They do. But I never asked for them. And I didn’t accept when they tried to push them on me.”
His brows furrow but he doesn’t call me out on my bullshit.
“I just didn’t want some random alpha’s hands all over me. I would have rather had the headaches. They weren’t this bad before though. Not like this morning.”
I wipe away another tear.
“That’s it,” he says, getting up. “I’m calling a doctor.”
“No—“
“Lily, this isn’t normal. Headaches, vomiting, and now this? Your body’s falling apart and we’re just sitting here.”
“It’ll pass. It always does.”
“No, it’s escalating. You said so yourself. When’s the last time you slept through the night?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. We both know it’s been days.
“I’m calling a doctor,” he repeats.
“Then let me see mine.” It comes out quick and desperate. “Please. Dr. Turner. She’s been my doctor since I went to the registry. She knows everything. Please don’t send me to a stranger.”
Garrett looks at me a long time. Then nods. “I’ll talk to Gabriel.”
He leaves. I stay on the kitchen floor, waiting for the world to come back together.
Twenty minutes later, Gabriel’s in the doorway with his keys.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll drive you.”
***