Chapter 14
The omega was more reserved. Guarded. Levi noted it right away, but allowed him his distance.
He followed orders, moved about the house at Levi’s whim and didn’t argue. Whenever Levi offered soothing pheromones, he no longer resisted or rejected them, but aside from the usual spillage of his own, the omega never responded in like.
Levi wanted to be irritated—was irritated—but there was nothing he could scold the younger man for. He was doing everything that had been asked of him, and yet as the days passed, Levi found his own unease growing.
The only times Elm interacted with him was when he instructed him to use specific types of pheromones.
They exercised it daily, shifting from aggressive, to soothing, and even lust ones.
By day three, Levi had gone through an entire pack of suppressants.
If he took any more inhibitors, he’d be at risk of messing with his own system.
He’d worked from home as often as possible, at first to keep an eye on the omega, but then because he didn’t like to leave him. Which was asinine, because why? What was there to miss when the sulky, quiet omega acted like little more than fancy furniture?
Levi had gotten exactly what he wanted, submission, and yet he somehow felt even less in control of the younger man than he’d been.
It was in the way he moved around the house like Levi had a leash attached to him.
His gaze was always distant and faraway, the bold statements and curses extinguished from his vocabulary.
On day five, he figured it out.
He felt like he had less control because he did. The omega had sealed himself off, tucked himself away somewhere, maybe not in body, but in mind.
Levi may very well hold the proverbial leash, but the omega was treating him like the piece of furniture. He ate when Levi told him to. Bathed when he was ordered. Slept where Levi wanted him to sleep.
But all the while, he refused to engage. His answers were made up of one-word responses, sometimes even a noncommittal grunt. The only time there seemed to be any sort of life left in him was when he was drawing.
He was so expressive when he drew. Became something akin to living art himself whenever he was lost to creation.
In those charged moments, it no longer felt like he was ignoring Levi intentionally, it was like the omega was sucked into his own impenetrable bubble.
A world no one could enter without an invitation.
Levi was loathed to admit it, but he wanted a damn invitation.
He started leaving more frequently, still only for hours at a time, but he’d find the omega exactly as he left him on every occasion, sketching behind the bars of his locked cage.
The omega was brought back there whenever Levi left. A few guards had been permitted onto the main level of the house, with strict instructions to never go near the stairwell leading to the basement.
There was little fear the omega would lash out at them anyway. Not with the threat of Pike being hurt in his stead looming over his head.
A fact that irked Levi to no end.
Was this a normal reaction? Did people close up this way when someone they knew was threatened? Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Shouldn’t the omega be spitting mad, cursing him out, talking to him?
“How is the pheromone addiction?” Baal said casually on day six while the two of them made the drive a town over. “Is it not working?”
“He’s getting enough from me he won’t—”
“That isn’t what I’m asking.”
Levi sighed. “I’m fine.”
Fiora was on standby just in case anything happened while Levi was away, and he had access to the cameras he’d left. He checked them now, tapping on his multi-slate to bring up the live feed.
The omega was on his mattress, attention on the pad of paper in his lap.
“You’ve grown attached.” Baal sounded…disappointed? Concerned? Perhaps both. “This grows more dangerous with each passing day, Levi.”
“Because he’s Kian’s brother?”
“Because you are you.”
Levi debated whether or not to pretend he didn’t know what his old friend was talking about, but…It was rare for him to feel this way, or any sort of way at all really. That’s what made him such a good Dominus.
His cold and unfeeling nature. He didn’t love.
Didn’t covet. Didn’t partake in any vices.
His enjoyment came from smaller things, the perfect song at a ritzy party he organized for the White Frost. The perfect décor to convey the mood he wanted to capture—a mood he often wasn’t able to fully experience himself.
The secret to wanting for nothing, at least in his own personal experience, was to want for nothing.
He kept the businesses running, led the White Frosts’ underhanded dealings, and that was that.
Occasionally, he’d allow himself a little side quest, so to speak.
A quick form of entertainment to keep his spirit alive.
Rebirth was that current project, one he’d only shown an interest in because of how desperately Kian and the Imperial Heir had been to rid the streets of it.
Levi knew better. It was obvious the two of them planned on perfecting the drug on their own.
They would use it for their own illicit purposes, furthering the Eumia’s reach and power.
With that being the case, of course the White Frost needed a batch of their own.
A way to reverse the effects, should the Eumia ever declare war and attempt to use alteration drugs against them.
This had started as an interest that would benefit and bolster his people’s defense.
So when had it boiled down to nonstop thoughts about a single synthetic omega?
“He won’t speak to me.” It sounded foolish even to his own ears.
“If I recall, you’ve always preferred it that way,” Baal said, shifting in his seat some to face him. “Koah mentioned you were acting strange over the omega, but we all thought it was his pheromones getting to you.”
“It is.” It had to be.
“I stepped into the foyer just now and I barely smelled him,” Baal pointed out. “You say he’s getting better. If he’s no longer reliant on you to stay in control, you shouldn’t be this agitated by the distance either.”
Levi tugged on his tie, loosening it. “This is absurd.”
“Did you read the file I put together?”
He had. As soon as he’d found out that the omega was an artist, his curiosity had been piqued. He’d combed through the packet of information Baal had collected on Elm Erskine twice over, committing every detail to memory.
“I read it right in front of him,” Levi stated. “He had no idea.”
“And what has he been doing? While you’re reading or working?”
“Sketching.”
Baal lifted a brow. “Sketching?”
“I gave him an art pad.”
“To…encourage mental clarity?”
“Mental health is proven to be linked to pheromone regulation.” Levi closed his eyes and rested his head back. This was idiotic. If he couldn’t speak to Baal of such things, who could he talk to? “But no. I like watching him draw.”
Baal seemed as taken aback by that revelation as Levi was.
It was something that had been easy to ignore and explain away in the beginning.
But now, months into having the omega, Levi was starting to notice the changes in himself that had been less obvious at the start.
Like how his eyes were always drawn the omega’s way, and how they lingered far longer than necessary.
“I’ve always enjoyed his smell, but I thought that was because of what he is,” he explained, hoping that if he said it all out loud, he’d be able to purge himself of these emotions.
“He responded only to my scent, which while an ego booster, isn’t too surprising.
Aside from being a synthetic, there was seemingly nothing remarkable about him. ”
“But then?” Baal prompted.
He sighed. “Do you know what he said to me the first time he came out of his feral heat? He said being an omega was unnatural.”
“For him, it is. He doesn’t have a womb, Levi. He isn’t meant to go through heat, or take a knot, or carry children.”
Rebirth could alter someone’s chemistry, but it couldn’t grow larger organs from scratch. It was able to produce the glands needed to create slick, and form the bulge at the base of a person’s cock to form a knot, but it couldn’t do much else.
Elm Erskine’s body thought it needed to breed, went into heat, craved a knot, but that belief was false. He would never be a true omega. Would never get pregnant.
“That isn’t it,” Levi insisted. “He’s horrified by what he’s become, but not because it was forced on him.”
“Then why?”
The corner of his mouth tipped upward. “Because he wanted it.”
Baal frowned. “I don’t understand. He wasn’t given a choice. Rebirth was given to him against his will.”
“He didn’t know there was an actual way to change his presentation, but he’s wished to be something else ever since he presented as a beta.
Imagine the internal conflict? A wish fulfilled, but in the most violent and unsettling way.
He acts tough and fills the silence with brash comments to hide how he’s really feeling.
A part of him thinks he deserves this. Isn’t that funny?
Imagine, if we were all held accountable for our deepest, darkest desires, the whole universe would be crushed under the weight of our collective sins. ”
Levi had learned a long time ago things like regret and guilt were a waste of energy.
“You could step into a number of our establishments and have your pick of omegas,” Baal said, and to anyone else, it might have sounded like he was changing the subject, but Levi knew better.
“Precisely.”
“Yet this one is special.”
“He’s…” Levi pursed his lips and gave a single, curt shake of his head.
“You’ve been gentle with him.”
“This is hardly the first time I’ve chosen the carrot over the stick method.”
“Last week, he mentioned the two of you cuddled. Have you done so since?”