Chapter Eleven #2
I scramble for an explanation. The medication has my name on it. The fill date. My dosage. Dr. Kanata’s info. Hell, if I registered us as mates, they might have his name on there, too. Some pharmacies still did that.
The pressure on my chest intensifies. I forget to breathe.
“I—”
His eyes go hard. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Birdy.”
Panic starts to close in. I want to turn around and run, to ignore this and him and escape away from it all, but I need the bottle he’s holding.
“When?”
When I don’t answer, his hand fists around the bottle.
“ Who ?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then, pray tell, what the fuck is it like?”
“We’re not…together.”
“I can’t believe you matched without me. That I didn’t know.”
I feel our dead bond writhing in my chest like a snake readying to strike.
He scrubs a hand through his hair.
“Fuck. No wonder I can’t smell you. This is the maximum dosage. Thought I was going fucking crazy.”
I hold my hand out for the bottle. “I need that.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Your refill’s not due for another two weeks. What happened?”
Was it two weeks? Fuck.
I shrug.
Connor tosses me the empty bottle and looks toward the parking lot.
“Come on. You’re getting soaked.”
We get to my car, and he slides into the passenger seat without a word, snapping the umbrella closed and laying it at his feet.
I rest my forehead against the steering wheel and try to breathe.
“So, you do know Kanata.”
I nod weakly.
“How’d you get an appointment with her? Didn’t think she took new patients. More focused on research these days.”
“Mac helped.”
His scent turns acrid. “Mac knows?”
I swallow thickly. “Don’t get mad at him. I made him promise not to tell you.”
“Where is your alpha? Why do you need so many suppressants?”
“He’s not around.”
Connor raises a dangerous eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Long story.”
“Who is it?” There’s an undertone of threat lacing his voice.
“They’re not in the picture. They never have been.”
“Fucking bastard. What kind of fool would reject you as their mate?”
What kind of fool , indeed.
“If he’s not around, what do you do for your heats? Go to a center?”
I shake my head.
His voice tenses. “Who sees you through them, then? Please tell me it isn’t that fuckhead footballer.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Mushrooms and Cheese.”
I snort. “No. No one sees me through them.”
“What? You ride them out alone?”
I don’t know what compels me to tell him the truth. It just spills out. Someone I can confess to, finally. “I haven’t had a heat since I first matched.”
“Was it recent, then? How long has it been?”
My voice is thin and reedy. “High school.”
His entire frame stiffens beside me. “Lana….that’s not possible.”
“Sometimes I wish that were true.”
Connor goes very still. There’s an air of threat filling the car.
I press my head into the steering wheel harder, daring it to beep.
“Where are you getting them?”
The implication of his question takes a moment to hit me. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fucking designation studies.
I swallow a dry clump of air. “Getting what?”
“The extra suppressants. I know you haven’t staved off a heat for three years on what Kanata prescribes you alone. She’d lose her license.”
It’s a struggle to keep from reacting. This is why I can’t be honest with people. Even him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Connor reaches for my sleeve and begins to push it up. I yank away from him, but his grip is like iron on my arm. Each inch of flesh reveals another tell-tale circular bruise left by my black market shots. There are even more on my belly and thighs.
I stare wide-eyed at Connor as his throat works. He’s positively seething. Barely hanging on to control.
Bad omega. Alpha is mad.
“I am trying very hard not to yell at you right now. Suppressant abuse isn’t uncommon. We studied it in one of my classes. But the health risks…”
“You’re yelling with your face.”
His jaw flexes.
“Three years? How many fucking blockers are you on? You’d have to keep increasing your dosage to maintain suppression.”
Enough to be in the same room as my alpha without him realizing I’m his mate.
He groans. “No wonder you’re working two fucking jobs. It’s to afford your habit.”
I jerk my arm away from him. “I need it to live. It’s not a habit.”
“This isn’t living, Lana.”
“I’m fine. I’m handling it.”
“Said every addict who wasn’t handling it ever.
Do you know how risky this is? How do you even know what you’re getting?
What you’re injecting yourself with? Unregulated suppressants aren’t easy to come by—for good reason.
They’re often diluted, not to mention the risk of contamination and infection.
The DEA cracks down harder on them every year. ”
“I’m just doing what I have to to get by.”
Connor tips his head back against his seat, staring at the discolored roof of my car.
“Does Mac know?”
“No. He knows I go too long between heats, but not the extent of it.”
“Good. I was going to kill him if he stood by and let you do this.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
He lets out a broken sigh. “No. You are.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m very much not. But you can begin by telling Kanata, so she can begin to determine how much damage you've already done. You’re quitting, Lana.”
“I can’t stop them. I’ll go into heat.”
“As you’re meant to. It’s a biological imperative.”
“Or what? You’re not my alpha!”
“ Someone has to be!”
I scoff. “Need I remind you what century we’re in? You don’t get to come back into my life and start bossing me around just because there’s not an alpha already doing that.”
“Well, somebody has to talk some sense into you! I’m not going to apologize for caring.
Does anyone else even know? I won't sit around and watch you hurt yourself. Do you know the kind of side effects prolonged suppressant abuse can cause? I’m talking permanent.
Fucked up heat cycles for life, inability to get pregnant, inability to form bonds?—”
“I’m not concerned with any of that.” I can’t afford to be. I knew the dangers, but it’d always seemed worth it. Short-term gain in exchange for long-term risk.
Connor’s expression hardens. “You’re only twenty-one, Lana! You could be fucking up your whole future. You’re going to stop, or I’m going to tell Kanata, Mac, and your elusive alpha what you’ve been up to.”
My mouth hangs open. “You’re going to punish me for telling you the truth.”
“I would have figured it out sooner or later, Birdy. You’re hanging on by a thread.”
“I hate you.”
His eyes flare. “Good. Hating me means you’re still fucking alive. Now, where are you getting them?”
This is going downhill fast.
“I need to get to work. We can talk about this later.”
He leans over me, all delicious smelling and wet from the rain, and pulls my keys out of the ignition.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
I sputter. “Connor, please! You’re overreacting.”
“I believe this to be a very mild reaction, considering. Your alternative is giving me your alpha’s name. I’ll take it up with him and the mating registry.”
I start to laugh. I sound completely unhinged, but the entire situation is ridiculous. A farce fit for Shakespeare.
“I’m not going through another heat. I can’t.”
His pupils blow wide as his scent spikes again. He reaches for my hand.
“Did he hurt you, Lana?”
I shake my head. “No. Not physically.”
His voice is dangerously low now. “Was it bad? A weak bond? It was your first time, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
Sad as it is, I’m still a fucking virgin. Believe me, I’d tried, but once you find your mate, you kind of lose interest in anyone else.
“Talk to me, Birdy. What happened? What are you so afraid of? Heat is natural for omegas. A necessary part of your biology. As normal as your period.”
I’m on the verge of breaking. I clench my teeth and try to bite back my words. To stuff them down into the vault where I keep all of my locked up emotions, but my secrets are tired of being caged.
“I don’t need a fucking sex ed lesson, Connor. My first heat was alone, okay? I can’t go through that again.”
Connor pales, and he squeezes all the bones in my hand together. “What’s his name? I’ll fucking flay him alive.” His voice vibrates with fury.
His indignation on my behalf, his rage at himself, is so ridiculous that I almost laugh.
“Who is he? Why isn’t he with you? Helping you? Have you reported him to the registry?”
“No. There’s no point.”
“Want me to kill him for you?”
“Spare me the fucking hypocrisy, Connor. I don’t owe you answers. We stopped being friends a long time ago.”
He looks like I just slapped him.
I bite my tongue until I taste blood. He’s not going to let off until I give him something. This is the most real information he’s learned about me in three years.
“He’s dead.” To me, I finish in my head. Mac could always tell when I was lying. I think he suspected about the black- market drugs, but was too stuck in his own blame spiral to admit it to himself. I hope that ability doesn’t extend to his son.
“What?”
Guilt roils in my belly as I weave the web of lies tighter around myself.
“It was an alpha from out of town. He died. He crashed his motorcycle on the way to the ceremony. So his scent was still there…”
Connor’s eyes blow. His expression grows pained. “So you went through your first heat alone?”
I give a stiff nod.
“Fuck, Birdy. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“The bond was weak,” I say, the words bitter in my mouth.
He swings back toward me again, his face ashen. “The ceremony I missed?”
I consider the questions he must still have about that night and clench my teeth.
Then I nod.
“When he didn’t show, the elders wanted me to use a surrogate alpha. You…you were the only one I was comfortable considering.”
Connor looks like he’s seen a ghost. “Fuck. The calls. That’s why Mac was so mad…”
I can see the gears turning in his head.
“And you wanted—me?”
“Yes.”
I want you, I want you, I want you.
There’s a hungry edge to Connor’s gaze when he looks back at me. His hands clench deep dimples into his jeans.
“And when I didn’t answer?” the words are terse and tight. Barely a whisper.
“I ran into the woods. I didn’t want a stranger.”
“Shit. You could have fucking died, Lana.”
“I came close.”
“Fuck, this explains so much. At the end of high school, you just fell into this hole. I knew there had to be more to the story. That you wouldn’t give up on me—on us—for that one fuckup.”
“I was working through a lot, after the ceremony.”
“Yeah. I can imagine.”
He tugs his hands through his hair. “You know, as tragic as this all is, I’m a little relieved. You don’t understand how much it’s plagued me—trying to figure out why I lost you.”
I bite my cheek until I taste blood. I’ve given him absolution he doesn’t deserve.
“I didn’t want anyone to know. To pity me.”
“The supps—they help with a broken bond like that?”
I nod quietly. Part of me hates that he believes me so easily. That it’s such a remote possibility in his mind that I’m his mate. Does he even know his scent was on that table?
I don’t expect Connor to try and verify my story—who would make something like this up? But if he does, Mac has sway with the elders. What happens at the ceremonies is sacred, secret. They won’t tell him the truth without my consent—not after what he did.
I get out of the car and lift my face to the rain. The passenger door opens and closes. He crosses to my side of the car and leans against the door next to me.
“I’m so sorry, Lana. If I’d known?—”
White hot rage flares inside me. “If you’d known, what? I’d earn a spot on your weekly rota of hookups? You would’ve left Cassandra? Would’ve asked her for a ‘pass?’ How magnanimous of you.”
“Yes! For you, anything.”
“That’s just your guilt talking.”
Connor lets out a heavy sigh. “You can’t suppress forever. You know the risks.”
“Stop trying to make it your problem, Connor. It’s not.”
He shakes his head. “You need help. I can see why everyone else is so blind to it. You do a decent job of pretending you’ve got it all together. But you don’t, Birdy. I see through your bullshit.”
I glance at my watch. “I need to go.”
He nods, pensive. “Stop the supps. I’ll know if you don’t, and then I’ll scour Crestwood until I find out who’s dealing and go straight to your source.”
I stomp my foot in the puddle on the ground, immediately regretting it when I’m splashed with cold water. “God, you’re such a fucking alpha.”
Connor moves off my car, and I jerk the door open.
“We’ll go to Kanata as soon as I can get you an appointment. And Birdy?”
I slide into the driver’s seat and refuse to look at him. “What?”
“Thank you for telling me the truth.”