Chapter 36 In which I recover from my trials

The world is full of darkness, with only flashes of lights and watery sound. Like I’m at the bottom of the ocean, trying my hardest to reach the surface.

Someone is shouting nearby.

Loud bangs and the world trembles.

Something warm and hard wraps around me, and then it’s gone.

Softness presses to my mouth, my cheek, my forehead.

And then there’s the incessant beeping.

More raised voices.

I want to tell them to be quiet. I’m trying to sleep, but I’m too exhausted to even try. My lids won’t lift and neither will my voice.

The darkness of the ocean is the only constant.

“Sir, you can’t do that.” The voice is frazzled and frustrated. More pleading than demanding.

“The fuck I can’t. This is my omega. She needs me right fucking here.” The second voice makes my chest warm, my heart ache. I need them.

“I’m not denying that having her alphas close will be beneficial for her, but you don’t have to get naked to-Sir, put your pants back on this instant.” Hands carefully lift me and then cool air flows over my skin. “No, don’t take off her- I’ll call security.”

“I fucking dare you,” the second voice snarls, pure menace dripping from it. “I dare you to take me away from her.” Silence, then, “Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought. Get the fuck out of here. No one gets to see Cherrybomb naked except for my pack.”

A moment later, I hear a door close, and the warmth over me lifts before it’s replaced by a smooth, hard, hot body sliding, bare skin against bare skin, next to me. An arm wraps around my stomach and pulls me closer, while a face nuzzles into my neck. “I’m here, Cherrybomb,” he murmurs. “I’m right here with you. Always be.”

The scent of a boozy beach reaches me, and I shift, trying to get closer. But there’s something on my arm that snags me and pulls me back when I try to turn into him. A little mewl sounds from my chest that has him tensing, then holding me tighter. A hand comes up to cup my face, thumb brushing my bottom lip. “That’s it, Cherrybomb. Come back to us. Come back to me. Please, we need you.”

“Swift?” I whisper. Or more like breath since barely any sound comes out.

“Yeah.” His voice is choked. “Yeah, Cherrybomb, it’s me. Can you open those fucking gorgeous eyes of yours for me? I need to see them like I need air in my lungs.”

It’s a struggle and takes far, far too long for the seemingly simple task. I was expecting to wince, to squint against bright lights, seeing as how I should be in the hospital, but the room we’re in is dim, filled with low lighting. Not completely dark.

My white blond alpha is propped on an elbow, leaning over me, smiling like a loon. “There my girl is. Hi, baby,” he croons.

“Hi.” Again, my voice is hardly more than a whisper, and I already feel exhausted from uttering it. Also, I’m so fucking thirsty.

I part my lips again to ask for water, but the door slams open. “She’s awake?” Luca demands, rounding the bed. “You said you’d call as soon as-Are you naked ? Is she fucking naked?”

I realize with a start that I am in fact naked, and so is Swift.

“She needed skin to skin contact.” Swift is completely unrepentant. “Though I might have to carve out the eyes of that male nurse. He refused to look away while I stripped her.”

A choked sound leaves me, and I’m not sure if it’s a protest or a laugh, but then there’s Luca, bending over the side of the bed Swift isn’t on. His big calloused palm slides over my cheek before he bends and does the same with his face, scent marking me, before his lips press to every inch of skin he can reach.

He pulls back and meets my gaze, a tremulous smile on his lips. “Hi, Vixen.”

I try to return his smile, but I’m not sure I manage. “Hi, Luca.”

He presses a fervent kiss against my forehead, murmuring against it, “oh, fuck baby, you don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.”

“Water?” I croak out, because even though I want to return the sentiment that it’s nice to see them too, I’m having a hard time voicing anything.

“Of course, vixen.” He pulls away from me reluctantly, while Swift snuggles me closer, draping one of his thick thighs between mine, while he slides one of his arms behind my head to help prop it up. Luca holds a straw to my lips and I drink greedily until all the cool water is gone. “More?”

“Not yet, mo chuisle ,” Logan says, coming into the room, followed closely by Maddox and Ethan. “We don’t want to overdo it and make yourself sick.”

“I’m so thirsty,” I protest, as Maddox perches on the end of the bed and curls one of his enormous hands around my foot through the blanket.

Ethan sits on the other side, resting his hand on my calf.

“We’ll give it a few minutes to see how your stomach handles it, then you can have more, okay?”

I nod reluctantly. “Fine.”

Swift nuzzles into my cheek, while Maddox chuckles. “Pouty little omega.”

I try to glare at him, but again, I’m not sure it translates. “What happened?”

Our prime squeezes my foot while Luca picks up my hand and presses a kiss to my palm, the pulse point in my wrist. “We don’t need to talk about that right now. You just need to focus on getting better.”

I nod slowly. “Okay…. But what happened to me? What do I need to recover from? Am I still…”

I huff out a pained breath as tears prick my eyes. “He said I wouldn’t be an omega anymore. Did that… happen?”

Logan reaches over Swift to stroke my cheek. “No, mo chuisle. That didn’t happen. He did hook you up to an insane amount of suppressants that, had we not arrived when we did, would have severely damaged your hormones, but as it is, we got there on time. There are still some suppressants lingering in your system, but they’re mostly gone.”

I let out a shuddering breath as relief flows through me. “So I’m still yours.”

“You’d still be ours no matter what, trouble,” Maddox growls. “Even if he’d broken your omega hormones completely, it wouldn’t change the fact that we love you. That we want you with us always.”

Another round of tears prick my eyes. “What did you say?”

A slow smile curls my prime’s face. “What part? That we love you?”

I must have a shocked expression on my face, because they all rush to reassure me.

“Of course I love you, Vixen. Pretty sure I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you at The Market.” Luca kisses my palm again.

“Same,” Ethan says, bending to press a kiss to my blanket covered knee. “You caught our attention right from the start and didn’t let go, heartbreaker. There’s no choice but to love you.”

Logan’s fingers grip my chin and turn my face toward him. “ Mo chuisle literally means ‘my pulse,’ Sadie. I’ve been calling you my heartbeat since we first met. I kind of thought it was obvious that I love you.”

Swift nuzzles into my neck, hand shifting until he can grip my left thigh under the blanket, thumb pressing into the bite mark there. “I already told you I loved you, Cherrybomb, when I was knot deep inside your pussy.”

“Swift,” I hiss, face flaming, and he cackles against me.

“What, Sadie? I think they know that you and I have had sex. In fact,” he whispers right against my ear like it’s a secret. “I’m pretty sure they’ve seen us fuck.”

I giggle because it’s true. None of us have been exactly shy about having sex with each other, not once we broke the seal, so to speak. Even when Claudia-

Shit. Claudia.

All of them tense and I realize I must have said her name out loud. “Did she-Did you see her? She was a part of it. She’s not a real omega. She bought my designation, my hormones.”

All of them pet me, trying to soothe me. “We know, Sadie,” Maddox says, running his hand from my ankle to my knee and back. “We know. She tried to fool us into thinking she was innocent, but we knew better.”

“You don’t have to worry about her anymore, Cherrybomb,” Swift says into my neck. Maybe those words should have the opposite effect on me. Maybe I should stiffen up and be concerned that he might have done something to the other woman.

But it has the opposite effect. I melt into the mattress and into his hard, naked body. “Good.” I look around, taking in the room that I know isn’t in our penthouse, but doesn’t look like a hospital, despite the bag of fluids hanging over the bed. “Where are we?”

“One of the heat suites at the hospital,” Logan answers, picking up my wrist and checking my pulse. Ah, that explains the oversized bed we’re all lounging on and the low lighting. Omegas in heat like things dark and close. Cozy. “They had you in one of the normal rooms, but-”

“It wasn’t secure enough,” Maddox says, sounding like this is an argument they’ve had before. “This room has a lock on it that can only be opened by someone programed into the system. It has no windows, and it’s in a secure wing of the building.”

“Yes, and the staff in this wing aren’t equipped to deal with a patient with blood loss like Sadie has. This is a wing specifically for easing omegas in heat. They don’t have the medication ready for-”

They cut off their argument when I laugh, five sets of eyes falling on me with bemused and warm expressions on their face. “You think this is funny, trouble?”

I wave a hand and then chuckle some more, shaking my head. “No, I appreciate you’re concerned about my safety. It’s just, if this is a heat suite you’d think that nurse would be more comfortable with nudity. He was so offended when Swift got naked!”

“So offended!” Swift cackles along with me, but no one else gets the joke. And I don’t know, maybe it’s not that funny, but my exhausted fuzzy brain thinks it’s hilarious.

When my laughter dies down and I’m wilted against the pillow and Swift, a yawn overtakes me. “When can we go home?”

Their smiles fall, and they go back to petting me. “Not for a few days, mo chuisle . They want to monitor you, make sure there aren’t any lasting side effects.”

I frown. “Can’t you do that at home? Isn’t that part of having a doctor in the pack? No lengthy hospital stays? We didn’t even take Luca to a hospital when he was shot,” I remind him.

“I didn’t need to go to a hospital,” Luca grumbles. “It was a graze, vixen. You, on the other hand, lost a lot of blood.”

“And I’m guessing they put some of it back, and now really, all I have to do is rest and recuperate, right? Can’t I do that at home?”

The idea of being here for a few more days is… well, it’s making my skin itchy, pulling me back to my bi-monthly visits to the doctor’s office. The countless tests and machines and unknown substances dripping into my veins.

I’m sure that Logan has been watching every step the doctors and nurses have done to me, but it doesn’t change the fact that it freaks me the hell out.

Logan’s eyes scan over me, likely reading all of that on my face. “I’ll see if we can get you out any sooner, Sade. But I’m not making any promises.”

I sigh and nod, even though I want to push back on it. I know he only wants what is best for me. He’d never risk my health just to get me out of an uncomfortable situation. “Fine. But I still think I’d do better at home than here.”

Logan taps his chin, humming. “Maybe. I’ll speak to your doctor now and see what we can do, okay, mo chuisle ?”

I smile at him as bright as I can, while feeling as rundown as I am. “Okay, thank you, Logan.”

He leans over Swift and wraps his hand around my neck, fingertips pressing into my pulse points. “Anything for you, omega,” he murmurs before brushing a soft kiss across my lips. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

With one more caress to my pulse, he leaves.

Maddox stares after him, then he sighs. “Well, if he’s going to work on getting you out of here early, then we need to make sure the house is ready for you.”

I frown. “It was fine before, Dox. You don’t have to do anything special for me.” The last word ends with a yawn. And my eyes get droopy.

Fuck, maybe Logan was right and I’m not really ready to go home. But no. Anywhere is better than here.

Swift snuggles me closer, urging me to slide down the pillows a little more.

“We know we don’t have to do anything special for you,” Luca says, running a knuckle down my cheek tenderly. “But we want to. Fuck, do we want to.”

“And the entire security system needs an overhaul,” Ethan says, standing and stretching his arms over his head, revealing a sliver of tanned abs. He frowns and looks over at Maddox. “Maybe we should just move? Start from scratch. There’s a house up on Lake Kilrose I’ve had my eye on. Sadie could be closer to Sorrel and Sylvie.”

Maddox stands up too. “We’ll discuss it later. Right now, we have to work with what we have. Swift-”

“Don’t even think about trying to get me to leave her,” he snarls, brandishing a knife from thin air at our prime alpha. I blink. Where did that even come from? Where was he hiding it?

Maddox arches a brow. “I wasn’t going to,” he replies, completely unconcerned that my psycho mate has a knife aimed at him. “I was going to say keep an eye on our girl.”

The knife vanishes. Where? I have no idea, but I feel safer knowing Swift has it, that he’ll keep me safe. That I won’t be left alone in a medical setting again. Not like my mother left me alone.

“Of course,” Swift says. “I’ll keep our Cherrybomb safe.”

Luca bends and presses a kiss to my lips. “Be back soon, vixen. Get some rest.”

I nod against him, our noses brushing. “Don’t take too long,” I murmur, sleep already pulling me under.

“We won’t. Promise.”

Ethan brushes feather soft kisses over my forehead, cheek, nose and mouth, before he murmurs, “love you, heartbreaker.”

Warmth swells in my chest and I force my eyes open to whisper back, “Love you, Ethan.”

Maddox is the last to leave, looming over the bed as he looks down at me. I frown up at him. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Scowl like that. I’m in the hospital, Maddox. You should only be sweet to me.”

Swift chuckles and nods. “Yeah, you should always only be sweet to our omega.”

He arches a brow and bends over, planting a hand by my hip as the other reaches to brush a stray hair out of my face, before cupping my jaw. “I am sweet to you. I’m sweet on you too.” He leans to brush his lips over mine. “I love you so fucking much, Sadie. Hopelessly and endlessly and irrevocably. I love you. Just want to make that clear to you. Even when I’m scowling, I love you.”

I swallow around the sudden lump in my throat, my hand sliding to press his palm harder into my cheek. “I love you too, Maddox.”

He beams at me. “Oh, I know, omega.”

“Cocky asshole,” I say, fondly, my lips curled into a smile. He kisses me again.

“Get some rest, Sadie. We’ll be back soon.”

I yawn and nod, turning into Swift’s tattoo covered body. He wraps me up even tighter, if possible, being careful of the tubes and wiring attached to my hand. “Good idea,” I murmur sleepily.

Maddox’s big hand smooths down the back of my head, and then he’s gone too.

My nose nuzzles into Swift’s neck, routing around until I find where his boozy beach scent is strongest. I sigh in contentment as his cheek brushes the top of my head. “Love you, Swift,” I whisper with the last bit of consciousness.

“Love you forever, Cherrybomb,” he whispers back.