Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

Now Playing: Hate Myself-Letdown.

Being nervous isn’t a feeling I’m used to. Even as a kid, I was a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. But stepping onto the stage with Candy Courage tonight, my entire body buzzes with fluttery butterflies. Omen is out there in the crowd watching us, hearing the first of many apology songs Cal has written for her.

Nexus walks to the front next to Azalea and speaks to the crowd, but my focus is beyond the stage. It isn’t easy to see with the bright pink and purple stage lights shining down on us, so I stop trying to see with my eyes and let my heart tell me where our girl is. It takes a minute, the potential bond between us stretched thin and frayed, so close to snapping it makes my chest ache.

There. Up on the balcony. She’s really here.

We play hard, pouring our hearts and souls into every note. Omen needs to understand the depths of our regret. She needs to know, before we see her backstage, that our actions toward her have been branded onto our hearts, a reminder of how greatly we’ve let her down.

Sweat drips down my back as I play alongside Candy Courage’s drummer, our movements weirdly in sync despite never performing together before. The song slowly comes to an end and I know my time is up. Anxiety demands I stay seated here to avoid facing the hell I know is headed our way when Candy Courage’s concert comes to an end.

I force my feet to carry me across the stage, pausing at the curtain to glance back out into the crowd. I can sense Omen there but the railing around the upper level obscures her beautiful face from my view. I nod, silently promising that no matter what she has to say I’m going to be by her side for eternity.

In the extra dressing room we’d commandeered for the evening, I find my mates in various stages of undress. One of our fans had created the coolest costume designs, something we hadn’t realized we needed until we’d seen them. What better way to start our journey of groveling and courtship than an evolution of our stage characters?

Glancing at myself in the mirror, I can’t help but admire my own transition. Gone is my infinite snake mask. In its place, I wear a full headpiece. The material is painted silver with spots that appear molten, as if the paint was actual silver and melted pieces of the mask away. The black harem-style pants they gave me are actually quite breezy, something I won’t complain about when I always walk away from a show soaked in sweat.

The line I drew was wearing a shirt. Our makeup artist will just have to suffer through painting my body silver before every show.

We all ditch the costumes, slowly washing away our image as Primordial Covenant. This is our second chance with Omen and we want to start off on the right foot. She needs to know the real us, past and present, not this version of us we wish for her to see. Especially not after we held her own history against her.

Time drags on as we wait. It’s one of those situations where you are constantly glancing at the clock feeling like an hour has passed but it’s only been seven minutes. We’re restless and impatient knowing our girl is only a few rooms away.

Finally, we hear the girls from Candy Courage laughing as they head to their dressing rooms to cool off before the band sets up for their VIP meet and greets. Something our band has never done. Anonymity certainly has its perks sometimes.

“Ready?” Nexus asks us quietly. His voice is shaky from nervousness and uncertainty. Feelings we all share as we leave our dressing room, following Fate’s path back to our girl.

Waiting for Candy Courage to finish meeting with their fans is a test of our patience. My instincts scream at me to rush into the room, grab my omega, and promise her I will never leave her again. But I have to wait. Outing my pack’s identities will only cause trouble for all of us. The exposure could put Omen’s safety at risk from backlash by the other omegas who have been trying to chase our band over the last few years. She already lived a life in hiding once, I can wait another twenty minutes to keep her safe.

Finally, the door clicks open and one of the security guards motions us inside. I step through first, only to stumble over my feet when I see her.

I thought I was prepared to see the evidence of the wreckage our betrayal caused in our omega, but nothing could have prepared me for this. Even the braided hair and face full of makeup can’t truly cover the signs of the rejection. Gone are her delicious curves, she’s lost enough weight to make her clothes hang baggily off of her body. The bright glimmer in her eyes is nonexistent, in its place is a hollow, far-away look. Like she isn’t really here at all.

Worst of all is the otherworldly glow that always seemed to surround her. She was the lighthouse guiding us away from rocky shores, but now her flame has been extinguished.

Witnessing first-hand the evidence of what we’ve done has my stomach revolting. It’s horrifying to realize how thin the thread keeping Omen in this world is. Tears burn in my eyes, I try to blink them away to hide the evidence of my weakness, but they still trail down my cheeks.

Nebula crashes to his knees beside me, a choked sound escaping his lips when he sees her. I place a hand on his shoulder, both to ground him and to lean on him for support. Seeing the signs of the rejection syndrome will hit him the hardest after watching his sister experience the same life-threatening illness.

Muffled sobs break the tense silence. Glancing behind me, I see Nexus clinging to the door frame, his head hung and his body shaking with the force of his crying. Cal stands beside him, tears staining his cheeks as he keeps one arm around our sweet alpha’s waist to prevent him from falling.

The weight of our actions sinks heavier onto our shoulders, like we’re carrying the world but in reality, all we carry is our debt to her. I never should have allowed my confusion and doubts to keep me from her. When Bea came to tell us who she was to us, I should have gone to her too. With Nexus. Maybe if I had he wouldn’t have felt the pressure to leave and she wouldn’t be this devastated version of the beautiful omega we fell in love with.

The girls from Candy Courage slowly slip out of the room, giving us a bit of privacy. I force myself to turn back to look at her. To face the consequences of my hesitancy.

Bea sits at her side glaring at the four of us, but she doesn’t try to send us away. I imagine Foster’s presence at the other end of the couch is helping to ensure her silence.

“Little Omega,” Nebula whispers hoarsely.

Omen’s attention flits between us, and I’m lost in a sea of green. Drowning in the crashing waves of her pain as it becomes tangible in the air. Fucking hell, this gets worse the longer we are here.

“You’re here,” she croaks. I can’t tell if she’s happy to see us or if our presence is only causing her additional pain. I hope it’s the former because she has suffered enough at our hands.

“We’re here, darlin’.” I squat before her, putting myself at eye level where she sits on the couch.

“Why?” She isn’t looking at us, she’s watching her hands twist around each other in her lap. Her nails dig into her skin and leave little red marks.

Slowly, I reach out and place one of my hands over hers, gently pulling them apart so she can’t hurt herself. She freezes with the contact, her green eyes snapping up to meet my own dark orbs. “Why?” she asks again. This time the word is choked out, the sound full of agony.

“Because we fucked up,” Nebula admits beside me. He hasn’t moved from where he collapsed to his knees. I can feel his fear in our bond, his worry we might be too late to reverse the rejection. We all made shitty choices and now we have to make up for them. Admitting we were wrong and apologizing are only the first steps. “I fucked up. I let my anger toward your family overpower the connection between us when I should have given you a chance to explain.”

Omen nods slowly, before looking at each of us. Her eyes linger on Nexus where he’s silently sobbing behind us, his red-rimmed eyes trained on the floor. She turns back to Nebula and asks “And now?”

“We start over. I want to listen. To hear your story and get to know you without the secrets– both yours and ours. It was incredibly wrong of us to lash out at you for hiding your birth identity when we’ve never shared ours.” Nebula explains.

“Ah yes, because your choice to adopt your stage names is the same as her hiding her birth identity to stay alive,” Bea scoffs. Drawing Omen’s attention to her. “Don’t let your instincts bully you into forgiving them,” she says with a pointed look our way.

My teeth grind hearing the venom in her voice. We may deserve some of Bea’s ire, but at this point, she’s being obstinate and endangering my omega. I don’t know how much longer I can put up with her bullshit.

“Bea,” Foster hisses. He levels a disapproving look at the other omega before pushing to his feet and dragging her from the room. He pauses in the doorway. “I’ll be right outside. If you do anything to upset Omen I won’t hesitate to call venue security in here to remove you.”

When they’re gone the room feels even tenser than it did before. I wish I could fix it, but I know our girl is going to need a better apology and time to heal before we get to that point.

“Brock Farrow. That’s my birth name. After we started getting popular with our music, I permanently changed it to Titan Graves so I could distance myself from my family.” Those green eyes pierce into me with my admission. I know she’s heard what my family was like, their judgmental attitudes and vicious ostracism of anyone they deemed less than, but I feel like I owe her another truth. “My mother was cold and distant. She loved to gossip and gaslight the people close to her. My father was better, but he could be just as savage when you didn’t live up to his expectations. Their reputation was the most important thing to them, even over their son’s happiness.”

I squeeze Omen’s hand when I see tears welling in her eyes. She’s cried enough because of us, we don’t deserve these empathetic tears.

Nebula must feel the same because he quickly pulls her attention to him. “Weston is my real first name. I choose to go by Nebula because it has allowed me to keep running from the unresolved trauma surrounding my sister’s death. Which is something I’ve recently started working on in sessions with my new therapist.”

Omen sits stiffly while she listens to Nebula. I feel for my packmate, knowing he has the most ground to cover with her after everything. If I were her, my fear of his rejection wouldn’t fade easily. Especially knowing the connection between Elizabeth’s death and her brother.

“I’m Colton Ellis. I don’t really have a reason for becoming Callisto, it just felt right.” Cal seems embarrassed as he admits this, but Omen nods which seems to alleviate my beta mate’s discomfort.

Her eyes turn to Nexus next. Concern and pain radiate in equal measure throughout the room as she waits for him to speak. He’s finally stopped sobbing, but he also hasn’t looked at her again since we walked in.

His silence drags on for several seconds before he uses a shaky hand to wipe his face and looks up. “My name was Ryder Bowen. The youngest of five and spoiled rotten by my family, though most of the time I think they babied me because they wanted to make up for all of the bullying I had to endure at school. I’m not a very athletic alpha. I love fashion and reading books with romantic plots, and I have anxiety. All things that got me picked on a lot. I choose to go by Nexus because I want to be the confident person I became after leaving the Alpha Academy and not the weak, self-loathing person I was before.” His bond is a flurry of determination, disgust, and sorrow. It’s easy to see he’s going to derail our original plan so I urge Omen to share her story with us before he can react.

“I was born Sarah Montgomery. Daughter of New Hampshire’s vocal anti-pack advocate, Pastor Grant Montgomery.” She rips her eyes away from Nexus and stares at her hands where they still rest beneath mine. “I fled from my home when I presented as an omega at the age of eighteen and was taken into the DAU’s protective custody program. They helped me create my new identity as Omen Powell so I could hide from my birth family.”

She shakes my hand off and hugs her arms around herself. It takes all of my self-control to not pull her into my lap when I watch her try to hold herself together. We’re right here, a breath away, but she won’t accept our comfort. Not when we are the cause of most of her pain.

“I’m also your Fated omega.” Her breaths are heavy as if this short burst of speaking has left her winded. Yet another reminder of how much we’ve hurt her.

“We can take a break-” Cal starts, but she cuts him off with a shake of her head.

“I started to suspect your pack was at the other end of my Fated connection after one of you wrote to Titan when we were leaving the ziplining company in Louisville.”

I suck in a sharp breath at the reminder of how she’d started to panic after I kissed her. I had wrongly assumed she was going to reject me and lashed out before she could hurt me.

The list of things we have to make up for seems endless at this point. Not that it matters. We’ll happily spend an eternity groveling as long as it means she’s by our side.

“Then I tested my theory before your show in Little Rock.”

“The bee,” Cal murmurs.

“Yes. I needed to know for sure.” She sinks back against the couch, drawing her legs up so she can rest her head on her knees. She looks so damn small and weak, I can barely stand it. If I could rip my heart from my chest and place it in her hand to heal her wounds, I wouldn’t hesitate.

“Why didn’t you tell us then?” Cal asks.

“Fear.” Her shoulders lift as she shrugs, somehow curling in on herself more. “If my birth family found me and learned of my connection to you… What they do to alphas and omegas in New Hampshire makes the symptoms of my Rejected Omega Syndrome look like a bad flu.” Her gaze goes distant, her body shaking slightly as she gets lost in her own memories.

“We never would have allowed them to take any of us,” Nebula argues weakly, but he knows none of us could have guaranteed the others' safety forever.

“Growing up, my father was… controlling. And vocal. He loved to boast about how he and Doctor Harrison would ‘correct’ any alpha or omega who presented in the state. I didn’t realize the depth of his hatred toward the designations until my brother became an alpha. Ben had always worshiped our father. Following in his footsteps and becoming a bully at school, all in the name of his faith. When he presented, he willingly subjected himself to a public flogging at the church. Attendance was mandatory for anyone above the age of 12. We were forced to watch as they beat him bloody, scarring his back and thighs until his scent diminished. Only once he had control of his instincts did they stop. It nearly killed him.”

Nausea churns in my stomach hearing the violence my firefly was forced to endure. Benjamin Montgomery is six years older than her, so she would have been in her early teens when this happened. The horrors she must have witnessed growing up in that family… My parents may be judgmental assholes but they were never abusive or violent the way the Montgomerys are.

“But you’re an omega, surely they would not have-”

Omen’s snort interrupts Callisto. “They wouldn’t have beat me. No, my punishment would have been much worse.”