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I sigh. Mason has always hated Tatem. I guess I kind of get it. They are complete opposites. She’s possessive and jealous. He’s easy-going and has only ever been possessive of Mav when some girl at a bar has made Mav uncomfortable. He’s more protective than possessive and more alpha than beta, if I’m being honest.
The other two don’t love Tatem either, but they’ve never been openly hostile of my relationship with her.
Hudson
Chill, Mason. She’s just going to dump her. Bring back IceBox, Brooke!
I chuckle a little and roll my eyes. I think that’s the real reason Hudson and Maverick tolerated my relationship with Tatem. Mav because he has Mason and could ignore her pretty easily, butbothof them have a little bit of an obsession with the cookie slash ice cream shop right around the corner from Tatem’s apartment. Anytime I spent the night there, I’d bring back a pint of their favorite ice cream and a dozen of the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies they are known for. They’re the kind that are still warm when you get them, and they fall apart in your hand, ooey gooey, and delicious.
Me
You got it.
Shoving my phone back in my purse, I groan at how this conversation is about to go. Squaring my shoulders and taking a fortifying breath, I start walking toward my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend’s apartment. I can’t even make myself feel bad about it, though. I’ve found my fated mate, and nobody could ever compare.
Five
Summer
After the meeting was over,I went back to my desk and started working through my to-do list. For the most part, I do administrative tasks like scheduling Jerrick’s meetings and appointments, light filing, and sending out emails to the office with updates from his department. When this is all I do, the day drags on for what feels like an eternity.
Every so often, though, he lets me do more difficult things like preliminary editing of a new manuscript so I can gain some experience. That’s what I got sent home with. I leave the office at the end of the day with Dillan Doherty’s new manuscript. I’ll read it tonight, and then I’ll have tomorrow to start the edits. Our offer hasn’t been accepted yet, but if it is, they want to get the ball rolling immediately. So having the first round of edits done before it gets sent to our editing department will be helpful.
If we don’t win the bid, nothing is really lost in their eyes since I’m only an administrative assistant doing the edits. It’s not like the actual editors have wasted any time on a manuscript we might not even get. For every perk of the job I receive, I’m reminded how insignificant I am. Indirectly, of course. Nobody in the office has ever been outright hostile or demeaning of my position. So, all this negativity could just be in my head. I guess you could say my self-worth has resembled a teeter totter since I ran away from my pack. Some days, there are really high high’s where I don’t regret my decision for a single second, and I know it took a lot of strength to leave them. Other days, I feel like I acted too rashly, and maybe I left the only people who will ever love me. All because of one tiny incident.
That’s basically how I am in general now. Oscillating between highs and lows of loving myself—trying to excel in this new life I’ve made—and burrowing into a depressive state. I’m currently teetering closer to a depressive state as I stand in line at the grocery store, waiting to buy my pint of edible cookie dough, and barely standing up straight as another wave of pain assaults my stomach.
Goddess, when will it stop?
The pain recedes, and it no longer takes effort to stand up straight. When I straighten my spine, I ignore the questioning look coming from the cashier and hand her my cookie dough and wine to ring up. I pay quickly, and then I’m hustling out the doors and heading home—all the while praying to the Goddess it doesn't take three months for the pain to stop. The doctor did say the side effects I'm feeling are from the suppressants I'm taking. I'll have to throw those away when I get home, so I'm not tempted to take them again.
Would I have ever known I was drugged if I never started taking a bond suppressant? What if six months had passed without any pain—enough time to ween off the ‘Passion Pack' drug?
Would I still feel like Jade, Connor, and Brody are my fated mates since we actually bonded? Or will that feeling, that connection, fade, too?
No.
We bonded; they marked me. Even after six months, when I'm no longer under any kind of influence, I will still have their bond; the physical and mental link to them. Even if the emotional link to them vanished the second those test results came in, nothing can change that fact.
It's about ten minutes later when I walk into my hole-in-the-wall apartment, toss my keys on the decorative coffee table by the door that I pillaged from a yard sale, and set the sweet Moscato wine on the small counter top that is meant to be my kitchen. I grab a spoon from the drawer, pop open the top of my cookie dough, and load the spoon up to overflowing.
When the first taste of cookie dough explodes on my tongue, I let out a contented sigh. Nothing fixes a bad day quite like cookie dough. Except maybe ice cream. I pull open the drawer right below my silverware and grab the cheap wine opener. After opening the bottle, I pour myself a large glass and take it to the bathroom where I keep my suppressants. The mirror in my bathroom has a magnetic lock, so with a push, it pops open to reveal a cabinet inside. I've only got two medications in here along with my daily essentials like tooth brush and moisturizer. I grab the heat and bond suppressants, pop the caps, and stand over the toilet bowl. If I just throw them away, I'll be too tempted to pull them out and take them again.
You have to take a bond suppressant every day to stop the effects of a bond. By tomorrow afternoon, if I don't take it in the morning, I'll be able to feel my pack again. I shudder at the thought.
The pack that tricked me into a mate bond.
Not only have they taken away my future, the possibility of atruemate bond. But now, I have to go on feeling them in my head until the drugs leave my system from the ‘Passion Pack,' and I can safely take the suppressants again. Now, because of them, I have to go through my heat by myself, without a suppressant to curb the worst of the effects.
My core clenches, and a nervous sweat breaks out along my body just thinking about it. Heats can be hellish for an omega without an alpha's knot. It's nothing but pain for a week straight. A heat can break sooner than that if an omega has a pack to help her through it. But suffering alone, that is almost sure to last a full week. Still, it has to be done. So I take a large swig of the sweet wine in my hand and dump both bottles down the toilet. I flush it and watch on in melancholy as my crutches for the next three months wash down the drain.
* * *
A loud screeching rings through my apartment, and I jerk awake. My heart is beating fast like I just woke up from a nightmare that I don't remember. I blink a few times as my eyes adjust to the darkness and awareness filters through. I'm still lying on my tattered cream colored couch, where I sat down last night with my glass of wine and the manuscript I was supposed to read through.
I groan, looking around for it. It's on the ground between my couch and small coffee table, where it must have fallen when I fell asleep. I bend down to grab it and a small pain reverberates through my skull. Ugh. I love the stuff in the moment, but nothing gives me a hangover quite like a sweet wine does.
When I look at the manuscript, I see my notes stop after a few pages and realize just how little work I got done last night. A groan slips from my lips, and I fall back against the couch, wincing when my head hits the hard part of the back of it. The screeching is still loud in my ear, and I realize it's the alarm on my phone. I look around the room and see the phone screen lit up on the coffee table, a beacon of light in the otherwise dark apartment. Fumbling forward like a freshly birthed fawn, I slap my phone a few times until I manage to hit the 'stop' button and blissful silence replaces the noise.
