Page 137 of Wild Omega

He slides down onto the floor beside me and tugs me across his knees. “You’ll be okay, Calli. There’s enough oxygen in this house for both of us.” His warm hand rests flat across my back. “Just try a little. That’s all you need to do.”

His slender frame shields me from the unforgiving morning light. The warmth seeping through my back unwinds a fraction of tension in my lungs. Maybe if he’s here, I can survive. I breathe in, but it catches in my throat, and I cough and curl in on myself.

“Good try. You’re doing so well. It’ll be okay,” he murmurs.

I can barely make out his words, but it’s enough to know he’s close. A whimper escapes me.

Rickon strokes the back of my hand. “Can you feel that? Isn’t our skin amazing to relay those sensations to your brain? You can even move your hand if you want to. And look, five fingers. Can you breathe in while I count them?”

Everything else fades away as I focus only on his voice and the light taps as he walks his fingers across my knuckles. “One, two, three—”

I choke and hyperventilate again as terror captures me. My mate has gone, and I can’t breathe. I’m drowning in tears I didn’t even know I was crying.

Rickon croons and massages my back. “You’re going to be okay. I believe in you. You can get through anything, Calli. Remember that senior school kid who you caught bullying me? You ripped him a new one even though he was twice your size, and then you got him stuck in detention for a month while you walked free.” Ricky chuckles. “Mad lawyer skills even when you were fourteen years old.”

I grind my hands into my eyes, recalling how enraged I felt learning those guys bullied Rickon. “You should . . . have . . . told me.”

He runs his fingers through my hair, and each pass of his nails loosens the iron wrapping my lungs. “Yeah, I should have. I should’ve told you about a lot of things. Like, do you know why I love corsets? The day I lost my parents at the zoo . . . a man helped me. He was wearing a Captain Hook costume, and I noticed part of it was this leather corset. That’s all I could see because I only came up to his waist.” He chuckles softly.

His fingers pass through my hair again, and I press my head into his belly. He’s suffered something I can’t even imagine. I lost my dad, but that’s nothing on what happened to Ricky.

A sigh runs through his slim body. “The only reason why I ever dated Hudson was because he smells a bit like . . . well, like the person I’ve been in love with for years but couldn’t have. The reason I’m terrified Red won’t come back is ’cause I’m afraid I’m not alpha enough for her. People always mistake me for an omega, you know?”

I can’t reach much of him, but I can partly squeeze his thigh. “Not once,” I wheeze out. His other words filter through my fog. I furrow my brow, thinking back. Did I know he had a long-term crush? On whom?

Rickon strokes my cheek. “I know. You never treated me that way.”

“But her—” I gasp at the thought of Red never filling this house with laughter and energy again.

“Don’t think about that now. Just breathe. We’ll figure it out, Calli. We always have.” A faint sigh of air whispers through my hair. “Together.” He sounds wistful, like he wants something, but I can’t puzzle it out because it costs all my concentration to simply breathe. In and out, in time with his counting and massaging.

Breathing should be instinctive, but for the first time in my life I have to work hard for every snippet of oxygen because our omega vanished.

He makes soft, encouraging noises. “Good, you’re doing fine. See if you can hold it just a little longer. One more second.” Ricky counts again, and I breathe in for three seconds, then four, then five. Slowly the knots of tension unwind, leaving me crying weakly in his lap.

“I don’t understand,” I croak out, when the room stops flexing.

Rickon’s fingers tangle in my hair. I must look a real mess. “Anxiety’s not something you can explain away with logic, Calli, but one thing I know is, your body’s trying to send you a message. You can’t keep pushing yourself forever without consequences.”

I roll a little so I can look up at him. He looks rather angelic, with the entrance window backlighting his platinum hair. “How do you know so much?”

He gets a sad smile, and I want to rub it off his lips. Nothing should ever make this dear boy sad. “From helping your mom.”

I stiffen as his words leave ripples in my soul. All these years I’ve privately mocked her condition. Did she feel this helpless every time she had an attack? Like she was dying? I shiver, a fresh sense of horror creeping up my spine. I had no idea.

I lick my lips, feeling rough cracks forming in my skin. “I thought it was all in her head.”

He tucks a piece of hair off my forehead. “Did yours feel like it was just in your head?”

“No.” Shit, I’ve been such an ass. It felt as real as the hard floor under my legs. “What do I do?”

He shrugs quietly. “Get counseling. Learn strategies to cope with the attacks.”

I dig my fingers into his shirt as a jolt of heat shoots through my forehead. “The attacks? Like, more of them?”

His fingers tease my worry lines. “It’s quite likely, but we’ll face it one day at a time. Do you think you can get up now? We have an omega to find.”

I nod, but he has to physically untangle my tight grip on his shirt before we can get off the floor. When I wobble, Rickon inserts himself under my arm to balance me until I can get into one of the bar stools, and then he drapes the duvet around my shoulders.

---