Page 25 of Two For the Show
Footsteps sound up the stairs, and I dart back to the bed, praying that my heart calms down enough for me to appear asleep, but no one was listening.
Pressurein my abdomen has me yelping and sitting up in bed.
I’m going to be sick.
Again.
But when I reach out for the bucket that Sylvia has been leaving beside my bed, I touch a warm, firm body instead.
“Mmm, Doc, a little to the left, I’ve got a sore muscle,” Quinton slurs with sleep. “Never been woken up with a massage before.”
I’m disoriented from the dream I was having. Did that actually happen, and I just forgot about it due to the trauma that came after? I feel like that would’ve been front and center in my mind. Maybe this is my brain trying to invent a reason, no matter how shitty it is, for Rich to let me be treated so poorly.
Or maybe it’s been locked behind the paddock gate in my meadow.
“Sick,” I manage to say, trying to untangle myself from the sheets and make it to the bathroom. I’m completely boxed in by Alphas and a handsy Beta who is gripping my thigh. “Let me up, guys!”
“No,” Jude mutters, grabbing me around the middle and pulling me down to lie flat on top of him. “You’re not actually going to be sick. You’re queasy because of the FOS. You just need more of our pheromones.”
“What, are you going to shove my face in your armpit and hope I get enough?” He places his hand on the back of my head and does, in fact, shove my face into his armpit.
Fuck. It smells good. A man’s sweaty armpit should not smell good, and yet here I am, sniffing like it’s a goddamn drug. The nausea is slowly reducing as the salty-sweet,slightly fruity scent of taffy fills my senses. When I squirm to get away, he pops me lightly on the ass.
“Quit wiggling. This is what you need. It’s why we decided that we’d all sleep in here together.”
Right, we did decide that.
Can I blame hormones or something? I was so overwhelmed when I saw Jude, when my Omega nature recognized what he is to me, that I felt like a different person, boiled down to this secondary sex characteristic that seems bound and determined to make my life more difficult with every passing day. It felt like the most right thing in the world to agree to a sleepover.
I’m sick, and so is Quinton. He needs me to get better, but I can’t help him until I get this FOS under control.
I came back here for a reason. They can protect me from Rich, sure, but this is my pack. Sylvia has told me a thousand times that I deserve a good pack, and that love is something I shouldn’t let slip between my fingers.
So I’m going to give this a try. Get to know each of the guys. Go on dates with them separately and together, like they wanted from the beginning.
Maybe, just maybe, we can figure out how to function well as a pack.
Despite the soothing pheromones I’m getting from Jude and the soft ones coming from the sleeping members of our pack, I’m still feeling worn down.
There is a long road to recovery from FOS, and I’ve only taken the first step. In the morning, I’ll throw out the light suppressants I’ve been on. That’s step two.
But, until then, I’m going to sink into the comfortable embrace of Jude Oliver.
“Shut up,you’re going to wake her up.”
The hissed words are louder than whatever was happening to cause them.
“It’s been twelve hours, she needs to eat!”
Wow, someone is feeling argumentative this morning.
I sink further into the bed’s plush embrace, luxuriating in the lingering scents of the Cirque de Mordu boys. After that first wake-up, my sleep was dreamless. I don’t exactly feel well. My limbs are still stiff, I have a headache that won’t stop stabbing me in the left side of my head, and a low level of nausea has made itself at home in my gut.
This is definitely the Foresaken Omega Syndrome, and I’m going to have to accept that I’m not operating at full capacity until I get better.
I stretch my feet out, curl my back, and attempt to loosen some of the stiffness that comes from a long sleep.
My toes brush against something soft.
