Page 32 of Alpha's Embrace
It shouldn’t have happened.
I should not have touched him.
*
The night after my conversation with Misha, I drove home without really seeing. I don’t know how I made it through the streets unscathed.
When I collapsed on my couch with a sandwich and turned on the TV, I forced myself to relax. It was difficult, but my own surroundings helped. The drone of a sitcom. The sound of an occasional car driving down the lane outside. My familiar things: books, pictures, blankets all made my version of a nest.
I’d lived here seven years. I’d been content. I didn’t feel I was missing out on anything like an Omega partner or a family. I was still young. I had plenty of time for thoughts about that in the future.
Still, Misha’s blunt words this afternoon had sent a shock through my system.
It was true. I’d had fantasies of him day and night since bathing him in the tub at the colony, but I put them off to my own vulnerabilities within the Sylph allure. Nothing more.
For him to insinuate it was more rattled my very being. That was why I’d gone for the blood test. If it came back negative, I could show him he was wrong. I would have facts and science to back me up. No matter how much I wanted him, he needed to know there was nothing between us. That he would not feel the call of my Alpha Burn mixing with his own. That he was safe.
But his own Burn. I could almost feel it right now. It teased me. Taunted me. But no, it had to be only my imagination.
What if he was right?
I picked up my phone and tapped up my calendar, checking and double checking the date of my next Burn.
My skin felt hot and my cock was erect. But no, I wasn’t due to Burn for another three weeks.
Various things might throw an Alpha off of his Burn schedule. The pregnancy of his Omega. Death of his Omega. Drugs. Head injury. Illness. Very old age.
I had none of those problems.
But Ihadtaken a job where I had let myself visit with and touch a Sylph. With my bare hands. There was a reason regulations, such as glove-wearing, were in place. There were reasons only bonded Alphas and Omegas worked in Sylph institutions.
I should never have accepted the position. My half-bond with Mase was obviously gone. It didn’t protect me. Despite my long-buried grief, it was as if it had never been.
I stared at the TV for a long time, willing myself not to think at all. Now and again, I picked up my phone and scrolled through messages from friends. I answered none of them.
None of my friends were close enough to confide in.
I was truly alone.
*
I read the words on the paper Doctor Prim handed me three times before I folded it up and put it in my blazer pocket.
“There is no mistake,” he said.
He stared at me a little long for my comfort. His eyes were dark and unreadable, but I knew he wanted to ask me questions. The answers to which were none of his business. Not really.
Except for the fact that any answers I might give irrevocably involved the proper running of the Sylph colony. Answers which I could never reveal to another soul.
It had been two long days waiting for the results of my blood test. I’d worked on auto-pilot. I’d avoided the staff.
Tory was the only person I spoke to, and he came across as far too forward. He asked too many questions. I kept my office door closed between us hoping to deter him because a lot of his work involved the work I was doing for Misha.
I simply wanted to put everything on hold.
I had not visited Misha since his visit to me in my office. And he had not come by again to request my attention.
But every thought I had was of him and that got worse with each new day. I was burning, burning and it wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t out of control, and it wasn’t like a real Burn. But I was hot all the time. I’d masturbated more in the past few days than I had in the past two years outside of a Burn.
