“Y-Yeah?”
“I want you to know that I would never knowingly hurt you. And if you ever want to talk about what happened, I will listen without judgement.” The softness in the alpha’s gaze made Oliver’s chest ache. His hazel eyes had shed their playful edge and in its place was something else. Something intimate, something like longing,somethingthat looked remarkably like a four letter word Oliver didn’t want to think about.
‘Don’t you dare push him away.’
Oliver’s eyes flitted back and forth between the door and Lucas. He wanted to dart out the kitchen, lock himself in his bedroom and bury his head under the blankets. It’s what he was used to—how he coped. But as his eyes drifted back to the alpha, he thought for one fleeting moment that he might share it with him. He was already sharing his body, after all, so after a moment of indecision he looked up at Lucas with a resolute expression.
“I’ll tell you. But it’s not a pleasant story.”
“Okay,” Lucas whispered, taking hold of his hands. “But only if you’re comfortable.”
And that brought forth a bitter laugh that had long been coiled in the back of Oliver’s throat. Because he wouldneverbe comfortable talking about it. To anyone.
“I was, um—” he began, eyes downcast, as he shuffled from one foot to the other. “I was twenty-one. He was twenty-nine. We met at a rock tribute concert of all the fucking places. I have no idea why I was there, it’s not even my style?—”
Lucas nodded, rubbing little circles across the backs of his hands.
“We were… in a relationship for two years. Or at least Ithoughtit was a relationship. I only go through heat once a year, and he worked away a lot, but looking back, I was just horribly fucking naïve. Anyway, he came back from a long-distancetrip when my second heat came around. We went through the motions, said all the things and I thought…this is it. This is who I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with.”
His breaths grew shallow as he struggled to stop the words from shaking. Partially from sadness, but mostly from the repressed anger he still held within his belly. Lucas said nothing, but his steady breathing was enough of a comfort.
“But after the heat was over, I became horribly unwell. I was so unwell, in fact, that I was in the intensive care unit for two months. It turned out that I had an extremely rare case of blood poisoning. I was… hallucinating for most of it. The infection made me so ill that I couldn’t eat or drink or walk.”
He shivered as he thought back to that time. How Matteus and Julian had sat at his bedside for days on end, talking to him through the fog of confusion. How his mum and dad had held his hands and cried. He didn’t understand why they were upset, and didn’t even know who they were at one point. But their faces haunted him every night before he fell asleep. They thought they were losing him, and he’d never forgive Patrick for that.
“But how the hell did I end up with blood poisoning, you might be wondering? I didn’t drink back then, never touched drugs—so what the fuck happened? Well, it turned out that he had been heat hopping around different omegas, and when he came home to me he didn’t clean himself properly.” His nose wrinkled as he tried not to fall into his usual pit of disgust. “So all that bacteria ended up inside me. It got into my womb and then infected my blood.”
“Oliver…” Lucas began, pulling him against his body.
“There’s more,” he continued, because why stop now? He was infinitely grateful for the alpha’s arms keeping him upright. “Whilst in the hospital, I found out that I had fallen… pregnant… during that last heat cycle. If you can fuckingbelievesuch a thing. Well, needless to say, I lost the pregnancy.”
Except he hadn’t justlostthe pregnancy. He’d discovered then why the conception to birth rate in sigma’s was so low. The doctor had tried to explain that he’d suffered a blighted ovum, but Oliver didn’t want to listen at the time. Only following a routine doctor's appointment months later, he discovered that his body had actually absorbed the fertilised egg, and the miscarriage had been triggered when his body, in its attempt to conserve its energy, had shed the unused uterine lining. The sweet, albeit bumbling, doctor had explained that whilst it could happen to all secondary sexes; the risk was far,farhigher in sigmas. Ninety five percent higher.
However, the doctor also explained that chromosomal issues could have caused it because of incompatible mates—which Oliver found to be an infinitely more appealing explanation.
Breathing in, he closed his eyes, because that wasn’t even the whole of it. There had been a lot more horrible words and misdeeds that were solely between him and Patrick Coletta. Oliver could have told Lucas the rest, but given that there was every possibility they could meet, he couldn’t risk him knowing it all.
He could never truly mourn the loss of the pregnancy because it happened whilst he was out of it. It felt totally abstract, just a HCG reading on a sheet of paper that showed he had been 6-8 weeks along. The doctor had apologised, saying things like“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Reed”and“It will hurt less with time.”
It was like his brain was keeping the memory at a careful distance, so as not to trigger the deep-buried trauma. However, he grieved for what was likely his one and only chance of ever having a biological child. And that was unforgivable. Patrick had destroyed him, and he thanked God, or Buddha, or Allah every fucking day that he had Matteus, Julian and his parents to build him back up.
He didn’t cry, as one might expect. He’d shed enough tears for that time in his life. So when he looked up, he did not expect to find the alpha crying silent tears of his own.
“Oh. Oh shit, don’t cry. Please don’t cry,” he said, cupping Lucas’ face. The alpha gently took hold of his hands, kissing his palms with so much affection that Oliver had to look away. “I didn’t tell you for sympathy. Or because I want your pity. I told you so you can understand what I meant in the car… when I said I was scared.Fuck, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Lucas pulled him into his arms, pressing his face into his hair. “I want you to understand what I meant in the car, too.”
Oliver sighed, relieved that the alpha hadn’t pushed him away. “Which part?”
“I will love you. If you’ll let me.”
Oliver’s eyes squeezed shut as he clung to the alpha. “You could have anyone.”
“So could you.”
Oliver scoffed and cocked a brow. “Have you met me?”
Nodding, Lucas swiped away a tear that slid down his cheek.Shit, he looked so beautifully tragic when he cried.“I have,” he said, clearing his throat. “And the more I see, the more I want.”
