After the first few sentences, the stories spilled out easily. The tale of his betrayal and finding the pack I wanted for life, then my time at Villem Central Hospital. I even found myself talking about those moments with the feral alphas I’d faced in the emergency room, and the earth-shattering instinctual response they’d brought on.
Once I reached the moment in the story where I was on the side of the road, on the precipice of heat, my words dried up. I knew the next part of my story was the moment of the bondmark.
All I had were the memories of pain.
I didn’t realize tears were sliding down my cheeks until Dr. Jalisco leaned over with a box of tissues. Sniffling, I took a few and patted the tears away before blowing my nose. “Thank you,” I mumbled.
“There’s more if you need them.” She put the box on the corner of her desk, within arms’ reach of me.
“I don’t know how to talk about the next part,” I admitted.
“I can guide you through some questions about how you feel, if you’d be alright with that?”
Hesitantly, I nodded.
“When you think back to that moment, I want you to pay attention to the sensations in your body. Where do you feel something?”
My eyes fluttered shut and I let out a heavy breath. I finally let my body sink into the loveseat as I went back in time to that moment.
The bondmark. The abandonment. The pain and fear.
My stomach tied itself in knots and my chest went tight. Every muscle seemed to be strained. “My stomach and chest, mainly.”
“Can you name the emotions that give you those sensations?”
“Fear and dread, sitting in the pit of my stomach. In my chest… I felt betrayed. Abandoned.”
“Are there any other feelings?”
I paused. “The tension in my muscles is anger. I’m so furious he did that to me and left me like that, when on some level I still thought he was a good man who’d made a mistake. Not someone who was out to get me from the start.”
“Good. I want you to try a breathing exercise with me. You’re going to breathe in for four, then hold, out for four, then hold. Keep letting yourself feel the feelings—don’t try to push them down. Breathe with them and let them diminish on their own.”
They weren’t going to diminish on their own. I’d be breathing forever if I waited for that. The emotions were too big—Benjamin was too damn close to my mind. I needed distraction or my alphas to bring me back from this.
But that was why I was here, wasn’t it? Because I didn’t want to need them like this.
So there was no harm in trying her way. I still had over forty-five minutes in the session, and if I spent all of it breathing, well… In some ways, that was better than talking.
Dr. Jalisco guided me through the first few breaths, counting out each step, before having me continue on my own.
My dismay settled heavily in my stomach, anger making me move my arms and tap my feet anxiously. The fear tried to keep my heart rate up.
Despite my doubts, letting the emotions run rampant didn’t make them worse, nor did it make them linger. It took more breaths than I could count, but eventually they dissipated like faint clouds in the wind.
I opened my eyes and blew out one final breath.
“That… helped,” I admitted.
She smiled. “Now you know one method for managing it when those emotions come up again.”
“It’s more practical than I expected therapy to be.”
“Practical is what we do here. A lot of people see Omega Haven Residence as a last resort. Our residents come in thinking they’ll never be able to leave and live independently again, but that’s only a very small percentage of the omegas who come here.”
I’d always thought that too. When I’d watched omegas get referred to the Residence, I felt bad for them. Like this was some shameful place to be.
But nowIwas here and, temporary or not, I’d needed their shelter. Mom was right after all—I could still benefit from their help, even though I was leaving.
