Page 85 of Knot Broken

Chapter 40

Tex

“Hey, long time, no see,” Candy said as I walked into her office. “What can I do you for, big guy?”

I sat down in the chair she gestured to.

“I need you to tell me everything you know about being a latent omega,” I said, right as Candy took a mouthful of her coffee. Apparently that wasn’t the right thing to ask, because she spluttered, sending droplets of coffee everywhere. “Actually, about all latents.” I wiped coffee from my face and rubbed my hands clean on my jeans. “Ethan’s a latent, but now I know he’s my packmate, I need to know more about that too.”

“Everything?” Her eyebrow cocked upwards. “William Rex Callahan.” I went by Tex because when I was a baby, my sister found my middle name easier to pronounce. Rex became Tex in the weird convoluted ways that Australian family nicknames evolved. “I spent many long years at university studying genetics, and have since worked in a program that has revolutionised the way we see alpha, beta, and omega genes.” She mopped the coffee mess up with some tissues, then leaned closer. “According to Riley, her pack, Gideon, and well, everyone, I act like an idiot, but I’m actually super smart.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not.” I settled back in my chair with a smile. “So give me the Cliff notes version.”

Her expression softened.

“This is about Nadia and what happened the other day. I know it’s scary⁠—”

“Terrifying.” I nodded, feeling that same chest tightening, heart pounding need to do fucking something, but of course, there wasn’t much I could do. There was no way for me to take Nadia’s pain away, to go through this for her. “I didn’t want to believe what you, Riley, and Ethan were saying. Me and my mate, we’re fated to be together, so I thought you’d give her a shot and she’d just shift.”

My eyes met hers.

“Nadia didn’t. I had to stand there and listen to her scream in agony, knowing I did this to her. I couldn’t help, couldn’t stop the pain or anything.”

My chest was heaving, because I saw it all happening again inside my head, but this time the events played out so much slower, meaning I was forced to re-experience every twist of her body, every spasm of her muscles. With a shake of my head, I continued.

“My sister talks a lot about mental load,” I said. “That blokes just cruise along, completely unaware of how much is being done in the background. Her husband’s a pretty good guy, a hands-on dad, but she showed me that even he slips up sometimes. Not me.” I tapped my chest. “Nadia is struggling to shift. I’m her fucking alpha. It’s on me to work out how to help her, so I might not have a fancy science degree, but if you use concrete examples, I’m pretty good at picking shit up. If you’ve got time and can help me to understand what the fuck is going on, I’ll build you a walk in wardrobe, shit, a whole new house, if that’s what it takes.”

For a moment she just stared, then finally Candy smiled.

“My dear sweet himbo⁠—”

“I’m not a himbo,” I said. “Every day, people trust me to build complex things and shit.”

“I know and it’s slightly terrifying.” Candy nodded slowly. “But you were always a good kid. I’m never gonna get in the way of a guy trying to step up for his girl.” She reached down and then plonked a container full of LEGO on the table, then grabbed a handful of blocks and a base plate. “Genes are like LEGO bricks. Someone like you who had little difficulty shifting has all the right blocks in every cell of your body.” She built a square construction made of staggered bricks. “Some made you tall, strong, have blue eyes, but all of these red ones?” She added them to the mix. “They are what you needed to shift. Your mum and dad could have had some red ones.”

“So she’s a latent too?” I asked, unable to see it.

“Maybe.” Candy shrugged. “There’s a lot of genetic material we used to call junk genes because they just seemed to be there, not doing anything. What we’ve learned since is that different things can switch them on.”

She tore down the construction and then rebuilt it with the red blocks evenly spaced around it.

“It’s like they’re there, just chilling, until something happens. Two people come together and have a kid like you.” She glanced my way. “Or someone like Nadia meets the three of you. Sometimes its famine or abuse or something that turns shit on and people change.”

“Like evolution?” I asked.

“Evolution is a long, slow process,” she said. “Epigenetics is a whole other thing.”

“Bringing out the big words,” I said with a wry smile. “So what’s going on with Nadia?”

“She doesn’t have enough red blocks.” Candy created a new construction, this time the red blocks were far fewer and placed at random in the tower. “Or too many of some and not enough of others. I could show you an actual model we’ve created of her gene sequence, but it won’t mean much to you.”

“So give her some of my red blocks.” I started pulling them off the original construction and adding it to the new one. “Take them all, if that’s what my mate needs. I don’t care if I never shift again. Just need for Nadia to be OK.”

Candy let out a sigh.

“Gene editing is still very experimental. People have died from simple changes. At some point, I think we’ll be able to introduce more red blocks… genes, into latents and fix the issue, but we’re not there yet.”

“Why not?” I didn’t mean to yell and the shame I felt had me up and out of my chair, pacing back and forth. “What’ve people been doing? This has been an issue for years and…”