Page 7 of The Omega Switch: Part 2

"Nora, you spoil me too much," I said, shaking my head. These herbs were going to be a project in my lab, and I already knew what type of natural product I was going to make with them.

"I absolutely do." She looked around the shop with satisfaction before turning back to me.

"Look at this place. You’re already gaining a following.” She said. I followed her gaze.

Several people had come in since the store opened, looking around and smelling perfume samples. One customer wrapped herself in a nesting blanket, then picked up several more and put them in her basket. My throat tightened. Maybe I really could make it on my own.

The afternoon passed as more customers came in, with plenty of conversations about essential oils, teas, nesting habits, and upcoming workshops. By closing time, my feet were starting to ache, but I didn’t care. I loved what I did. I spent the next half hour tidying up and restocking before looking at my events calendar. Next month's perfume classes were nearly full.

As I locked the front door and flipped the sign to Closed, I found myself smiling again. My apartment sat directly above the boutique, a real steal even though it was tiny. I’d managed to get an awesome place, and looked out as the waning sunlight poured through the window. It wasn't extravagant by any stretch of the imagination, but it felt more like home to me than I ever could have imagined. Before I could even set my keys down, paws skittered across the hardwood floor.

"There you are,” I said, as a tiny ball of fur launched at me with all the enthusiasm his eight-pound body could manage.

When I first went to the shelter, I was determined to adopt the biggest, scariest dog they had. Living alone for the first time had made me very aware of just how vulnerable an unbonded omega could be, and I wanted something capable of protecting me.

But instead of a large guard dog, I’d found Puff. He was hard to see at the back of his kennel, trembling beneath a blanket. Someone had neglected him so badly that he barely looked up when I knelt beside him.

“Oh, you don’t want that one. Too damaged,” the shelter worker had said. I didn’t even look up.

“I’ll take him.” I responded. I took him home that night. Puff wasn’t much of a guard dog, but he followed me everywhere, opening up and finding his confidence again once he knew he was somewhere safe. Now he slept next to me every night, and sometimes he’d even come with me to the store.

I scooped him into my arms, burying my face into his soft fur as his tail wagged. After feeding Puff and changing into my pajamas, I carried a mug of tea onto the little balcony overlooking the street below.

The neighborhood had become familiar now. It was a special enclave of mostly omegas and betas, with a strong police force that kept it safe enough for unbonded people like me to feel comfortable living alone. The agency had special neighborhoods like this where alphas were not allowed to live, though a few might come through on occasion to shop or visit.

It was more than I ever hoped for. And yet, sometimes, when I was alone with my thoughts, my mind still wandered to Pack Vale. Some part of me still ached for Elias’s excited conversations, Ronan’s gentle protection, and Hunter’s approving gaze. But that was back then, before I realized how little our bond mattered. They believed a lie so easily that I almost didn’t think the Bond profile mattered. And that made me ache less.

The pain wasn't as sharp as it had been five months ago, but it was still there, lingering somewhere beneath the surface. I didn’t exactly miss them - I missed who I thought they could have been. And the future I’d imagined all those months ago. But I no longer missed chasing people who hadn't chosen me.

For years I'd been trained to believe that love was something I had to earn, that if I worked harder, tried harder, created better products, or shrunk myself down, that eventually someone would decide I was worth it. But now, with time and distance, I knew better. My real mates would never need convincing.

I took another slow sip of tea as Puff climbed into my lap. Maybe someday the ache would disappear completely. And maybe someday I'd even fall in love with another pack. Or, maybe I wouldn’t. And in the end, it didn’t matter. Because I didn’t need one to make me happy. I already was.

I looked down at the warm lights of the cozy neighborhood and felt Puff snore softly against my chest. This was the part of my life where I finally started living. And I had never been happier.

Chapter 5

Ronan

Our pack was falling apart.

A pack either survived hardship together or it didn't survive at all. We didn’t feel very much like a pack lately, and I knew we weren't getting through this hardship. As a pack, we faced every problem together. I never imagined the thing capable of breaking us wouldn't be a competitor, or even a physical threat. It would be a frightened omega we'd failed to protect, and another who had manipulated every instinct we possessed until none of us could tell the truth from lies.

Six months had passed since we'd walked out of that hotel suite, leaving the Carrington family to deal with the consequences of everything they'd done, but it felt as though we'd never truly left. From the outside, we looked stronger than ever. The Vale Labs board remained confident in us, and our investors never wavered. We spent a significant amount of money adding security protocols so extensive that even our cybersecurity consultants joked it would now be easier to rob a secure vault than tamper with another compatibility profile. Every sample required multiple biometric confirmations, and every employee with access to the system underwent new background checks and security clearances.

But none of it made any difference to our pack. The damage had been done. It was too little, too late. We had protected future omegas, but the one we were supposed to protect had already disappeared, and no amount of money, technology, or security could undo that.

The public didn’t know the truth, not yet anyway. While rumors inevitably circulated among investors and gossip magazines alike, no one outside a very small circle ever learned that Pack Vale's own matching system had been weaponized against us. Hunter had so far refused to let the story of what happened with Arabella go public, though we weren’t against it leaking at some point.

Arabella would take the brunt of the scrutiny. After all, she was the one who had stolen her stepsister’s profile. Hunter said we should keep the story under wraps for now while the lawsuit against Nestwell Aesthetics was underway. It was a great tool for leverage. Rationally, I knew he was right. But every day that passed without the world knowing the truth felt like we were allowing the Carringtons one final victory.

But even if our company was doing well, our pack was in shambles. Hunter stopped sleeping the first week after Ivy disappeared, but none of us realized how bad it had become until Elias confessed he'd begun checking on him in the middle of the night. Hunter would have small fits of sleep, but wake up yelling so loud I could hear it from my room. He never talked about his nightmares, but he didn't have to. Every morning his scent carried the unmistakable bitterness of guilt beneath his exhaustion, and every morning the circles beneath his eyes grew a little darker.

Elias had a different approach. He buried himself in patients, sometimes working fourteen-hour workdays. He thought that if he stayed busy enough, his mind wouldn't have time to wander back to Ivy. Instead, the opposite happened. He became distracted during consultations, and said sometimes he couldn't remember what he'd just read. One evening Elias quietly requested an indefinite leave of absence.

"I can’t focus. That’s dangerous, and I’m not going to let myself make another mistake," he admitted later while we sat alone in the kitchen, both of us nursing our cups of coffee. He wasn't exaggerating. Elias could usually remember birthdays, medication allergies, family histories, and the names of patients he'd treated years earlier. Watching him doubt himself was almost as bad as watching Hunter stop sleeping.

I handled things differently. My temper had always been shorter than Hunter's or Elias's, but during the last five months it had become almost unrecognizable. Minor inconveniences ruined my day. Small disagreements with my pack escalated into shouting matches, and every day felt like I was close to snapping. I lost weight, and I had to force myself to eat. Everything tasted flavorless. I didn't find joy in anything anymore.