AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh, definitely. My parents went on a lot of trips without me to places that weren’t quite as safe when Mom was part of Doctors Without Borders. On those occasions, I hung out with Auntie Angelica’s pack. They rode coast to coast, spending winters in the south and summers in the north. One of her packmates is also a teacher, so that made things easy for them to keep up with my education, too.”
“How did you end up here?”
“Ah, that’s Billie’s fault, actually.”
Nicky giggled. “Somehow I’m not surprised.”
“This was a couple of years before Jasper had his own bakery and was working the day shift at another local place. I was in town with Auntie’s pack and stopped in to grab some breakfast for everyone. That place had a sit-down area, and Billie was curled up there with a book waiting for Jasper’s shift to be over. I flirted with Jasper, and they took notice. It didn’t take a lot to convince me to go out with them. I dropped off the food I’d bought with Auntie’s pack and told them to go ahead without me, that I’d meet up with them somewhere else. I’d only planned to stick around for a few days. Spoiler alert, those few days turned into six years.”
Nicky rose up and kissed me in her slow, sweet way that felt like a drug coursing through my body. “I’m glad you stayed,” she whispered against my lips and dove in again.
She sat on my lap, and we indulged ourselves in too many kisses to count until her phone buzzed, and she fetched it off the coffee table to read the message. “Would I be the worst if I dipped out in the next half hour?”
“Nope.” I sat up, searching her face for clues. “Is it good or bad news?”
“Just an appointment I’ve been waiting on. There's a cancellation, and they can take me in an hour.”
“Speaking of appointments, and you don’t have to answer, but did you ever attend therapy to process everything with Alphonse?”
“I should have, but no.”
“If you’re open to it, I might consider looking into it. You’d probably feel a lot better once you’ve worked through things.”
Nicky nodded, not saying anything further. We passed the next stretch of time with more stories of my childhood travels while she got ready for her appointment. I felt lighter when we finally parted ways: Nicky to her appointment and me back to the pack house.
She’d relaxed considerably over the course of my visit, and that calmed my instincts to soothe her. I had succeeded there, even if I couldn’t solve the root issue, but, if Alphonse was going to make himself a problem, then that fucker was just begging for me to introduce my fist to his teeth.
27
NICKY
“Thankyouforseeingme.”
“Of course.” Dr. James smiled at me. “I’m glad we could fit you in. Why don’t you walk me through what brought you here today?”
I did so, explaining my huge jump in libido and what already felt like a burgeoning codependency. Dr. James listened quietly, taking notes on her laptop.
“It just feels like I’m out of control. Isn’t it weird to have such a strong instant connection with that many people?”
The doctor smiled indulgently. “Not at all, especially in a pack situation. I’ve done plenty of research on the subject so I can give my patients comprehensive answers. When you think about it, all of the people involved in this pack are compatible with each other, so it stands to reason that if one of them discovers they’re compatible with you, then that would probably follow through with the rest of the people involved, or at least most of them.”
Each of her words untangled knots of worry in my gut. It didn’t alleviate all of my concerns, but she did have a point, and that helped.
“Do you mind if we do a quick hormone test?”
I offered up my finger to be pricked for the clinic's rapid test, jolting as the needle punctured my skin. I sat with bated breath as the doctor stuck the test strip into the droplet of blood that beaded on my fingertip. The end of the strip turned a bright greenish-yellow and Dr. James showed me where that fell on the guide.
“I have no baseline for you,” she said, “but this result is very high for a beta. It’s not quite in the omega range, though it is close. I’d be curious what your levels were prior to getting involved with the pack, since that can have an influence.”
“What does it mean to have high levels for a beta?” I asked. None of the health or biology classes I’d ever taken really discussed the minute details of these things.
“Ah, that’s something else that I wanted to discuss with you since your brother spoke with me.”
The doctor didn’t look concerned, so I smushed down the rising panic.“Oh?”
“I’ve been working on a new study with other medical professionals between the omega clinics and the general beta healthcare system. Through that, we’ve come up with a model we’re calling the Dynamic Spectrum Theory. Essentially, we believe the dynamics are on a spectrum, with alphas at one end, omegas at the other, and betas filling in the majority in the middle. We’re proposing that portions of the beta population are what we’ve dubbedunexpressedalphas and omegas.”
Was she telling me this because I was one? “What does that mean?”
