Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 60378 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60378 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
It felt so good. The pressure, the weight of him, the scent of him, the feel of his bare skin. Michael felt like he was hidden from the rest of the world, protected and taken care of. It felt so, so good.
He moaned when Anthony buried his face in his neck, pumping out his pheromones.
It took Michael an embarrassingly long time to recognize what Anthony was doing. It was the classic way to calm an anxious omega: a lot of skin contact with the alpha, and pressure.
And it was working on him.
Fuck.
“Don’t think,” Anthony said, his voice low but firm. “Just let it happen. It feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Michael whispered hoarsely.
“It feels good to me too,” Anthony said against his neck. “You smell of me.”
There was deep satisfaction in his voice, in his scent, and it made something warm and pleased curl in Michael’s chest. He liked pleasing his alpha. He liked smelling of him. This was right.
Michael frowned, trying to shake off the thoughts and the strange, pleasant lethargy taking over his body, but he couldn’t seem to. He felt perfectly content where he was. He’d die happily like this. Under his alpha.
“Ant,” he murmured, feeling needy and scared of it.
“I’m here.” Anthony bit his nape, catching skin between his teeth. “I’ve got you. Go to sleep, sweetheart.”
Michael drifted off.
His dreams were strange, full of colors and sensations. It felt like his body was burning, a deep ache building in his lower stomach, as if something was being rearranged inside of him.
He keened in pain, his body aching and his mind disoriented.
“Michael?”
A cool hand pressed against his forehead.
“Fuck, you’re burning up. I’ll get a doctor.” The hand was suddenly gone, and panic hit him hard, making him hyperventilate and whine.
“Shh, I’m here, I’ve got you.” Cool lips touched his forehead. “Let me just text Hugh. I wouldn’t be able to explain my presence here to another doctor.”
Whimpering, he curled into a fetal position, losing himself to the pain.
Some indeterminable time later, distant voices pulled him back to awareness. One of them sounded angry.
“I can’t fucking believe you, Anthony. I wasn’t joking when I said you needed to stay away from him!”
“Enough,” the familiar voice said, though it sounded much harder now that it wasn’t addressing Michael. “I didn’t ask you to come here to lecture me. Just help him.”
“Help him?” A laugh. “There’s nothing I can do for him anymore. If these readings are to be believed, his body is undergoing a transformation, hence the fever.”
Silence.
“You mean...”
“Yes.”
“But how? It’s not even the full moon anymore.”
“Did you spend the full moon with him?”
“I did.”
A sigh. “And I suppose you were the aggressor.”
“Yes,” was a terse reply.
Another sigh. “I can only theorize—alleged cases of bitching were never properly documented, but submitting to another alpha during one’s rut does seem to play a big role. It’s probably just taken a few days for the changes to manifest. It doesn’t happen instantly.”
There was silence again.
“So he’s really becoming an omega? A real omega?”
“I can’t give any prognosis on the extent of his transformation,” was the dry response. “We’re flying blind here. But from what I can tell, it’s already irreversible. The nerve endings in his knot have already begun to degenerate and there are other signs of his reproductive organs being changed.” A pause. “I can’t believe you did this to him.”
“I didn’t do this on purpose,” the other man said stiffly.
“I know, but you should have known better. It was hard for him to stop because he was under the influence of his changing hormones. But what’s your excuse?”
“I didn’t do this on purpose,” the voice repeated, sounding strained. “I just couldn’t, okay? I couldn’t stay away.”
Fever and pain dragged him back into the abyss, and the voices faded.
***
“He’s shaking. Fix him! Why is he shaking?”
“I don’t know, maybe because his body is undergoing an unthinkable transformation it wasn’t built for?”
“If you’re going to act like a sarcastic dick instead of helping him, you know where the door is.”
A sigh. “I can’t help him, Ant. Not with this. He does seem to feel calmer when you touch him. It might help him survive this.”
A strong arm wrapped around him tightly. “What do you mean, survive?”
“There’s no guarantee that this transformation would end with a viable result. He might become a beta or an omega—or he might end up with a completely broken body. Under normal circumstances, I’d recommend hospitalization. But in this case... there’s nothing we can do. All we can do is hope he pulls through.”
The other voice was terse as it replied, “He will pull through. Go if there’s nothing you can do for him.”
There was the sound of the door opening and closing.
And then, in a hoarse whisper against his nape, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Cool lips pressed to his neck. “Sometimes I think…” He trailed off before saying quietly, “Do you remember when we first met? You probably don’t. You probably think it happened after the war.” Silence. “It actually happened at Burton. You were a few years younger than me, so we didn’t have any classes together, but I saw you around.” A harsh chuckle. “It would have been hard not to notice you. You fucking shone. Even as a teenager, you were impossibly elegant and beautiful, while the rest of us were all awkward limbs and pimples. I had—” Another harsh chuckle. “I had an enormous crush on you—until I found out you were going to be an alpha. I already knew I was about to become one, too. So that was that.”