Forget : A Dark Omegaverse (Unhingedverse)

It’s been Hayes this entire time. I don’t know how or why, but I feel betrayed all the same. I was in such a good mood when I woke up, and I came downstairs with the afterglow of bites and really incredible sex in search of food. Domh, Evan, and Caelin were still asleep.

It sounds selfish because I believe in the search for truth, but maybe I should have allowed myself to stay in my bubble of happiness. I haven’t been allowed many truly happy moments in life.

Yes, I’m having a pity party.

“Aisling!” Hayes roars, but all that does is make me run faster.

I’m barefoot and wearing one of Caelin’s sweatshirts that I found. I also saw my knife just outside of my nest, and brought it as part of my security blanket. Too bad I’ve probably lost it in Hayes’ shoulder.

“No!” I scream, panting as I attack the first door that I see, leading outside. Unlocking it, I shove it open and run straight for the snow-covered ground, intent on getting away.

Did Dad know about this? I know he works with them all, but how much did he know? Did he know he’s my scent match and all of the other bullshit? I don’t feel as safe as I did when they told me that Cian Sullivan gave his blessing in a way. At least, that’s how this silly little omega took it.

I’m completely spiraling, and I feel lightheaded.

My feet fly over the ground, the sting of cold on my legs and feet making me hiss. I can hear the alpha’s heavy running steps behind me, but all I want to do is leave. Everything else falls away as I focus on getting away.

I’ll remove myself from my life, my friends, everything to find distance from the trauma and disappointment behind me.

I thought I had actually found scent matches that cared about me. As fucked up as it was, I enjoyed the things that happened during my heat. Even when they spit in my mouth, gagged me, and told me to swallow, I did it despite the sting of humiliation. Why would they lie to me about it all?

“Why are you so fucking stubborn? It’s freezing out here and I just want to explain,” Hayes yells.

“You lied, you can go fuck a duck,” I scream as I jump into a deep pile of snow and try to wade through.

I hear growling as my feet start to freeze and I squeal when I drop a little more before being able to get out and continue to run. There’s trees in the back of the property, and I head in that direction.

“Aisling, stop,” he says, using his alpha bark. I fight through it, but the time it takes me, costs me my freedom.

Hayes sweeps me off my feet as I scream and fight, but he grabs my ankles in one hand and my wrists in the other, as he lifts me, to wear my body like a scarf. No matter how I writhe and fight, there’s nowhere to go as he turns and jogs back to the house, grumbling.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

“You don’t understand,” Hayes complains. “I’ve known I was your scent match since I met you, while you showed no sign of it.”

“I wear an alpha scent blocker gel,” I screech. “How about some self awareness? Not everything is about you, Hayes. I didn’t ignore you on purpose, asshole.”

“Language,” he mutters. “All I wanted was for you to see me, and then I took things too far. Now my pack is obsessed with you. You’re stuck with us now.”

“If you keep me, I’ll slit your throat in your sleep and escape,” I snarl.

“If it was that easy to get rid of me, your father would have put a bullet in my brain and been done,” he says with a dark chuckle. “We’re scent matches, baby. You’ll always feel a pull toward me.”

“I don’t like being manipulated,” I scream, annoyed that he caught me. I shouldn’t be surprised since he’s fucking huge with longer legs than me. “Why do you think I have blockers at all?”

“About that, I don’t want you wearing them anymore. You’re wearing my pack’s bites, it’s unnecessary and dangerous,” Hayes growls.

As far as I know, it’s not dangerous, outside of making me unable to scent when an alpha is present if I’m not looking. They become invisible to me, because I’m alpha scent blind.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been using them for so long, because no one else that I know has this side effect.

It also doesn’t escape me that he said his pack had bitten me. He hasn’t. I also haven’t claimed them back, and I don’t fucking plan to. I have too many unanswered questions.

“Was Dad in on this?” I ask, blinking away tears as he trudges back toward the house. Hayes has to be careful with where he places his feet, since the fresh snow on the ground isn’t packed down.

I guess he doesn’t want to fall in the way I did. I’m shivering with cold, my stolen sweatshirt drenched with wetness.

“What? No, Aisling, why would you think that?” Hayes asks.

“He was acting really oddly the other day,” I mutter. “Did he know the entire time that we’re scent matches?”

Hayes slams back into the house, tossing me onto the couch as if he can’t stand to touch me anymore. It’s nice to know where we stand, because I can’t stand the sight of him.

Caelin, Evan, and Domh watch on in shock as Hayes and I scream at each other.

“Yeah, he’s known since I broke into your nest,” he says uncomfortably, pulling back his tone. Rubbing his neck, he sighs. The guys all found time to pull on sweatpants at some point, and I resolutely ignore them.

I won’t be manipulated by good dick and delicious abs.

“What the fuck?” I ask, remembering the way I kept smelling his scent in my closet.

“Domh hadn’t heard from you, and you didn’t go to work,” he grunts. I need to search Omega’s Haven for bugs I guess. “I snuck up to your room, and found you hooked up to all of these wires, in pain.”

“The sedation stopped working as well,” I mutter. “If you want to complain about something dangerous that I was forced to stoop to, it’s that. I was terrified of my heats when I was forced to ride it out without any fucking aids. I didn’t go shopping for sex toys because I’m a whore or overly horny, and if I did, that’s none of your fucking business, Hayes. Some part of me knew that as an eighteen-year-old omega, I could go into heat at any time.”

“I didn’t think about any of that,” he mutters. “I was crazy with your scent, and jealous of those stupid toys.”

He still has the knife in his chest, and I stand, moving over to pull it out of him.

“That’s mine now,” I say sweetly as he hisses. “I think I deserve it. I’m going to my nest to cleanse it of your scents. I want to go home, but you obviously aren’t going to let that happen. I have a life and a business. People who depend on me.”

“My cousin is one of those people,” Evan says cryptically. “We’re your new favorite shadows now, Aisling. One of us will always be with you from now on.”

“Why?” I ask, sighing. “Why are you ruining my life, forcing me into this charade of a bond?”

“Because it’s not a fucking lie!” Domh roars, making me flinch. “I understand this is a lot to process, but don’t make light of what we have. We’ve been obsessed with you for months, in awe of everything you face head on. I know Aiden fucked up.”

“We didn’t know the full extent of it until recently,” Caelin says softly. His glasses are perched on his nose, though slightly crooked, his wavy curls messy. “You have us now, you’ll never have to suffer a heat alone, poppet. You can forgive the asshole.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I tell him automatically. I’ve always despised being dictated to. Tell me to do something, and I’ll do the opposite. Call me a brat or openly defiant, I don’t care.

“I’ve been chasing this phantom scent for a month, thinking I was going fucking insane. You can’t tell me to get over it.”

“I didn’t—” Caelin begins, eyes wide, realizing this isn’t going the way he expected.

Standing, I shake my head. “You did,” I say. “I kept mentioning this mysterious scent I was smelling, and no one bothered to tell me they knew who it was. I’m going to a therapist to unload all of my goddamned trauma to her. This is one of the many things that the world decided to saddle with me. I’m tired, so fucking tired. I want to be left alone.”

“Aisling,” Evan rasps, his face stricken as I start to move past them.

“No,” I grunt. “If I could just disappear, I would. If Pack Mohan wasn’t dealing with so much, I’d just move into their basement. I think they’re the only ones who have never lied to me at this point.”

“What is it with you and that pack?” Aiden asks. It also makes so much sense now. Aiden Hayes. They’re one and the same.

“They adopted me as their own,” I say. “I’m theirs and they’re mine. I can walk into that house a complete mess, and Flynn will bring me cookies, Shaw and Everest will offer to kill whoever upset me, and Ambrose will get really inventive in his torture techniques to make me laugh. Wren will snuggle with me on their couch while we enjoy the ridiculousness of her pack. Eventually, it pulls me out of my funk. It just hasn’t been helping as much anymore.”

Moving around them to run up to my nest, I admit to myself that my soul is tired. I’m depressed, and I don’t know how to pull myself out of the hole I’m in.

I want to know if they joined the dating app to get closer to me, or if they hijacked it completely. I don’t know where my phone is either. Wren is going to blow my dad up with questions if I go too long without responding back.

What a fucking mess.

Slamming the door to the room closed, I shudder as the combined scents of the alphas hit me all at once. Oh my God…

Tears fill my eyes as I let myself mourn the small slice of happiness I found. It’s over now. No matter what, I can’t see it happening again. I need to trust the people I give my body to, and while I was able to suspend that for the sake of my heat, I know too much to be able to trust them right now.

Angry sex is different, though, not that I’m planning on that either. Cursing out my needy pussy under my breath, I strip the sheets from the mattress. Under other circumstances, this would be my dream nest.

The blankets are the different textures that I love, soft and warm.

If Aiden was in my nest while I was sedated, then he got a firsthand look at all of the things I love. I feel violated that he was in my space, a place that no one else gets to go inside. While the staff cleans my room at Dad’s house, I clean my nest.

It’s where I draw the line.

I feel as if I don’t belong anywhere anymore, and dash away the tears that are falling down my cheeks at a faster pace. I’m more emotional after my heat, the drop after being so vulnerable is steep, especially after finding out who Leather and Whiskey is.

Opening the door, I drop the bedding outside of the room before going back and collecting the alphas’ clothing. I keep Evan’s only, though I’m unsure as to why.

“Aisling,” Caelin says, startling me from my thought as I toss the clothing outside of the door. “Poppet, you’re seriously cleansing us from your nest?”

“Yep,” I grunt. Turning, I hunt inside of the connecting bathroom for cleaning supplies, lining them up on the nightstand. “Fuck around and find out at it’s finest, Caelin.”

Looking up at his pale blue eyes, I shrug. “I don’t think you understand that I’m used to losing people. The difference is that this time, you’re alive, stalking my every move, but you’re dead to me. Don’t play with an omega’s emotions. It’ll never go the way you expect it to.”

Pulling the sweatshirt over my head, I toss it onto the clothes, ignoring his gasp of surprise. Slamming the door to the nest closed, I lock it and begin cleansing my nest before I’ll allow myself to shower.

There are more tears, but I force myself to turn them off once I drop onto the mattress in exhaustion.

I’m clean, my body no longer carrying their shared scents. It doesn’t make me feel any better though. I feel empty instead. I just need a nap, and then I’ll figure things out. Curling into Evan’s long-sleeved shirt, I let the world fall away as I pass out.

Domh

“I can’t do this,” I rasp, dropping my head back to stare at the ceiling. Aisling is upstairs in her nest, and hasn’t come down. She’s barely eaten in four fucking days.

My alpha need to protect her from herself is almost unbearable.

“I washed all of her sheets and put them back outside of her room,” Evan whispered. “She didn’t want a single piece of us. I didn’t find my favorite shirt, though. Think she kept it?”

He’s taking this hard. Evan has always worried that he’s disposable as a beta, unwanted for an omega. Aisling definitely wanted him, but she’s lumped him in with the rest of us, because we’re pack. Fuck.

“Maybe,” I tell him, hoping she did. There’s clothing that we bought in the closet, so she’ll have her choice. We planned for every eventuality except the one where she fought against biology.

“She’s stubborn,” Aiden grunts. “Her father just texted. I don’t want to tell him. He’ll be gutted to know that she thinks he lied to her. The old man is different with Aisling. You should have seen him when I snuck into her nest. He looked like he hadn’t slept, eyes red, completely unhinged.”

“The only thing keeping him from killing us is her,” I sigh. “We need to get her to forgive us.”

“We need to make it impossible for her to leave,” Caelin contradicts. “We need to put the paperwork in stating that she is Pack Hayes omega. I’ll forge her signature, she wears our bites. She won’t be able to escape us while we figure our shit out.”

“And I thought I was obsessive,” I mutter. Caelin’s lips merely curl into a smug smile, unbothered by my observation. “We know more about her than she does us, and I think that’s an issue.”

“She knows you,” Evan says. “If things were different, she’d keep you. You two have been openly dating.”

Standing, I wrap my hand around Evan’s throat and shove him into the wall before kissing him hard. “Jealousy, while I think is fucking hot, is unwarranted, Evan. We all kept Aiden’s fucked up secrets. I think we should claim her to the Healthy Pack Organization.”

“Agreed,” Aiden says with a nod.

“Bunch of crazy fuckers,” Evan grunts, leaning into my grasp around his throat. “Fine, yes. Let’s do it. How are we going to handle her day to day life shit?”

Brushing my lips across his forehead, I start walking toward the kitchen, expecting them to follow me. I can’t stand the thought of our omega’s stomach rumbling for one more second.

“I think one of us should always be with her, only we stop hiding it,” I say as Aiden snorts.

“Even me?” he asks.

“Especially you,” I say. “How is she supposed to get to know you if you hide away? You need to convince her that you weren’t trying to hurt her.”

“I wasn’t,” he sighs. “It just got out of hand really fast. It didn’t click for me that omegas begin having their heats at age eighteen.”

“Not everyone,” Evan grunts, shrugging. “Morgan’s first heat I think she told me was at twenty-one, but Meghan’s was at nineteen. Each omega is different. It can also be triggered by a large-scale event for some. Aisling found her dad the day before.”

“None of this is an exact science, guys,” Caelin reminds us as I begin pulling out ingredients. She refused to eat what Aiden made earlier, and now it’s been eight hours since she went upstairs.

She’s a stubborn shit.

“It’s not,” I mutter. “All of us will take shifts taking her to work or errands. We can’t isolate her from her life completely, she has very powerful friends we can’t afford to piss off.”

“I think it may be too late for Pack Mohan,” Aiden says. “They’re going to dislike us either way.”

“Wren is her business partner,” Caelin reminds us. “I’m making their website and I’m running behind. I’ll eat later.”

Walking away, I can tell from here that he’s struggling.

“A sad omega is a volatile one,” I say, deciding to make a quick stir fry. Chopping, cooking, following a recipe in my head, all of those things are helping me to focus, because they’re normal.

“Aisling has had too much shit happen in a short amount of time. I don’t even like that she has your knife.”

Aiden glances down at the medical grade bandaid on his chest and nods.

“I don’t either. We need to regularly check on her. Do you think she’d…”

“No,” Evan snarls. “I’m going up to sit outside of her nest. I won’t accept Aisling hurting herself. We just found her… No.”

The explosive word resonates like a gunshot as he also leaves, breaking into a jog.

“This is my fault—” Aiden begins but I shake my head.

“We all took part in this,” I say. “You aren’t leaving the pack, you’re our alpha. You can’t stop being her scent match, and she has two half bonds started. We need to finish them, or they could do funky things to her. I’ve heard of omegas with half formed bonds hearing their alpha’s voices and being called crazy. We can’t do that to Aisling. She doesn’t understand how angry a half formed bond can get, and her body will still crave us.”

“Omegas need their pack,” Aiden says in agreement. “It’s not going to happen overnight…”

“I know,” I agree, putting the food on a plate and handing it to him to bring up. “Do something helpful. Take this up, knock, and leave it for her. Don’t speak.”

“Gee thanks,” he mutters, leaving.

Making myself a plate, I take a bite as I stare out at the silent, dark, snowy night.

Come on, Sugar.

Aisling let us in so easily the first time, I doubt she’ll be willing to do so again. We are going to have to claw for every smile, every conversation, every meaningful moment. I can’t let the pack fall, not when we need to fight together.

The negativity, the fear, I need to beat it back so we can get our girl.

Shivering as I think about how she leapt into that snow drift, I remember how I ran downstairs when I heard screaming with the other guys, catching the way she looked. Wild, determined, and really fucking angry.

That’s what we’re dealing with, gentlemen. An omega that’s been pushed too damn far.