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“But... that’s not how itworks,” I blurted. “We can’t actually talk to each other inside our heads, can we?”
Luca whipped around to stare at me. I could feel his surprise through the bond.
“It was different for you?” he asked.
Dr. Mushimba’s light South African accent came through the screen before I could answer.
“It’s true that some bonds seem to be able to confer more detailed information than others. But, no, it’s not like talking on a telephone.” She gestured at the screen separating us. “Or a video call.”
“But...” Luca looked at me helplessly.
“Perhaps you could tell us howyouexperienced the mating, Emiel,” Dr. Mushimba said.
I tried to think back, putting words to the tangle of instincts and feelings. It took a few moments, but one of the things I liked about Dr. Mushimba was that she never tried to hurry me.
“It was dark,” I began. “You know when we’ve talked before about how I feel like there’s a monster living inside me?”
She nodded—even as I felt a small pulse of distress from Luca, who didn’t like it when I talked about that.
“Well,” I continued, “it was there in the dark. But so was Luca. I was so upset and, y’know...scared... that I didn’t recognize him at first. I just knew I had to protect him from the monster.”
“Yes?” Dr. Mushimba prompted. “Go on. What happened next?”
“He kept trying to protectme,” I said. “Even though I was the danger.”
I remembered having a strong flash of memory while it was happening. Luca at the cage fight, months ago—pulling a cosh out of his hoodie and cold-cocking one of the alphas I’d been trying to fight off, even though he’d been terrified and outmatched.
“Emiel,” Luca said. “You’renotthe danger.”
Dr. Mushimba tapped her pen on her notepad. “It sounds like you did experience roughly the same sequence of events. Luca, your mind may have filled in more details to help you make sense of the experience. Whereas you, Emiel, remember it more as a series of emotions.”
Luca was still watching me closely. “As long as we agree on what happened in the end,” he said.
I thought about the way the monster had seemed to disappear as soon as we were both trying to stop it. About the relief I’d felt, knowing we could beat it together.
“We can stop the darkness from getting us, now that we’re together,” I said, feeling the reality of the words settle into place.
“We don’t have to fight alone,” Luca whispered. Then, louder, “Please promise me you’ll remember that whenever things get hard.”
I stared at him, still in awe at the feeling of his emotions tucked inside of me. “Will you?” I asked.
“I’ll damn well try,” Luca said.
We’d agreed beforehand about how things would go down after the mating. Or, it might be more truthful to say that I’d insisted on it. No matter how many times the others told me that I didn’tneed to worry about my alpha instincts getting out of control, I knew I still needed to be careful. Luca and Mia were too important to put at risk.
So, it was Nat who came in to visit us first, after the video consultation ended. He was my friend. A beta. Someone I could be pretty sure wouldn’t register in my instincts as a threat.
With Mia watching from the door of the room, he came in and wrapped me up in a hug.
“We need to stop doing this in hospital rooms,” he said. “Congratulations, you great lump. Now, I’m going to hug your mate, and you’re going to be fine with it, okay?”
And, it turned out, Iwas.
Luca’s happiness at being hugged by someone he trusted and cared for flooded through the bond, sending a warm flush outward from my chest.
Next was Zalen. An alpha. Mypackalpha. And still, no territorial killing rage rose up inside me. Luca was going to mate Zalen, too. So was Mia. But not because Zalen wanted to take anything away from me.
Zalen always wanted to protect people. Evenme; god alone knew why. Having more alphas to protect the omegas was agoodthing—especially a good, strong alpha like him.