Page 15 of Bewitched

L ayla sat up in the middle of the night. She felt… strange. Like her ears had finally popped after a steep change in elevation or her nose finally cleared after a long cold. That is, she felt normal. Except for the lingering ache in her vagina and her shoulder and her knees and her back from where Axel threw her, it was like the previous few days never happened at all.

She ran her fingers through her hair. When had she brushed it last? She must be a mess.

Jaxon moved beside her, and she flinched. She had forgotten he was there, so used to his presence that it wasn’t weird that he was pressed against her side.

He purred lightly, a contented rumble. She could sense it or feel it, still in tune with his emotions from the after-effects of the bite. She could feel him, but she didn’t know what she felt. Numb maybe.

He reached for her, trailing his hands over her belly and her thighs, reaching for her center. It didn’t feel good like it did before. She didn’t want to arch into his touch or lick his wrists, but she couldn’t bring herself to push him away. She still needed him to want her. She still needed her Alpha to like her.

Jaxon touched her clit, fingers barely caressing the small bud, and she hissed.

He pulled his hand away, and his purr ceased. “Layla?”

Layla glanced around in the dark. Her sense of smell was duller. She would still smell the overwhelmingly thick scent of sugar, but it didn’t make her sick to her stomach.

She moved her legs, pressing her knees together. “It hurts.”

Jaxon sat up, and she leaned away from him until he caught her throat in his hand, bringing her close again. He bent down, his breath against her neck, making her shiver.

He sniffed and flicked his tongue across her scent gland. “Your heat is over.”

“Oh,” she said. That’s what was different. She wasn’t in heat. Don’t think about what that means. Don’t think. Everything was fine if she didn’t think about it.

Her stomach cramped unpleasantly, still sickeningly bloated from when he had knotted her. “I need the bathroom.”

Jaxon grunted, picking her up and carrying her to the bathroom. The harsh fluorescent lights gave everything a washed-out look.

Her stomach cramped again, not her uterus. Oh no. “Get out,” she snapped in a near panic.

Jaxon stared at her for a moment, and she was ready to cry again. To scream and beg for him to leave. She couldn’t do this with him here. She was a lady. She cried out as her body cramped and twisted, attempting to do the natural processes that had been sidelined for the last couple of days.

He pushed her toward the toilet, and she sat miserably.

Gods, it was worse than the whole heat. Embarrassing and horrific. “Please, leave,” she begged.

He grunted and finally retreated. “I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”

She groaned and bent over as the door closed. Finally, alone, she relaxed enough to void her bowels, pretending Jaxon wasn’t standing right outside the door. She covered her ears and hummed loudly. She couldn’t deal with this. No thoughts. No thoughts.

No one told her about this nor had she read it in any book. Not that she searched out the information. It was just another shame heaped upon omegas because of what they do. How they ruin things.

Layla didn’t know how long she sat there until Jaxon came back. He didn’t knock, and he didn’t listen to her pleas to leave again. He just cleaned her up like a sick toddler, ignoring the way she struggled against him.

He wiped her down with a warm cloth. Cleansing her of cold sweat and slick. She closed her eyes and pretended this indignity was happening to someone else. Don’t think. If she didn’t think, she didn’t need to worry about what came next or remember what came before. She wouldn’t need to think about how she had shamed herself during her heat.

She had begged Jaxon to take her on her knees like an animal. She wanted to sink into a hole and die. She was wanton, like all those omegas in the movies. She really was an omega. Only useful for breeding and pups, but what if she wasn’t good at it?

It was her only purpose, and she was terrible at raising pups.

Jaxon tipped her head up and pulled a shirt on over her head. It was soft and smelled familiar, like her room at the dorms with faint traces of charcoal and blood. It was her shirt, dark and long-sleeved, just like she preferred. That’s why Jaxon had met with Mina. He was getting her clothes.

Underwear came next, and she nearly began crying again. It felt like the real world was creeping in again. Her clothes, real clothes, meant she was herself again. She didn’t know if she could do that now.

Jaxon pulled her underwear over his hips and then her pajama pants. “Good girl.”

She smiled at him because she was trying to be good. He smiled back, but his eyes were pained.

“Let’s get you tucked in,” he said.

She nodded and followed him to the bedroom. She stopped at the door. “Oh.”

Her nest had been decimated. Jaxon had taken away most of the blankets and towels, leaving behind only the pillows.

Layla couldn’t stop the sudden sob. Her nest was gone. It was the only place in the den that was hers. Where was she supposed to go? Did it mean she needed to leave? She should leave. He didn’t want her there anymore.

Jaxon was suddenly in front of her. He pulled her close, and she burrowed into his spicy scent. “My nest?”

His chest rumbled under her ear. “It was filthy, kitten. You can build another one later.”

“I can?” She’d like that. Her own small space in his life. She’d be fine living in the closet. She couldn’t fit most of her stuff in there, but that was okay. She could be a good omega and be small and unobtrusive.

“Sure. Right now, you need to rest in the bed.”

Layla glanced at the bed, which was made up with pillows and a lovely sea foam green comforter. “Okay.”

Jaxon pulled the covers back, and she crawled inside. It was warm, but the blankets weren’t heavy enough.

“Any pain?” he asked.

“Everything hurts,” she said miserably.

He disappeared for a moment and came back with a bottle of water and a pill. She took it listlessly and burrowed into the covers.

Jaxon lay down beside her. He didn’t touch her, and they just watched each other over the expanse of the bed. He felt so far away.

She didn’t like it up so high on the bed, and there was too much light in the room. She missed her dark nest. And it felt like there was too much input. She could feel her instincts for the first time, and they were driving her to do… something.

Layla scooted across the bed. Don’t think. She nuzzled into him, and Jaxon wrapped his arms around her, bringing her close. She found his neck and the heady scent at his mating gland. She opened her mouth over the gland.

Jaxon shuddered. His hand moved to her hip and squeezed.

She pressed her teeth into the gland. She could taste the heavy flavor of cinnamon and musk. If she pressed harder, it would break. If she followed the overwhelming instinct, she would make him her mate, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t listen to her instincts. They were already betraying her to do something terrible.

She pulled away and tucked her chin into her chest. “I’m sorry, I—“

Jaxon pulled her tighter to him, winding his hand into her hair. She flinched as his chest began to rumble, but he was only purring.

She felt terrible. He wanted something from her that she couldn’t give because it was wrong. He just didn’t know it was wrong.

He turned her head, exposing her bruised mating gland to his open mouth. He pressed his teeth into it, pressing hard enough to release a rush of hormones, and she squealed.

The rush was calming and relaxing. The taste of cinnamon on the roof of her mouth burned pleasantly. It was like he filled her with a contentment she had never known before. She arched into him, kicking at his shins.

He growled against her skin. “I’ll remind you who you belong to every day, Omega. I will not let you go. Do you understand that, kitten?”

She whined. It would be so good. He could hold her beside him as tight as he wanted. She wouldn’t need to worry about failing to cling to him tight enough.

“Would you like that? That I can remind you where you belong.”

Layla nodded. It would be like a storybook, A Thousand and One Nights of Bites . Each day he wanted to keep her would be pressed on her skin, and she would beg for it if he asked.

“Thank you, Alpha,” she whispered.

He squeezed her tighter, just like she liked. She could stay here forever, just the two of them. They never needed to leave. The world outside could just be an idea but never real. She would never need to disappoint anyone if they didn’t exist.

A faint knock on the apartment door shattered Layla’s little cocoon of contentment. Her eyes shot open, and she tensed.

Jaxon grumbled beside her. “I should have waited to call them. That’s Kaiser.”

She didn’t feel the terrible well of anger toward Kaiser that had gripped her, and she wondered why she was angry with him in the first place. “Kaiser? Why?”

Jaxon kissed her forehead before slipping out of bed. “You need an omega to help you right now.”

Layla felt a sick sinking in her stomach. “No. Please. I don’t want anyone else to see me like this.”

Jaxon stared down at her hard, all alpha. “He’ll know what you need.”

Layla curled away from him, betrayed. Of course, he’d take this decision from her, too. Stupid alphas. She just wanted to be alone and quiet.

She tried not to listen as he opened the door, and voices echoed down the hall. Maybe if she pretended to be asleep, they would leave her alone.

“Layla!”

Layla peeked out of her covers to see Eris, all yellow curls and pudgy cheeks, run into the room. She blushed as he hopped onto the bed and hugged her, ignoring the still lingering scents of slick, sweat, and sex. He smelled like rich baking chocolate, not as sweet or sugary as Kaiser’s scent.

Eris took her hand and rubbed their wrists together in a familial gesture she didn’t even share with Mina.

“Hi,” she said weakly, a little overwhelmed.

Eris rubbed his wrists across her cheeks and over her hair, covering her in his scent like an omega parent smothering their pup. She tried to dodge him and gave Kaiser an imploring look as he leaned against the door frame.

Kaiser chuckled. “Enough, Erry, give her space.”

Eris sat back on his heels. “There,” he said. “Much better.”

Layla smiled at him. It had been so long since she had seen little Eris. He wasn’t so little anymore. He was grown, just as she was. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re going to have a puppy pile.” Eris held up a bag. “I brought snacks. Dad said he was always hungry after.”

“Eris,” Kaiser reprimanded with a small shake of his head.

Eris rolled his eyes. “Uncle Kaiser said he was always hungry after. I mean, I get hungry too, but it’s not really the same thing.”

Layla glanced at Kaiser as she took a protein bar, but he was carefully looking anywhere else in the room. She furtively sniffed the air for his oversweet scent, but only light honeysuckle reached her nose.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Well,” Kaiser said and cleared his throat, “omegas take care of each other, right?”

She nodded. She wouldn’t know. She never needed to know.

Kaiser sat on the bed beside her, kicking Eris to her other side. His honeysuckle scent wasn’t as cloying now. It was the scent she had always known. She wondered what had happened to make him smell so awful a few days ago.

Kaiser grabbed the remote for the television that was bolted to the wall. She hadn’t even noticed it was there. “So, what kind of trash TV do you like? We have Love Island Beta Edition or Antique Roadshow .”

“ Love Island trash,” Eris cheered.

“ Love Island is fine,” Layla said. She was sure she couldn’t pay attention to anything anyway. Jaxon hadn’t come back. He was supposed to be with her, right? Wasn’t that what Damian said? Did Damian actually see her in her nest?

“Where’s Alpha?” she asked.

Kaiser glanced at her. “Jaxon? He’s in the living room. Do you want me to get him?”

She flicked her eyes at the closed door. He was still in the den, and that was the important part. He wouldn’t leave her again. He promised he would keep her. He also said she needed omegas right now. “No.”

Eris flopped around and curled up against her to watch the television. He wrapped around her like a squid, and she had to admit it was soothing. It was a different kind of contentment than Jaxon gave her. Platonic and familial. She had a strange impulse to braid his hair and rub her wrist over his nose.

“Warren should be here soon,” Kaiser said. “He’s an omega doctor. He’ll uh, be able to explain what happened.”

What happened? Don’t think . But she couldn’t stop her thoughts from spinning. To the forest. To the truck. To the apartment. To a knife in her hand. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

Kaiser put an arm over her shoulders. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

She stared at him for a moment. Something was itching in her brain. Something about Hera and her death and Bryson’s sudden flight to her home with her father, but it wasn’t connecting.

There was only one thing she knew for certain. “Your suppressants failed before.”

He laughed bitterly. “Spectacularly. More than once. Eight times, to be exact, before it was stopped.”

Eris made a face. “That’s why I can’t take suppressants. It’s so annoying.”

Layla looked between them. “You and Georgia—“

Kaiser choked on a laugh and ran his hands through his hair. “Erry, go check on Jaxon. Make him eat a protein bar.”

Eris groaned and clung tighter to Layla. “I just wanted to be in the puppy pile!”

“Puppy pile later. Mated omega discussions now.”

“I’m going to be mated someday.”

“Out,” Kaiser said.

Eris reluctantly released her and stomped his way out of the room, slamming the door.

Kaiser laughed. “That’s what you get with pups.”

Layla tried to smile, but she didn’t have the energy to keep it up. She was so tired. Of being scared. Of not knowing what was happening to her body and mind. Of being so fucking naive.

Kaiser opened his mouth, then closed it. And again. He frowned, a sort of sadness taking over his expression and his scent. “The first time my suppressants failed was twenty-four years ago. I didn’t know what was happening. I was confused, terrified, and desperate. Then Hera found me.”

The hairs on the back of Layla’s neck stood on end.

“There was no fighting it for either of us. We had always been inappropriately close. She was my other half, but this was… it was something neither of us wanted, but we couldn’t stop. She was married. She was mated to Bryson. She was never attracted to omegas. But for us, when I went into heat, it was a compulsion. It wasn’t her fault any more than it was mine. Just victims of biology and a failure of science.”

Kaiser touched his neck — over his mating gland hidden by the collar of his shirt.

“She bit you.”

Kaiser nodded. “And I bit her. We were mated. Our bond was so strong it overwrote anything she had with Bryson. Not that he noticed. Bryson’s head was up his own ass most of the time, but he did love her in his own way. Hera and I were mates, and no one could know. We were terrified. We couldn’t tell anyone. It would be a scandal, and Sorretos can’t have scandals.” He laughed again. Bitter. Broken. “It would have ruined our lives. Our children’s lives.”

Hera’s pups: Ryan, Raina, and Eris, children she’d played with in her childhood. She had dated Ryan. Layla was terrified of where this was going. “Hera’s children?”

Kaiser sighed, long and pained, as if she was dragging the words out of him. “All mine.”

Layla watched Kaiser break apart in front of her as if he’d pulled a knife from his chest to bleed out over the bed. It was as painful as it was a relief of pressure.

He sighed, wiping away tears. “Those first three times, my suppressants failed. Those were the kids. It was like my body knew when she needed another pup. Damn me. After Eris, she got an IUD, so at least we wouldn’t bring any more children into this mess.”

“Oh God.” She didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t know how to comfort him. It was horrible. His sister. She tried not to feel disgusted. Kaiser’s biology had ensnared his own sister, just like she had Jaxon.

Kaiser rubbed his face. “The night Jaxon dragged you into the Tower. I knew immediately that the same thing had happened to you. There’s a particular scent that goes with it.”

“Sugar,” Layla said. The smell that had been the bane of her existence for three days. She hated it.

He nodded. “I’m telling you this because… I shouldn’t. But I don’t want you to blame Jaxon too much. I know he’s uncouth and useless and, in general, a terrible person to be around, but he’d never hurt an omega. I would know that too.”

Layla shifted uncomfortably and glared at him. Jaxon was her Alpha now, no matter what relationship they had in the past.

He held up his hands. “That was a long time ago before I met Georgia.”

She continued to scowl. Kaiser had touched her mate. He had attempted to breed with him. Unforgivable. Layla shook her head, pushing away thoughts of hurting Kaiser. He wasn’t a threat.

“I don’t know what to do,” Layla said.

“I know it’s overwhelming right now. A breakout heat, newly mated.”

She shook her head frantically. “People are dead.”

Kaiser sighed. “Yeah. That does complicate some things.”

She wiped tears off her cheeks. She hadn’t even noticed when they started to fall. “I’m so tired of crying.”

“Hormones,” Kaiser said. “It’ll last a few more days until it levels out.”

Layla sighed and leaned back against the headboard. She could feel the crack Jaxon had put in it with his fist. “He’ll hate me when this is over.”

“What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Just… nothing. What’s happening in this show?”

“Layla…”

There was a commotion outside the room and new voices drifting down the hall.

The bedroom door slammed open, and there was Roan. Her Roan. Her sweet brother. She hadn’t seen him in years. He looked older. He even had grays shot through his brown hair.

“Roan,” she crawled over the bed. She needed to touch him. She needed to smell him.

He rushed to her and pulled her into his arms. He smelled like home. He smelled like snow, with an overlay of Holden’s rabbit leather scent.

Roan rubbed his hands over her face, covering her in his scent, and Layla did the same, touching his hair and his cheeks. She liked this instinct to touch and hug and hold on to her brother.

“Layla, shh, shh. It’s alright,” Roan whispered.

She pulled back because nothing was alright, and it never would be. “No, it’s not. It’s worse. It’s so much worse.”

He looked her over and tugged her shirt collar to the side, exposing the rough bruise of her mating gland. “Oh, Layla.”

Layla bowed her head, shamed. “I asked him to. I think I asked him to. I was so out of it. It’s not his fault.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Breathe, Layla.”

She stared into his brown eyes so like her father’s. Her mother hated him for it. Being an omega, mating Holden. It fractured her family. She was going to make it worse. “She’s going to be so mad.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Roan said, holding her arms tightly. “Let her be mad. This is your life. I won’t leave you.”

She shook her head. “But I’m a bad omega. I can’t even be a beta. I can’t do anything right. No one will want me.”

She felt more hands on her, Kaiser, behind her. His honeysuckle scent attempted to soothe her. “Layla? Come lay down. It’ll be okay.”

Layla was filled with absolute terror and numbness. Could she feel everything and nothing all at once? It all stuck in her chest, hurting. “No, no, no, Alpha?”

“Jax!” Kaiser yelled.

The edges of the room went black, and all she could hear was Roan talking like he was far away and underwater. Then Jaxon’s heavy hands were on her. Alpha. He pulled her close, crushing her against him. She nuzzled into his chest, finding the spots thick with his scent. The black receded, and her hearing cleared. She trembled in his grasp, her only anchor.

“Alpha,” she whispered.

Jaxon shushed her and pulled her down to lie on the bed. “Breathe, kitten. That’s enough.”

“What the hell was that?” Holden asked from the door, and she flinched.

Jaxon growled. “Quiet, you loud fuck.”

Layla tried to burrow deeper into him, and she felt someone cover her with a blanket.

“I don’t know,” Kaiser said. “That’s not a typical reaction.”

“It’s a panic attack,” Roan said, and she felt his hand touch her back. “She used to get them all the time when she was little.”

No, she didn’t. Did she? She didn’t remember feeling like this. Hot and cold. Alone and overwhelmed. Hiding under her bed, pressing her cheek against the cold tile floor of her bedroom — praying that no one found her. Oh.

Layla stared at Jaxon’s chest, at the loose weave of his shirt. Don’t think.

Roan settled on the bed behind her and scooted close. He wrapped an arm over her when Jaxon didn’t growl. She glanced back at him and smiled. He rubbed his wrist over her hair.

“It’s going to be okay. I promise,” Roan said.

She felt Jaxon drawl in a long breath, but he said nothing. He didn’t smell agitated, and she hoped that another bout of panic hadn’t convinced him to send her away.

“Puppy pile?” Eris asked.

“Eris…” Kaiser said.

Jaxon laughed. “Just lay the fuck down. Both of you.”

Kaiser sighed and sat down while Eris practically crawled on top of Roan. Eris tugged at her, trying to touch as many people as possible. Layla laughed as he finally squeezed between Roan and her. She liked this, even weepy and miserable; it was better than almost anything else. What else did she miss out on while trying to be a beta?

Holden snorted from his position beside the door. “You have fun. I’m going to see what you have to eat.”