Page 40 of Loving My Omega (The Perfect Designation Trilogy #2)

Chapter

Forty

“ S tage one can be described as just straight anxiety. You’re unable to sit still or focus. You’re fidgety and jumpy. It almost like having ADHD but more paranoid.” My brow furrowed as I tried to describe it like how I did with Mike.

“Alright. When does that start? Do you know?”

I nodded. “We know…everything up to this point. Stage one starts are six months without an Alpha. It lasts for about four months before it jumps to stage two.”

“What?” Lauren gasped. “That fast?”

Sighing, I took a sip. “Most of the time it gets written off as anxiety as a new shifter. Because the time for you to have an Alpha starts from the moment you get your wolf and your designation.” I blinked, realizing what I said. “Now, mind you, this is from the perspective of a wolf shifter. I don’t know if the timelines different depending on the species since you live so much longer than we do.”

Mr. Alford nodded. “Noted. So after the fourth month of anxiety, stage two hits?”

“Yeah. It feels like you’re sick. You get really lethargic, nauseous, basically cold and flu symptoms. Except that no medicine works. You can also get a fever that will be in the hundred and one to hundred and five range for a few hours. Intermittently through the time of stage two.”

“And that lasts for how long?”

I wracked my brain for a second since it had been so long since I talked about these early stages. “It lasts for six months, not four. Basically, month ten with no Alpha.”

“Now, when you say no Alpha, you mean…not having sex with them?” Beau asked, curious at my wording choice.

Mrs. Alford slapped her arm but I smiled and shook my head. “No. It’s the reason why I hate calling it by the Alpha ‘let’s make it sound like they are just needy Omegas’ name.”

“Which is?” Marcus still wouldn’t look at me as he asked.

“Touch-starved.” I sighed. “When I say with no Alpha, I mean not marked by an Alpha or an Alpha not claiming an Omega. Sexual intercourse won’t change that. At least, I don’t think it does. It didn’t for me but I am well past the beginning stages. So it might delay it but it will catch up to you. That’s why so many Omegas die from it.”

The room got quiet for a moment and I could see Beau glancing more and more at her mate. I wondered if Lauren maybe knew an Omega who died from it. She seemed to at least know a little about it.

“Okay. Stage two, six months. Then, stage three hits. What does that look like?”

“It’s where the most diagnosis happen for Omegas because it becomes far more apparent. You have a lack of control over your pheromones. They run wild if you don’t have crystals to hold them back. You have increased sex drive, irritability, and actually dropped inhibitions.” I narrowed my eyes, thinking. “It’s like being in a Haze. A one-sided Haze. You crave touch to the point where it doesn’t matter where you get it from. You just have to have it.”

Mrs. Alford gasped. “By the old gods…is it constant? Feeling like that?”

I shook my head. “You can sometimes get relief if you engage in sexual actions. It’s just…not great because, like for me, I was fifteen. Not everyone hits that level of sexual activity at that age.”

“You snuck off to clubs.” It wasn’t a question from Marcus.

Nodding, I couldn’t look at him. “I started trying to manage my heats at fourteen by having sex. It brought down the symptoms. So I was already used to…that.”

“ Fourteen ? What the hell have you been through over the years, little one?” Mrs. Alford was sweet to worry for me.

“I made it. That’s…all I can really claim to at this point. It wasn’t clean but I survived and I managed to hide my designation this long.” I looked up at Marcus. “I have help now. It won’t be nearly as bad.”

He did catch my eyes but he looked away fairly quickly. “Just keep going, Colt.”

“Stage three lasts for six months.” I turned back to Mr. Alford who was scribbling down notes.

“Alright. So, Stage four. This is the bad one.”

Lauren now was staring at me and I asked her directly, “You knew someone at stage four, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “My older sister.”

I swallowed and I felt a stab in my heart. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you how I managed to continue past stage four but I…I don’t know. Simply chalking it up to a high pain tolerance seems silly.”

“It’s okay, Colt. Just…continue. I’m curious how you would describe it.”

Nodding, I took a couple sips of the tea before I continued. “Stage four is pain. Well, not, stage six is pain. I guess stage four is touch sensitivity being relayed as pain.”

“How so?” Mr. Alford stopped writing, looking up at me.

“When touched, no matter if they are Alpha or not, becomes painful. It’s like a simple brush against your skin feels like a thousand needles digging into you. It sets your nerves on fire and makes you shy away from any touch.” I stared at the light reflected in the oven door. “I can understand why so many Omegas don’t reach past that point. All we want it to be loved. To be touched and held. For someone to claim us and call us theirs. It’s ingrained in our wolves and are psyche. For that simple touch to turn into pain, your mind starts to associate touch with pain and it becomes…purgatory.”

After a few moments, I pulled myself out of my thoughts and looked up. I regretted it. Everyone was staring at me in horror. Even Marcus was staring at me.

“Sorry…you don’t need my personal opinion.” I took a deep breath. “Stage four lasts eight months.”

“Eight? Only eight?” Lauren looked at me with her mouth open. “So they can’t even last eight months?”

Sighing, I knew she didn’t mean it like that. She didn’t understand how it felt and I couldn’t blame her. Especially with someone like me still sitting here. Catching her gaze, I shook my head.

“I would never wish any further stage on anyone, Lauren.” She recoiled, realizing what she said. “As much as…I’m still here…I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. That is…also to say…I did try to kill myself multiple times during that time as well.”

Everyone sucked in a breath and I shook my head, shrugging. “That was a long time ago. Mike helped me through that time. I probably wouldn’t have made it through that without him. But after that, there was a long time I wondered if it was even worth it. If I would have been better off…” I couldn’t continue, knowing that if I did, I wouldn’t just be dredging up the old Colton.

“So, what’s at stage five? After eight months of that kinds of pain, you make it sound like it gets a lot worse.”

Nodding again, I took a slow breath. “Stage five hits after that eight months. It lasts for seven months. I think Mike and I defined it as Heightened Intermittent Pain.”

Mr. Alford’s eyebrow rose and he started to scribble more on the page. I continued though.

“You get bouts of random pain. You don’t have to be touched. You don’t have to be doing anything. It just hits you at random times.” I dug my teeth into my bottom lip for a moment. “It’s pain unlike anything you’ve ever felt. It brings you to your knees. It steals your breath away. It’s like…being burned alive all while being cut in to pieces with a bread knife. It’s…unfathomable until you feel it. Even then, it’s impossible to describe.”

I realized I had slipped back and grabbed the shoulder of my shirt, dabbing the corner of my eyes. “Sorry.”

“Colton, this…” Mr. Alford shook his head. “You have nothing to apologize for, pup. Nothing at all. You said it lasts for seven months.”

Swallowed and snuffling, I took a deep breath. “Yes. Which turns into stage six.”

“What do you mean?” Lauren asked with tears in her eyes. ‘“What else could there possibly be?”

I gave her a sad smile. “That intermittent pain…becomes constant.”

“No.” Lauren shook her head as she covered her mouth.

Beau reached out and pulled me to her, hugging me tight. I smiled and rubbed her arm. She shook her head though and buried her face in my shoulder. Looking over at Marcus, he looked like he was going to be sick.

“You’re serious? It’s just…constant? The pain that you just described, you feel that all the time. How long, Colton? How long do you feel it for?” Marcus looked at at, actual tears in his eyes.

I opened my mouth but the words struggled to come out. “These…stages are different…”

“What are you talking about? What the fuck does that mean, Colton?”

“They…compound…they don’t replace one another.” I was crying too, unable to take the pain that was coming through the bond. “Marcus…please…I’m still here…I…I’m okay.”

Marcus roared and I shrunk back. “How are you okay? How is any of this okay? You’ve been feeling this pain all the time? You just walk around with it? You sit in class? You’re in pain every time we fuck? Every time I touch you, you are always in pain?”

“Mar…please?” My wolf was whimpering and I realized it was starting to come out too.

Mr. Alford had to came back around and ground Marcus. He slammed his hand down on his shoulder while Marcus breathed through not shifting. His scales were showing under his skin and I wanted to reach out but I knew I was the reason for it this time.

“When did you…Marcus, your scales are black.” Mr. Alford looked up at Marcus and then to me. “Is this…a mate bond change?”

I nodded. “He gets to get my color of wolf but I just get the feeling of being hot all the time.”

It lightened the room a little as Beau chuckled and wrapped her arms around me. “I’ll cool you off, if it helps.”

“Please. I always ran a little cold but now I can’t even sleep in the blankets anymore. I end up feeling like I am a rotisserie wolf.”

Even Mr. Alford laughed but Marcus was staring me down, pain still etched on his face. “Colton, I need you to keep going.”

“I…”

I didn’t want to. Not if he was going to belike this. I knew the next questions after this. Those I didn’t want to answer again. Mike got mad at me every time we talked about it. It wasn’t going to be any better. Taking a deep breath, I looked at Mr. Alford. He nodded, patting Marcus’ shoulder a couple times before grabbing his pen again.

“Alright. How long does this last? Or didn’t you say you were trying to differentiate between stage six and seven?”

Absently, I rubbed the inside of my forearm. “Yes. I would say at the very least, stage six lasts for for twenty four months.”

The air got sucked out of the room and no one moved.

“But it could be that stage seven starts earlier than that. But I hadn’t come into contact with an Alpha during one of my episodes.”

“Wait…so…the monthly episodes you get, are even worse pain than what you feel on a daily basis? It’s that just…the intermittent pain…but also…ramping up because you’re already feeling pain.” Lauren was trying to work it out and she looked more and more horrified as she worked it out. “You said they compounded. So…that’s what you meant.”

Nodding, I rubbed my palms together. “Yes. I still get the intermittent pain, that’s the once a month that is worse. I tend to pass out and I do my best to stay in the shower to help counteract the burning feeling. But the pain I was feeling before in stage five became a baseline and only got worse.”

“Then what the hell is seven?” Beau finally got frustrated. “What the fuck could possibly be worse. You keep saying worse things but what the hell else is there besides just dying!” She slammed her hands over her mouth as she looked up at Marcus.

He lost all the color in his face and he turned, the kitchen door slamming open before I watching his dragon lift off. My heart hurt as I felt how upset he was. I looked back at Beau and gave her a sad smile.

“I think that’s stage eight, actually. Mike and I…we’ve theorized at the stage eight will come twenty-four months after stage seven.”

“Well, first, what’s stage seven?”

Putting my hand on my forearm, I squeezed it. “If an Alpha touches me, my skin peels open. As though you were just cutting through the skin with a knife. Skin on skin contact with an Alpha will do that.”

“But…we’ve all touched you. All of us are Alphas.” Beau’s hand hovered over my arm.

Reaching out, I took her hand and squeezed it. “It only happens during the intermittent pain. So the five or so hours where it’s bad, if an Alpha touches me, I peel open.” I shook my head. “We are struggling to get a good sample size for that though because one, you can’t just ask an Alpha to touch a mess of a shifter in the shower without raising some questions. So, we only have the few times it’s started in public and an Alpha has touched me.”

“Fucking hell.” It was odd hearing Mr. Alford curse as he wrote. “So…what are your theories.”

“We think stage eight is where my body will shut down, unable to handle to the pain and the lack of our soul being complete.” I took a breath. “We always assumed…that I wouldn’t make it very far past my twenty-first birthday.”

Lauren got off the counter and followed Marcus. The kitchen door slammed shut behind her and I didn’t see her shift but I did see a yellowish orange streak disappear into the forest. Mrs Alford came around and wrapped her arms around me.

“But you have Marcus now. You are mated. You have an Alpha. You have us too.”

Nodding, I rubbed her arm. “I do. I don’t know how it’s going to change things. I don’t know if it’s going to slowly heal. That one day, I’m not going to feel this pain all the time. Or…that it’s too late. I’m already on this road and it finishes off.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, I would handle the pain for the rest of my life if it meant that stage eight never happened. That I would accept in a heartbeat. I just…don’t know.”

Taking a breath, I chuckled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…I didn’t mean to kill everything. Marcus was right. I had been avoiding the conversation with him. I knew he would be upset. Still…I guess it had to be said at some point. Better now then when its terrible and I can’t convince him not to touch me.”

Mrs. Alford let me go and clapped her hands. “Fuck lunch.”

“Mom!” Beau’s mouth dropped open.

“No! Fuck it!”

I laughed, hearing fuck coming from Mrs. Alford, was hilarious. Beau seemed absolutely mortified at her mother. Mr. Alford was chuckling as he continued to scribble on a new page. She didn’t care about her daughter as she pulled out a pie from the over. My heart hurt as the smell of the apple pie filled the kitchen. Mrs. Alford reminded me a lot of Mrs. Truman.

“We are having apple pie and ice cream.”

“For lunch?” Beau chuckled. “Marcus would have a cow if he heard you trying to feed Colt empty sugary calories.”

I nodded. “She’s not wrong. He’s also not here. I’ll happily take both, Mrs. Alford.”

She pointed her spoon at me. “It’s Candice, Candy, or Mom. Don’t think you are going to get away with that again, Colt. Not in my house.”

“Yes…Candice?” It felt so wrong to say.

“We will work on it. Eventually, it will be Mom.”

Nodding, I couldn’t bring myself to say it but could knew, just from what I had seen from both of Marcus’ parents, eventually they would be Mom and Dad. A feeling that I still wasn’t used to but I definitely wouldn’t mind. I definitely didn’t feel as alone anymore in the world. I felt safe and happy. Looking out the window, I couldn’t see Marcus and I hoped that we could talk.