Page 4 of Secure Touch (Her Vicious Pack #8)

Caleb

It would be nice if our lives could become a little less hectic very, very soon. Our pack needs stability, needs to be able to settle in with each other, needs to be able to fully develop and get used to our bonds, and that hasn’t happened yet. At least not strongly enough for our Omegas.

Pregnant Omegas are much more sensitive to pheromones —both from their pack and from others around them— and having their mates around.

And while Vera and Mathew have both had at least some of us around at any one time, there has also been a lot of interference, too much interference if I think about it honestly.

Things seemed to be going pretty okay, but that was probably just because we were too busy to notice it, too busy to pay attention, and now everything is falling apart.

The way that Mathew and Vera were tightly wrapped around each other all night, like they were trying to become one person, it was hard to watch. Especially when Vera’s pheromones were so messy and confused. The exhaustion and all the stress had clearly caught up with her, and with Mathew too.

I noticed something was wrong with Vera when her pheromones changed slightly last night and when her mind seemed to drift off while she was talking.

At first, I thought it was just exhaustion.

We were all exhausted, so that made sense.

But when she growled at Derrick when he offered to get the car to drive us home, I knew it was something else.

Something much worse.

When marked and bonded Omegas are taken from their mates, they first become withdrawn, then they start lashing out at everyone who isn’t their mate, to the point where they endanger themselves and everyone around them.

If they’re kept from their mate or mates even longer than that, they get ill, their bodies slowly breaking down.

Until their body simply gives up, and they die.

Normally, Omegas don’t need that many pheromones from their mates, a hug or simply being in the same room will do the trick.

But pregnant Omegas need a lot more pheromones, a lot , lot more, and if they have more than one mate, they need all of those pheromones mixed together, not simply one by one.

Last night, Vera and Mathew were showing signs of pheromone withdrawal.

Even though they’ve been around us almost constantly, it clearly wasn’t enough.

And the stress and everything else they’ve been up to —like Mathew’s mission and Vera slipping away to rescue Luca and the kids— probably meant that they needed a lot more pheromones on top of what they needed extra because of their pregnancies.

And we didn’t notice it until it was too late.

We were all too busy to notice that our Omegas needed us.

We were all too busy to pay attention to what was going on, too busy to remember what the doctor told us, that our Omegas were going to need us more than ever.

We were too busy, and that put our Omegas in danger.

We can’t let that happen again. We have to be better about this. We have to pay more attention, or it could put Vera and Mathew, and the babies, in a lot of danger.

Which means that we’ll first have to figure out a way to get to the nest. It’s a much better place to sleep, for all of us, it’s much more comfortable, and it gives easy access to the bathroom and anything else we might want or need.

And we’ll have to find a way for Luca to be near them as much as possible too, which might be even more complicated than getting our Omegas to their nest. Luca mostly spends his time with Riley and Jorge, since he can be around them without any problems. But Vera and Mathew need his pheromones, they need him, and it’s clear that he wants to be near them, even if it hurts him.

Maybe I should ask Derrick for better masks?

It’s just the scent of the pheromones that Luca doesn’t react to well. He doesn’t seem to have any problem touching anyone and from the way he keeps staring longingly at Vera and Mathew when he can’t smell their pheromones —and even when he can, at times— it’s clear that their bond is intact.

The normal solution for pheromone withdrawal, especially during pregnancy, is to have everyone in the nest together until the Omega starts to feel better again.

Not doing anything but be together, no work, no stress, nothing.

And after that, making sure to all be together as much as possible for at least a couple more weeks —though it doesn’t have to be all the time anymore— and to keep pheromones from people outside of the pack to a minimum.

That is the normal solution anyway.

Yeah.

With this pack, with our Omegas, that’s going to end with a lot of dead bodies. Not just because our Omegas suck at sitting still, but because we currently have a house full of people and Mathew runs a whole organisation that he can’t just take a break from for a couple of weeks.

So, how we’re all going to survive this, alive and in a single piece?

I have no idea.

It turns out that Vera and Mathew react poorly to everyone who isn’t part of our pack, not just other Alphas or Betas, but also other Omegas.

Usually, Omegas are fine around other Omegas when they’re dealing with pheromone problems —something about Omegas automatically having a soothing effect on each other or something— but apparently not these two, at least, not right now.

Our initial plan was to get Eli or Erika involved, so Vera and Mathew wouldn’t become distressed when they brought us food and other things we might need.

But that went out of the window fast when even mentioning letting Erika come near our pack made Vera growl in a way that made even my hair stand on end.

If Vera’s withdrawal is bad enough that she can’t even let Erika come near her, someone she’s super close with and who she adores under normal circumstances, then letting anyone else we know come close isn’t possible.

That would be putting too much risk on them, especially since our Omegas have no problem getting rid of anyone who they feel might pose a danger.

But we also can’t leave our Omegas’ side right now, all four of us need to be near Vera and Mathew at all times, or things could get worse again. Which means that one of us can’t slip out for a bit to get food or do other things, we have to be with them at all times .

So, ultimately, we landed on our only solution: divide and conquer.

Divide the kids and Luca’s family over the pack houses.

There wasn’t a lot of space for us to work with without bothering any of Mathew’s employees, since Erika, her pack and the others were already staying in the spare houses.

But Nathan, Logan and Jace offered to crash in the library in the main house for the time being, sleeping on field beds and taking on some security duties, so the kids could stay in the house with Erika and the pack.

And Luca’s family is staying in the other house with the rest of Erika’s security team.

It’s not the best fit, it’s pretty crowded, but it’s all we can do right now.

And then came conquering the pheromones that were still hanging around the house.

I guess there’s an advantage to Mathew being the head of an organisation who’s used to ‘cleaning up’ various ‘dirty’ situations, including cases where they have to get rid of pheromones quickly.

Because once we got everyone out of the house, his people managed to clean out the floor with our bedrooms, and the downstairs hallway, in under an hour.

We have to wait for at least another hour or two before we can go up to the nest, since the chemicals are still in the air and they’re not good to be around. But after that time, it’ll be safe to go, even for pregnant people, as the chemicals will have fully dissipated.

On the one hand, the efficiency of what Mathew’s people did was kind of scary.

Because, it means that you could leave for work in the morning and when you return home at the end of the day, the only clue that something happened in your house was that there are fewer pheromones than there were when you left.

And with how many people like using diffusers, especially of scents from their mates, you might not even notice it at all if the cleaning crew turned the diffuser on when they left. It would just smell like home.

That’s just scary shit.

On the other hand, I should ask Mathew what the stuff is called, because it would have come in very handy in the past and I’m sure it’ll come in handy in the future.

I’d love to get my hands on some, just to be sure.

And it makes me curious what other cool things Mathew’s people have access to that I’ve not heard about before. ..

But that’s for another day, not today.

Today, we’ve got more serious things to worry about, like how we’re going to get everyone into the nest in the quickest and safest way possible.

We’ll have to purposefully spread our pheromones in the nest and our bedroom when we get there, since none will be left after the cleanup, but that’s still better than accidentally finding pheromones from other people and setting off Vera and Mathew’s issues.

We’ve got most of the blankets, and some of the pillows, from the nest here, so they smell only of us.

Anything that was still left in the nest is currently being washed, so we can grab that from the dryer or the lines whenever we need them.

Once Vera and Mathew’s situation became clear last night —that they couldn’t be around anyone else’s pheromones— Derrick or Timothy opened all the windows and doors to the outside in Mathew’s office and locked the door to the rest of the house. That way, the room could naturally air out overnight.

Which was good thinking of them. Because it meant that we were able to spend most of the day in the office and weren’t stuck outside the whole time.

There were a few moments where pheromones from other people drifted from random places, but we mostly resolved that by simply flooding the space with our own pheromones over and over.

And a nest in the corner of the office, with the couches and desk to keep up a large blanket, like a pillow fort of sorts, to shelter us from the world, was a pretty decent temporary solution. But very clearly only temporary.

I look around the makeshift nest, at every member of the pack.

Luca is sitting near the entrance, that way he can slip out to get some fresh air when things get too much for him, but he’s been staying in here, close to our Omegas, as much as possible.

He’s strong. He might not see himself that way, but he is.

And I’m glad he’s here. I think he’ll make a good addition to our pack.

Vera and Mathew are close together, watching something on a tablet, constantly touching each other, even though I don’t think they even notice it. They seem calmer than when we woke up, but I know that pheromone withdrawal symptoms come and go in irregular waves, this might just be a good stretch.

Riley has taken it upon herself to take charge of the new identities for Luca’s family. It’s cute to see and I’m sure that it makes the stress of everything going on easier to deal with.

Jorge has gotten himself involved with looking after the kids, even from a distance.

Using his connections to find out who of the kids still have living family members who might be able to take them in and looking through Erika’s system to try to find good matches to take in the other kids.

His emotions have been a total roller coaster, up when he manages to find family members, down when there’s nobody for a kid to return to.

I know that technically, the advise is for ‘total rest’ for the Omegas and the rest of the pack, when dealing with pheromone withdrawal, but I guess we can start with that once we get to the nest.

Who am I kidding?

Even in the nest, they’re not going to stop working, they’ll just ‘take things easy’, by which they mean not working for twenty hours straight and not going out on missions, but that’s about it.

My pack is not good at sitting still, at all.

But that’s what makes them so precious too, even while I’ll be cursing them for it later.

Ah, well. At least it’s not boring.

At all.

Ever…