Page 7 of Thorns That Bloom (Venusverse #3)

They say something again. And again.

Another knock.

Shaking my head, I lean against my knees and screw my eyes shut.

‘Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone.’ I don’t know why those words won’t come out of my mouth. I want to scream at them from the top of my lungs for them to go away, but I only do so in my head, trapped and helpless.

The moment I register a faint scent, I freeze.

Pheromones. Alpha pheromones.

I don’t even focus on the flavor of it, only the deep, innate knowledge that at least one of them is an alpha, and suddenly, my body comes undone in a completely new way.

Fear—potent, rattling fear that makes my heart stop and my teeth chatter—takes over me, and no amount of reasoning myself out of it can overcome it.

My leg slips off the door because I lose all strength.

It squeaks open slightly, and I freeze. I sit there, utterly powerless.

Powerless to move, to fight against my fear and the memories.

Powerless to come back from the distant place far from reality, where my conscience seems to linger to protect itself.

And on top of that, my damn body… Behind the chill of my fear persists that unbearable, intrusive heat.

The door flies open somewhere in the distance.

I hear more steps, but all I focus on is the crack in the door and the moving shadows behind it. They could easily push in—kick past the only measly protection I've been able to muster—and do whatever they want. Corner me, overpower me, take control like they have before.

“What the hell’s going on here?”

“I don’t know!”

“We just got here and he was…” The voice fades into the back of my mind as I take a ragged inhale. I’m going to pass out if I don’t breathe, if I don’t do something.

“You’re not back there,” I mutter to myself, tightening my grip on the toilet seat underneath. “Y-you’re not back there. You’re fine,” I keep saying, but all it does is make me want to cry and stop existing.

I don’t want to have to continue fighting to pull myself away from the abyss.

I’m tired. So fucking tired.

“Can you not sense how scared he is?” someone says, tone intense and high-strung. He sounds closer, probably right behind the door with the others.

“Should we call an ambulance?”

Oh, no! No, please, don’t.

“He looked pretty bad.”

“He’s pregnant. How about you give him some fucking space?”

I narrow my eyes. Why does the voice sound familiar? Where have I heard it?

The discussion past the door quickly turns into arguing.

The two closest voices keep barking at each other, each word sharp and loaded.

The scent of pheromones…grows louder. There’s more than one now.

The first I recognize as something woody, like oak.

With a hint of something else. The new one is stronger.

Not in an intense way, but it still terrifies me how strong the scent of spiced coconut is. It’s aromatic and sweet and—

My breath hitches when someone pushes the door open. It gently swings toward me until I’m faced with the man carefully stepping into the stall, kneeling in front of me, staring at me with tentative blue eyes.

He’s…the alpha that appeared in my office a few days ago. Has the same messy, thick, dirty blond hair. The same chiseled face. This time, he looks even more unsure. Worried, really. He looks worried.

“It’s okay. You are okay,” he whispers softly. The moment I stop focusing on his long eyelashes, I realize how close to me his pheromones have drifted, and that he’s using them to calm me down—intentionally or not—while slowly reaching his hand out.

I let out some sort of yelp and shake my head, recoiling from him.

He blinks, retreating swiftly. He puts his other hand up as if he’s trying to show me he gets it. But his scent is already all around me. I’m trapped. I’m trapped in this tiny room with all these men staring at me, and I’m going to crumble into pieces if they don’t leave me fucking alone!

Smacking my hand over my mouth, I barely stop myself from throwing up. Too much. Everything is too much.

He widens his eyes even more, looking down at my other hand clenching my stomach. As if with a snap of a finger, his pheromones ease, but there’s no erasing them from the air around us or from my mind.

“The fuck are you doing? You’re making it worse!” the other alpha says.

He turns to him with a scowl that appears on his face before he even faces away from me. Straightening his back and stepping away from the door, he measures up to the older man. “Maybe keep your voice down if you don’t want him to get even more freaked out,” he mutters through his teeth.

I see another guy poke between the two to look at me. “Hey. We should go and call someone.”

“No,” I somehow get out.

They all pause to turn to me. I’m almost as surprised as they are that some words finally came out, even if I sound shaky and pathetic.

Did I get over the threshold of losing it without even realizing it? It feels like I might manage not to slip into a full-on panic attack if they just…

“G-go. Please. Just…please, leave,” I whisper desperately, hoping they listen.

“I’m sorry,” the blond mutters, but when the other alpha snorts, he turns back to him with a frown. “Maybe if you didn’t stand over him like a pack of—”

“What the fuck? Who put you in charge of the toilet security?!” The frustration growing in his voice makes me feel like I’m losing the fragile grip on my emotions I’ve gotten.

The alpha gets all up in the blond’s face.

“He wasn’t in the stall when we got here.

He was on the floor, trembling like a leaf, so we were tryin’ to make sure he was alright. ”

“And how did that work out?” the blond retorts swiftly.

The other man tightens his fist, and my chest clenches instinctively. Thankfully, someone else comes in before the two jump at each other.

“What the hell is going on here? What is this?”

I don’t recognize the voice, but it sounds older, more measured. All four men standing in front of the stall look like dogs with their ears down and their tails between their legs the moment he shows up.

Is he a supervisor? He seems to have that effect on them.

“There’s a pregnant omega in there,” the alpha says, not even looking at me, and walks out of my field of vision, intentionally brushing his shoulder against the blond as he passes him.

The younger alpha snickers but doesn’t retaliate.

Instead, he watches the other two men leave with him and waits for the newcomer to come closer.

“He’s um…yeah,” he mutters, glancing at me briefly before he rubs the back of his neck and steps away.

The man who walks in immediately puts me at ease.

I don’t know if it’s the balding sixty-year-old gym teacher vibe he has going on or the fact that he’s most definitely a beta.

The uniform he has on, slightly different from the others, and the name tag, confirm that he is, indeed, one of the senior staff from the manufacturing floor.

“Oh, dear,” he says the moment he lays his eyes on me. Do I look that rough? “Get out of here and let me sort this, Theo.”

The blond nods and leaves, uttering a quick, “I’m sorry.”

One of the many knots inside my stomach releases when it’s only me and the man in the room. But when I look down at my hands, I realize I’m still trembling. And sweating buckets, too.

“Son, can you tell me what’s wrong? Do you want me to call someone?” the man asks, his kind, wise eyes gently glancing across my body to see if there’s something visibly wrong.

I shake my head quickly. “No, I-I need to…get back to work.” Kristoff is going to be worried about me. He’ll probably rush in here soon. And I still have so much to do after lunch that—

“Hey, hey,” he interrupts my train of thought with that fatherly, caring voice.

The air is clearing, too. All I can smell are my own pheromones, which I shouldn’t be able to do.

It must mean they’re pouring completely out of my control.

Fuck. “Let’s make sure you’re…” he pauses briefly, looking down at my stomach that I’ve been subconsciously caressing, “...both okay, yeah? Let me get someone with a first-aid certification to have a look at you at least, hm?” he asks with an inviting smile.

What if all this stress hurts the baby? The doctors told me before that it wouldn’t, it shouldn’t, but I still can’t help but feel guilty.

So damn guilty and stupid for allowing myself to go through this.

They can feel my emotions. I made them experience the same panic I experienced, and that isn’t right.

“O-okay,” I whisper, nodding. Maybe it won’t be too bad to make sure this really is just an unfortunate side-effect of the pregnancy and not something serious.

“Good. I won’t let anyone else in, alright? Just stay here.”

When the man leaves and I’m alone, the weight of it all lands on my shoulders. The ridiculousness of this entire situation. The way I almost folded over something like this. As I hug myself and try to push those pesky negative feelings away, it dawns on me that…I might not be able to.

Sighing, I look down at my shoes.

I’m not being responsible. This isn’t healthy. It might be time for me to find a therapist again, no matter how much I’ve tried to avoid having to do that. Brute forcing my way through these situations, and healing, won’t do it…

I’m going to need to work on it. For real this time.