Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
And yet... And yet Lucien didn’t send Aksel away. Couldn’t.
When Aksel wasn’t around, Lucien felt like the loneliness would swallow him whole.
***
There were days Lucien almost felt happy. Those were the days he spent playing hide-and-seek with Aksel on the extensive grounds of the Cleghorn country estate, laughing as he tried and failed to fool the Xeus’s superior senses using various tricks. He felt almost happy when it was just him and Aksel and the sun on his skin.
But there were other days too. Days he struggled to summon enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. Days he stared at his body in the mirror and wanted to throw up.
He hated his body.
Although he’d known that all Dainiri omegas changed physically after their first pregnancy, he’d had no idea that the changes wouldn’t go away even if the omega miscarried. He felt strange in this new body. His chest was not large, but it was more than a handful. It—the protrusions—jiggled when he walked and ran. It was bizarre. And more than a little disgusting.
Had the changes to his body happened in less traumatic circumstances, Lucien’s attitude toward them likely would have been different. But in his mind, his physical changes were tightly linked with everything bad that had happened to him—the heat, the rape, his abandonment by his family—so Lucien hated them. He knew it was irrational, but he hated them. He hated his body. He wanted to go back to the simpler, better times when he had looked different and hadn’t been soiled and changed into something else without his consent.
To make things worse, the changes to his body weren’t all visible. After the pregnancy, his hormones couldn’t seem to return to their old normal. Dainiri omegas were known for their fertility and produced milk from the first weeks of pregnancy, and even after the miscarriage, Lucien’s chest was uncomfortably full with milk. His suppressants didn’t seem to do anything to stop lactation, and it didn’t help that Vagrippa had insisted on “putting the omega to use” and asked/ordered him to nurse Belinda. Vagrippa had said she didn’t want to breastfeed the baby—as if Lucien wanted to do it! The mere thought of putting his protrusions to use utterly sickened him. But he’d squashed down his discomfort and had done as he was told. He had wanted to fit in. He wanted to be part of the Cleghorn pack. It was normal for omegas of the pack to nurse the babies. He could do it. He could.
So he forced himself.
The irony was, it ended up being for nothing: Belinda weaned sooner than normal, and Lucien had been left with an aching chest full of unwanted milk—and no baby to feed. He envied betas who could stop lactating easily; Dainiri omegas could lactate for many months after their babies stopped feeding, as he had unfortunately found out.
“Fuck!” Lucien cursed as he tried to express milk into the sink with his tired, aching hands. God, he hated this, he hated himself, he hated this body so much, why had this happened to him?
He was crying in frustration and pain on the floor of his bathroom when Aksel found him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded before his blue eyes zeroed in on Lucien’s swollen chest.
Mortified, Lucien tried to cover the protrusions, but his hands were too small to hide them completely. “Don’t look at me!” he mumbled, sitting up and turning away.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
“Luce,” Aksel said hesitantly, laying a hand on his head. “I want to help. Look at me. What’s wrong?”
Lucien wiped his tears and took in a shuddering breath, trying to calm down. He was sixteen. He was supposed to be an adult now. He shouldn’t scare Aksel with his hysterics.
“Don’t look at me,” Lucien whispered, barely audibly. “I’m disgusting, and ugly, and dirty—” I hate myself. “Please go, darling. You shouldn’t see me like this.”
He felt more than heard Aksel sit down behind him. Then two arms wrapped around him from behind, surprisingly strong for their size. Lucien muttered, “Don’t,” but he allowed Aksel to pull his head to Aksel’s throat, to his scent gland. Closing his eyes, Lucien breathed in raggedly, taking comfort in Aksel’s familiar scent.
“You’re not disgusting,” Aksel said fiercely, stroking his back. “And you’re not ugly or dirty. Nothing about you is, Luce.”
Lucien shook his head.
“Luce, look at me.”
It was so unfair that such a young, unpresented alpha could make him want to obey him. Being an omega sucked. Or maybe it was just him. Maybe he was just that weak and pathetic, unrelated to his designation.
Sighing, Lucien opened his eyes and allowed Aksel to tip his face up so that their gazes met.
Aksel’s blue eyes were unusually serious and grim—no seven-year-old boy should have eyes like that. Lucien felt a pang of guilt. Was he the reason Aksel was growing up so fast? Had he exposed Aksel to the ugliness of the world before it was necessary?