Vengeful Bonds - Episode 10 - San (Patreon)

Unbeta'd/Unedited. Sorry for the delay. They'll be more regular going forward.

San hated Veritas on sight. 

It wasn’t rational hate, not the kind built from evidence or stories passed hand to hand. It was older than that—something animal and immediate—the way his skin tightened the moment they crossed the threshold.

The building was so innocuous, that bothered him more than anything. Shouldn’t evil announce itself? Shouldn’t they be forced to flaunt their evil right out in the open. Inside was worse. Everything about it smelled…wrong somehow. It was too clean, too sanitized, an antiseptic smell so pungent it made his eyes water. It was the kind of smell usually only found in hospitals and animal shelters. The kind meant to erase mess, erase evidence, erase the fact that bodies—living bodies?—had ever been here at all.

But it wasn’t just the smell. The staff smiled too much, the place obnoxiously clean and bright, but devoid of any personality at all. The place practically screamed ‘what bad thing could ever happen here?’ As if cruelty required shadows, as if harm didn’t thrive just fine under fluorescent lights and carefully curated mission statements. 

Seth and Ollie sat in the waiting room chairs with Deke in between them, but Saint and San stood on either side of the three like sentinels. If San attempted to sit right now, he’d peel his own skin off. This place gave him the creeps, triggering some innate fight or flight instinct he couldn’t quite put his finger on. His body wanted movement—escape—or violence. He didn’t know which yet, only that stillness felt like surrender.

Saint could feel it too. He looked like he’d eaten a bad burrito, his face permanently locked in a grimace as he scanned the place, spine stiff, his scent so sour, San could smell it even through the scent patches they wore. Saint’s fear came out sharp and jagged, all angles and threat assessment, the way it always did when his past started whispering in his head.

San didn’t need his scent to know how nervous Seth was. His leg bounced, he bit at his cuticles, his lower lip. If they didn’t come get them soon, he might actually cannibalize himself in their lobby. San recognized the pattern with aching familiarity—Seth’s anxiety always turned inward first, teeth and nails against his own skin like penance.

Deke didn’t seem to have the same reaction. He wasn’t as manic as the other alphas, but there were some signs, but…more subtle. He sat pulling at his shirt sleeves from the inside, fingers twisting in the fabric like he was restless more than anxious. Contained, but vibrating. 

But Deke had been there almost every day for weeks. Immersion therapy. Expose someone to something enough without incident and that thing began to seem harmless. San knew that trick. He’d used it on himself more times than he could count.

Ollie didn’t seem anxious either. His head rested on Deke’s shoulder, his eyes closed, hands clasped over the slight bump under his shirt. He looked exhausted even though both he and Deke had slept until almost noon. It wasn’t the usual exhaustion most people experienced. No, it was that tiredness that came when people’s bodies quietly did something monumental.

San once more shifted his weight from one foot to the other, another wary sigh escaping. Seth whined, his head falling to San’s hip. Saint’s eyes cut to him, his scent spiking through the—pretty much useless—scent patch. But Seth wasn’t in distress, just seeking affection. San smoothed a hand over his hair, petting him. The simple trust of it—Seth leaning into him without hesitation—tightened something painful and tender in San’s chest.

He wished he could do something more to help, wished fixing this didn’t feel like something permanently out of his reach. Not only Seth, but Ollie too. They looked worn out. San understood why. Pregnancy was hard on the body, probably more so on a body that hadn’t thought itself capable of the event in the first place. Probably harder still when the world suddenly decided your body was a miracle worth studying instead of a person worth protecting.

Binnie said he was the overly honest one, the one who said the hard thing, but that wasn’t always true. San was used to being able to fix things for his friends when they were stressed or upset. Used to being the steady one, the soft place to land for them, the protector—never the one quietly wondering what it might have been like to need the care instead of offering it.

Saint’s spine straightened as a man approached with a lab coat and a clipboard like he needed to prove he belonged there. “Oh, well,” he said, sounding surprised. “I see we have a full house today.” 

The man’s voice was pleasant in the way rehearsed things always were, smooth and practiced and utterly uninterested in how that sentence landed.

Ollie blinked open heavy lids. “Saint and Seth have their first OB appointment with Win today and San tagged along to see the ultrasound.”

San caught the faint strain in Ollie’s voice, the way excitement and exhaustion sat on top of each other.

“How exciting,” Lance said with a tight smile. 

The word sounded safe, innocuous…pre-approved by corporate.

Lance didn’t waste time. “You ready, Deke?”

Deke rose, then helped Ollie to his feet.

“I’m afraid we need Deke alone today,” Lance said, his voice just as chipper as before.

“What? Why? No!” Ollie snapped. “That wasn’t part of the agreement.”

San’s shoulders tensed automatically, a familiar protective heat coiling under his skin. Agreements were supposed to mean something. San had told them that Veritas would treat them like suggestions.

Lance gave him a patient smile. “We’re introducing a new protocol today and having his pregnant omega anywhere near him could destroy our baseline.”

Baseline. San hated that word. It reduced people to numbers, reactions, data points that could be corrected if they misbehaved.

“Too bad,” Ollie said, a red flush crawling up his face. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

The sound of heels clicking closer had everyone’s head turning towards Win who, as usual, wore an outfit that probably cost more than a year’s rent at their last apartment. Like Lance, she also had a labcoat but was without the requisite clipboard.

She looked like someone who had never once been told no and fully believed that was because she’d earned it and not because her father was one of the most powerful and influential billionaires alive.

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking back and forth between Ollie and Lance.

“You said if Deke agreed to this, I would be able to stay,” Ollie snapped. “Three weeks and you’re already going back on your deal?”

She frowned, looking at the clinical research coordinator as if this was news to her. “Why isn’t he permitted to view Deke’s testing today?”

Lance sighed, dropping his voice. “We’re testing his responses to certain triggers and his alpha will automatically seek his scent. We cannot teach him to control his gifts if we can’t figure out what triggers them. Ollie there will automatically skew our baseline. It's not for every test, just this one.”San noted the careful phrasing—teach, control, gifts—as if what they were doing wasn’t invasive so much as educational.

“Right,” Ollie said.

The single word was sharp with disbelief, his scent spiking just enough to make San’s jaw tighten.

Deke put a hand on Ollie’s shoulder. “Don’t get too worked up. It’s not worth it. You’ll stress out the baby.”

San hated that too, the way concern always circled back to the pregnancy, never the person carrying it.

“Deke’s right,” Win said. To Lance, she asked, “How long will the testing take?”

“No more than sixty to ninety minutes,” Lance assured them. “It will likely be quite…draining so we don’t want to exhaust him.”

Draining how, San wondered. Physically? Chemically? Emotionally? They never seemed to specify the parts that mattered.

Win glanced at Seth who still huddled beside San and Saint. “How about this,” she said. “Ollie, come with me. I’ll check in on your little one and we’ll check on Seth’s babies as well. Okay? By the time we’re done, Deke will be, too.”

“B-Babies?” Seth stammered. “You already know there’s more than one?”

San felt Seth’s hand twitch against his side, a flash of fear and hope tangled together so tightly it made his chest ache.

Win gave him an indulgent smile. “No, but let's call it a hunch.” 

A hunch delivered with far too much confidence.

“Why do you want to check me again? You just checked the baby last week,” Ollie said.

Once more, that patient expression, that canned neutral tone. “No, I measured your belly and asked about your symptoms. I want to keep a close eye on growth since she was measuring large on ultrasound.” 

San clocked the casual way she slid from observation into justification, like it was her default, like the decision had already been made without them.

Ollie looked at Deke, who nodded encouragingly. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine. You’ve seen other trigger tests before. Go check on Pop-Tart.”

The others snickered, but Ollie glowered at Deke. “I didn’t agree to that nickname,” he grumped. 

Deke kissed his cheek. “Bring back pictures of our daughter. Binnie is going to be devastated that he missed a scan.” 

San felt something twist low in his stomach at the easy intimacy of it, the normalcy, the way Deke trusted this place not to take more than it promised. He was right though, Binnie would be crushed to miss a baby pic. He loved Ollie’s baby so much. Normally, the thought didn’t bother San. It usually made him love his mate even more. Today though, the thought landed like a lead balloon.

They stood there as Deke walked away with Lance, chatting amiably. Ollie watched them go, his trepidation evident in the pinched lines between his brows. San wondered if Veritas mistook compliance for consent, or if they simply didn’t care about the difference.

Win cleared her throat then gestured for them to follow. Saint stuck to Seth this time, with San walking between Seth and Ollie, head on a swivel. He felt like a guard dog without teeth—alert, ready, and painfully aware that if something went wrong, there would be very little he could actually stop.

This place just set his teeth on edge. Binnie had said the place was jarring, but now that San saw it for himself, he felt like he owed his mate an apology. Not for doubting him—San never doubted Binnie—but for underestimating just how invasive this place felt once it wrapped itself around you.

They made several turns before they ended up in the fertility and genetics wing, where Win showed them to a rather mundane room that looked more like a boring hotel room than a doctor’s office. Neutral walls, neutral lighting, neutral furniture. A room designed to offend no one and comfort even fewer.

When they entered, she clasped her hands in front of her. “Shall we do Seth first?”

Seth shrank in on himself. “Are you sure I’m pregnant?”

The question wasn’t medical. It was existential.

“We’re all sure,” Ollie said, giving him a little shove to the front.

Saint stepped behind their smallest omega, settling his hands on his hips. “It’s going to be okay.” Saint’s voice was steady, practiced, the same tone he used when he was forcing his own panic into submission.

Seth gave a jerky nod. Win patted the leather table gently. Seth climbed on, still visibly trembling.San watched the tremor travel through Seth’s limbs, anticipation and terror braiding together in his body.

San stepped to the head of the table as Seth laid back, looking down at his now upside down face. “Why are you so nervous? We used to dream about this? Remember? We were gonna be pregnant together and have our babies at the same time.” 

The words slipped out before San could stop them, pulled from a past he’d carefully packed away and labeled resolved.

Seth flushed then gave a wavering smile. He nodded, suddenly smelling of not fear but sadness. That shift—fear draining into something heavier—hit San harder than panic ever could, rocking him back on his heels. In his attempt to make Seth feel better, he’d made them both nostalgic and sad. Nostalgia was a dangerous thing. Dragging long buried grief to the surface of his mind.

It was hard for San to remember a time when he thought he’d be able to get pregnant, have babies, do all the things omegas do. Back before his body betrayed him and made him an alpha. Back before his future had been decided by a presentation he hadn’t wanted and hadn’t known how to mourn.

San stuffed down the panic rising to the surface as soon as Seth started to frown up at him. “Are you crying?”

San sniffled, then shook his head. “I’m just…happy for you.” 

It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

Seth didn’t believe him—that much was clear—but he let it go. San loved him for that mercy. He stepped back so Saint could take his place, leaving Win the space needed to use the ultrasound machine.

“Can you just slide your pants down around your hip bones and lift your shirt a bit?” she asked, her voice turning clinical. 

The shift was immediate, warmth replaced by procedure, emotion flattened into protocol.

Seth rushed to comply with shaky hands. San had to curl his fingers into his palms to keep from stepping back in, from fixing something that wasn’t his to fix.

As soon as San reached Ollie’s side, he murmured, “Nobody believed you were happy.”

San startled. “Shush.”

His voice came out sharper than he intended, a reflexive attempt to seal the crack before anyone could look too closely.

“Does Binnie know you wanted babies of your own?” Ollie asked in a barely there whisper. 

Ollie’s voice was gentle but relentless, the question pinging around in his brain, leaving damage in its wake.

“I do not. That’s…not what this is about.” 

San wasn’t sure when that answer had stopped being true, or if it ever had been.

“If you say so,” Ollie said doubtfully. “But if I caught it and Seth caught it, there’s no way Binnie wouldn't. He is so locked in on your scent sometimes it's hard to tell where one of you starts and the other ends.”

The idea landed deep, unsettling and intimate all at once.

San gave him a pissy look. “It’s-It’s nothing.”

“Okay,” Ollie said, his tone so affable San contemplated stomping on his foot.

“You’re lucky you’re pregnant.”

The words slipped out sharp with envy before San could soften them.

Ollie’s lips twitched with a smile. “Mm.”

There was no judgment there. Just understanding.

“Oh, well, there we are,” Win said, pulling their attention back to the screen.

San braced himself, not for the image, but for the way it was going to make everything he’d buried claw its way back to the surface.

San wasn’t sure where the baby was based on the black screen with its gray and white blobs. To him, it looked like static—meaningless noise masquerading as information—yet everyone else was holding their breath like it might reveal a miracle, which San supposed this was.

Seth hissed in pain as Win pressed the probe harder against his tummy, tearing a growl from Saint aimed at Win. San felt Saint’s reaction in his own chest, the echo of a threat response that had nowhere safe to go.

Seth slapped at him with the back of his hand without thought, then gave him an exasperated look. Saint immediately dropped his head looking contrite though he didn’t apologize. Saint’s submission wasn’t weakness; it was restraint, carefully leashed and trembling.

Win just chuckled. “I’m used to it.” 

That bothered San more than it should have.

She turned back to the screen. “Look, see those little flashes?”

“Is that a heartbeat?”

“It will be,” she said. “Right now it's more like a small electrical impulse.” 

San latched onto that phrasing—will be—as if the future tense could guarantee anything. 

“Wh-Why are there three little flashes?” Seth asked, face going pale. “Is that normal for a baby?” 

San felt the question ripple through the room, a stone dropped into still water.

“No.” Win’s smile widened. “But it is for three of them.”

“Three!?” Ollie, San and Seth said all at the same time while Saint swayed on his feet. 

San reached out instinctively, ready to catch Saint if his knees gave out.

“Yes, three. I’m sure Fen told you there was a chance of this with the fertility med, yes?”

Seth nodded. “Yeah, I guess I just didn’t think it would happen to me?” 

As if miracles were things that happened to other people.

Win laughed. “I hear that a lot in this line of work.” She turned back to the screen. “It’s fascinating. Just like Ollie, the babies are measuring larger than they should be so early.” 

Fascinating. Not concerning. Not alarming. Just interesting enough to note.

San watched as she drew a series of lines, typing Baby A, Baby B, Baby C over each little bubble. The letters made it real in a way the shapes hadn’t, three lives reduced to labels that still somehow carried weight.

“Does that mean something?” Saint asked. 

His voice was steady, but San could smell the fear underneath it, sharp and metallic.

“Nothing bad,” Win assured him. “I’m just wondering if it's the proximity to Deke that is causing this.”

San’s spine stiffened. There it was—the first quiet step toward cause and effect.

“What do you mean?” Seth asked, looking at Saint with wide eyes. “These are definitely your babies.”

“I know, little one. I wasn’t worried,” Saint said. “Not that it would matter.” 

The words were unconditional, devastating in their certainty. They’d all agreed when they became a pack that all babies are pack babies regardless of parents. It was a fairly common practice in packs like theirs—poly packs. It was honestly far more common for two to three omegas to carry babies for all pack alphas than it was for couples to have babies only by their mates. It was often too hard to keep track of who had contributed the…DNA that had led to the pregnancy. Especially when nobody cared. 

It wasn’t like back in the day where being the pack leader was a legacy handed down by birth. Their ancestors had learned their lesson on that one. DNA alone had never made anyone a fit leader. 

Seth flushed, then bit his lip. 

Love did that to people, made them brave, made them…fragile, somehow at the same time.

Win shook her head. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. What I mean is, I’m curious to know if Deke’s presence within the home is what’s causing the babies to grow faster or if it's Deke’s…intimacy with your alpha that has in some way altered him which could cause the babies growth to accelerate slightly.”

She said it gently, but the implication landed hard: bodies influencing bodies in ways they couldn’t yet measure.

“Is that a thing?” Seth asked faintly.

San could feel Seth teetering, excitement and fear warring for dominance.

Win shrugged. “We just don’t know. Deke is the first enigma we’ve been able to study as a whole. All we had prior to this was one single degraded blood sample. This is why testing him is so important.”

Important enough to justify almost anything.

To Saint, she asked, “Would you consent to us testing your blood to see if Deke has triggered your dominant alpha gene like he did with Lochlan?”

Saint shrugged. “If it helps our babies, I’ll do anything.”

San’s chest tightened at the ease of that answer.

Win’s shoulders sagged. “Excellent.” 

For a moment, she looked elated, but then her eyes shifted back to the screen. The pivot was seamless—joy tucked away the second it stopped being useful.

“I do want to caution you. In cases of multiples, there is a higher risk of miscarriage. We will do everything to monitor the babies as closely as possible, but sometimes there’s nothing we can do to stop nature from taking its course. Even the most modern medicine has its limitations. For now.” 

For now hung in the air like a promise she wasn’t ready to keep.

Seth sucked in a breath. “They might die?” 

The room seemed to shrink around the word, every sound swallowed by it.

Win placed a hand on his arm. “Its unlikely that you will lose all three. We will do everything to ensure you deliver three healthy babies, but I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t, at least, bring up the possibility.” 

Her grip was steady, reassuring in a practiced way. It was an anchor, not a promise.

“O-okay,” Seth said, eyes glassy with unshed tears. “So don’t get too attached?” 

The question wasn’t really for Win. It was for himself.

His words sounded a little bitter but also like maybe he was cautioning himself. San felt something in his chest crack at the restraint in Seth’s voice, the way he tried to preempt grief by denying himself joy. It was the same thing Ollie had done for weeks, was still doing to some degree. Maybe this was just how all pregnant people behaved. Maybe cautious optimism was all anyone really had when it came to something this complex?

“Seth, we are in uncharted waters here. While we’ve had several pregnancies with the help of our fertility medications, this is the first where an enigma is actively in the household. There’s no reason to think you are more or less likely to lose any of the babies, but I just want you to understand that this is a real possibility with any medication assisted pregnancy and with multiples. It just happens sometimes. That doesn’t mean it will happen to you. Okay?”

The language was careful—balanced, noncommittal—meant to inform without alarming, even as it quietly shifted responsibility back onto Seth’s body.

Seth gave a jerky nod. San could smell the effort it took to keep from folding in on himself.

“Would you like photos?” she asked gently.

“Yes, please,” Saint said, voice raspy. 

The word please sounded like a plea, like proof that this—they—were real.

“While I print your pictures, I need to ask a few questions about the conception. For the file. Is that alright?” 

San bristled at the timing. He’d never seen anyone move so seamlessly between human and scientist. And no, San didn’t think they were the same thing.

“I guess.”

She handed Seth a wet wipe to remove the ultrasound goop on his belly. They watched as he righted his clothing, then sat up. The intimacy of the moment evaporated the second procedure resumed.

“Can you tell me exactly how long after you took the medication, your heat kicked in?” 

From reassurance to interrogation in three seconds. This place sucked.

Seth flushed to the roots. “Um, I can’t be a hundred percent sure but not that long, I think. Maybe 4-6 hours?”

Win’s eyes widened briefly but she recovered quickly. Weird. 

San caught it—interest sharpened by surprise.

“I see. And how many days did your heat and rut last?”

Seth gnawed on his lip. “Six days, I think?” 

San felt Saint’s tension spike beside him, the silent acknowledgment that this hadn’t been normal. But also like he wondered if Seth would tell the whole truth or maybe Saint didn’t know the whole truth, maybe he didn’t know that Seth had come out of his heat before he was tied up, that he remembered everything between them, every bitemark, every bruise. 

But he’d loved it. He’d told them so, like it was a shameful secret. One he wasn’t even sure he wanted Saint to know…for many reasons. 

Win nodded, jotting down the information on a tablet she’d pulled from the countertop beside her. In between her invasive questions, the only other sound was the quiet whirr of pictures printing and Seth’s heavier breaths. Each image felt like proof and evidence all at once.

“And how many times…approximately would you say you had intercourse that concluded with you being knotted?”

The clinical phrasing didn’t soften the invasion; it sharpened it.

Seth’s embarrassment was so immediate that he whined, covering his face, his voice muffled as he asked, “I don’t know. Is that relevant?” 

San wanted to step in, to draw a line somewhere—anywhere—but the questions kept coming.

“It is, I’m afraid.”

“We were both out of our minds,” Seth said. “I barely remember those days. It's a blur.” 

A blur sounded safer than feral, than uncontrolled, than dangerous.

Win noted something down, looking to Saint. “And you feel the same? It was all a blur?”

Saint grunted in the affirmative. 

Win seemed to lock in on his reluctance. “Would you say your rut was more…intense than usual?” The pause before intense carried weight, like she was choosing the least alarming word available.

Saint shifted his weight on the balls of his feet, reaching blindly for Seth’s hand. San clocked the instinctive reach—protection, apology, ownership all tangled together.

It was Seth who answered. “His ruts are always pretty intense,” he said with confidence. Too confident. Defensive.

San knew for a fact that Seth only knew this from the other alpha’s who’d known him before they had.Which meant he was filling in gaps, smoothing over something he hadn’t fully understood at the time.

“Would you say this was a typical rut for him then?” 

The question landed sharper this time, no longer idle curiosity.

Seth opened his mouth, then closed it again, glancing at Saint. Seth had only experienced one of Saint’s ruts. Finally, the omega said, “Is this really that important.”

San felt the room hold its breath, the answer hovering just out of reach.

Win sighed, looking back and forth between the two. “I’m not here to judge. I’m merely collecting data. If you’d like to do this privately I’m fine with that, I just know how close your pack is.” 

San almost laughed at that—how easily she framed intrusion as accommodation.

“It's not the pack,” San said. “It's you. You’re the outsider here. You're the one asking hella invasive questions. We know how things went. We were there.” 

The words came out sharper than he intended, but he didn’t soften them. Someone needed to draw the line, even if it was only a symbolic one.

“You participated in their heat/rut cycle?” Win asked, turning towards San with interest. 

Interest, not concern. That distinction mattered.

It was Ollie who answered. “No, not this one. Seth wanted to ensure that the babies would be Saint’s. We didn’t want to risk any…cross-contamination.” 

The way Ollie said it—careful, deliberate—made it sound like a protocol rather than a choice, almost like he’d been there long enough to pick up a new language…their language. 

“Saint’s ruts can always be intense, feral even. In the past, it's taken Loch, Binnie and myself to keep him sated. This time, things got a little out of hand. I blame your drug for that.”

Win looked startled. “What do you mean out of hand?” 

San didn’t miss the way her surprise flickered into calculation.

“Ollie,” San warned. 

This wasn’t something that needed to be dissected under fluorescent lights.

“No, they need to understand this is a possibility.” He looked to Saint. “Don’t you agree?”

Saint nodded, miserable. “Yes.” 

The admission sat heavy, steeped in shame rather than guilt.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Seth insisted. 

Too fast. Too automatic.

Win narrowed her gaze. “What wasn’t? Exactly?” 

She leaned in slightly, scenting blood in the water.

When neither Seth nor Saint spoke, Ollie acted as spokesperson once more. “Saint has documented diagnoses of PTSD and OCD. The medications you introduced to push Seth into his heat seemed to trigger a new level of paranoia in Saint who was already going into an intense rut cycle.”

“Meaning…” Win prodded.

Her tone suggested she already knew. She just wanted it said.

“Meaning he tied Seth to the bed and refused to let him go,” Ollie said with no feeling whatsoever. 

The room seemed to tilt on its axis.

“B-But only for a couple of days and only because he was protecting me. He thought he was protecting me,” he corrected, probably worried about sounding like a victim defending his abuser. “He wasn’t in his right mind. He thought that the rest of the pack would take me from him. He did untie me.”

Eventually.

San felt the familiar urge to intervene, to contextualize, to soften—but nothing about this needed softening.

“And while you were tied up were you still engaging in intercourse? Were you still being knotted regularly?” 

San was taken aback by the clinical indifference in Win’s voice, like she was asking about dosage, not consent. 

“Yes,” Seth mumbled.

The word barely cleared his throat.

“Would you say the encounters were more aggressive or less aggressive once you were subdued?” 

San felt something cold coil in his gut. “What the fuck does that matter?” he heard himself ask. 

He didn’t bother moderating his tone. Some questions didn’t deserve politeness.

Win’s gaze snapped to his, like she’d forgotten he was there. “It all matters.”

To her. To her research. Not necessarily to the people sitting in front of her.

“I told you, I was just as out of it as he was,” Seth lied. “Whatever he was doing to me, I didn’t mind. Clearly.”

San recognized the defensive cadence immediately—the way victims tried to reclaim agency by reframing harm as choice.

Win gave him a patient look. “Seth, this is important. You have an untrained enigma in your pack. You have an alpha with mental health issues. You have a multiples pregnancy that occurred during a feral rut and an intense heat due to our medications. I need to know how this affected you both mentally and physically so we can prevent it from happening to anyone else.” 

Prevent it from happening? Prevent harm, or simply control variables better next time?

“I took photos,” Ollie said. 

The words dropped into the room like broken glass.

Seth and Saint both looked at him, betrayed.

“What?” Seth gasped. 

San felt the fracture ripple outward, trust cracking in places that had once felt unbreakable.

“I wanted Veritas to see what their drugs were capable of. But Saint was so distraught over what had happened, I hesitated to give them to her. But I think it's important that she sees exactly what their drugs did. Besides, she can’t share this outside Veritas anyway. Right, Win?” 

Ollie’s voice was steady, but San could hear the tremor underneath—the fine line between advocacy and regret.

San peered over his shoulder as he pulled his phone out and navigated to his gallery, thumbing through until he found the pictures in question. San knew what he was about to see and still couldn’t look away.

San flinched. He couldn’t help it. Seth was…battered. Not broken, not ruined, but marked in ways that told a story no one should ever have to justify.

When Ollie handed over the phone, Win’s mask slipped, her gasp loud in the otherwise silent room. For one brief, unguarded second, she looked like a human being instead of a clinician.

Saint’s head drooped, but Seth pulled him against him, burying his face in his neck.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay.” 

San didn’t believe that for a second, but not because of anything to do with Saint.

“I should be soothing you, not the other way around,” the alpha said, self-loathing dripping from every syllable.

“We’re supposed to take care of each other,” Seth reminded him. 

And that was the tragedy of it—they had, in all the wrong ways.

She handed the phone back to Ollie, her composure firmly nailed back in place. The speed with which she recovered made San’s stomach turn.

“Would you be so kind as to email me those for the file?” she asked placidly. As if they were lab results. As if pain translated cleanly into data.

To Saint, she said, “Do you remember what you were thinking or feeling when the injuries in those photos occurred?”

Saint shook his head but not to signify he didn’t remember but more like he couldn’t believe his thought process in that moment. San recognized that look—the horror of hindsight.

“I was sure that the rest of the pack would take him from me,” he said, voice cracking. “It sounds crazy now but at the time I was positive that they would and even that they should but also that I couldn’t let that happen. I don’t remember the marks. I don’t remember much of anything other than just this surety that if I untied him, I’d lose him.”

The confession felt less like an excuse and more like an autopsy, like he was figuring out his own motivates in real time. 

“Baby…” Seth said, voice choked with tears.

Win nodded. “Given your PTSD and your proximity to Deke as well as a history of feral ruts, I’d say this was actually the best possible outcome.” 

San felt something cold and furious settle in his chest.

“What does that mean?” San said before he could stop himself.  The words tore out of him, sharp and unfiltered.

“Only that going forward, if Seth wants to use any fertility medications for future pregnancies with Saint, we will likely need them to stay here in the lab under supervision.” 

There it was. The price tag.

“You want to supervise us having sex?” Seth said dully. 

The numbness in his voice scared San more than anger would have.

“Any good heat or rut facility has 24/7 monitoring. This is nothing new. It's just biology,” Win said.

Just biology—the phrase people used when they didn’t want to say control.

“I assure you, our researchers and physicians are far more interested in medicine and biology than in watching two strangers have sex.”

San wondered if she truly believed that, or if belief was irrelevant when outcomes were measurable.

“Couldn’t our pack just…help?” Seth asked, face more flushed than San had ever seen it.

Hope crept into his voice, fragile and tentative.

“Do you think your pack could monitor you effectively without also going into a full blown heat/rut cycle?” Win asked. 

The question wasn’t cruel. It was surgical.

Her voice was light, but it was clear she was driving the point home. Logic had never felt so sharp.They were all too tied together. Blood bonded. Claimed. Entangled in ways that didn’t respect clinical boundaries. There was no way to maintain any measure of control, not with any certainty. They were all far too in love with each other. 

Love, San realized dimly, was the variable Veritas would never stop trying to neutralize.

And Deke’s enigma power ate through suppressants like they were tic-tacs. Did Veritas make super-suppressants? Would they try to use them for guinea pigs for that too? The thought made San’s skin crawl.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Win said suddenly, setting down the tablet. “I’m going to give you some prenatal vitamins and a schedule for tapering off your ADHD medications as quickly and safely as possible.” 

Seth looked like he was going to puke. He nodded, his skin tinged green even in the dim lighting.

She turned on the other pregnant omega. “Ollie? Are you ready for your scan? Would you like to take a look at your…what did Deke call her? Your Pop-Tart?” 

The sudden gentleness felt jarring after everything they’d just agreed to without meaning to.

“Sure. Why not,” Ollie said, sounding more resigned than excited, giving more credence to San’s earlier theory that maybe distance at this stage of pregnancy came more from survival rather than disinterest. These little unborn lives were delicate things, there and gone in an instant sometimes. It was likely safer to keep some distance from it. 

But somehow that did nothing to quell the ache in his chest. 

This feeling of what might have been.