Thorns That Bloom (Venusverse), page 4
The man I saw in the cafeteria for a few seconds.
Whose name I don’t even know.
A man who didn’t even look back at me.
I get into the elevator and press the button. The silence and stillness make my mind even louder. I frown at my reflection. This is just weird. You…are weird. But I have no choice now but to go there. I promised I would sort this out for Madison.
Technically, I’m not stepping over any line. I’m doing nothing but my job.
Maybe this is just some strange biological thing—some wires getting crossed inside my brain. I’ve heard of people being actually, physically allergic to someone else’s pheromones. Sneezing, swelling, all that. This could be like that, only…the other way around. Or maybe I’m just horny and my rut has come far too early. In which case, I need to set my mind straight, because this isn’t right.
I sigh, shaking my head. Get it together.
When the elevator finally opens with a ding, I run my hand through my puffy hair and walk out confidently. A young woman, probably some sort of secretary, appears in front of me and pauses sharply, waiting to get in.
With a polite smile, I step aside for her while she smiles back and lowers her head. A faint scent of mandarins trails behind her as she does.
I head toward the Engineering, which should be straight ahead. As I sober up to reason a little, I realize that I’ve been here far too few times to really know who to talk about this to.
My dad's voice rings in my ears: You never think before you act, Theo. I’ve always protested against his slander, knowing how stuck in my head I can get. I guess that today, he’s right.
The atmosphere is markedly different compared to downstairs. The carpets are perfectly clean, the walls don’t have scuffs or grazes on them, and instead of metal and dust, the air smells of some basic, inoffensive scent like ‘office bliss’ or ‘fresh clouds’ or something like that.
I wander for a while, following the sound of clicking keyboards and the low hum of talking. My legs freeze, and my heart gallops when I catch that scent again. Blackcurrant and sage. Weak and gentle, but undeniable.
Like some bloodhound, I shoot my head to the side, sniffing the air. Looking around, I spot a smaller room away from the main office area, with its door propped wide open.
Hesitantly, I follow the scent that makes me feel all mushy and absent-minded until my boots reach the door frame. I finally pause, clutching the tablet in my hand. The quiet clicking of the keyboard coming from inside ceases almost immediately.
By the time I notice the man sitting behind a monitor in the dim light, his eyes have already found me.
My heart hiccups. With a surge of nervousness rushing through my body, I shoot my hand up with a wave and smile. “Hey, I… I’m from the manufacturing floor. Theo. I’ve got some errors that I need to discuss with someone from Engineering so that we can continue with our work,” I say, maybe a little too quickly and excitedly.
Even when I step into the room, his dark eyes are too far away to see properly what color they are, no matter the way they widen. He glances down and then up at me again before breaking our gaze.
He starts to speak, but his words get caught in his throat at first, I think. “I don’t deal with that stuff,” he finally says, sinking behind the monitor instantly.
It’s a bit of a blow to my little dreamy reality, but I keep my smile.
I shift on my feet and swallow hard. What am I even doing here? Trying to find out his name? Trying to get closer? Why? For what nonsensical reason?
He’s probably taken. I mean, he’s pregnant, for god’s sake. And I’m here making a fool of myself.
“Oh,” I say, realizing I haven’t responded in a timely manner. He keeps clicking on his computer, face hidden by the monitor, but the movements are slower now. “That’s alright. My…my bad. I also— By the way, I wanted to apologize. I bumped into you in the cafeteria earlier, didn’t I?” Stupidly, I keep going, like I don’t already sound like a mumbling weirdo.
The chair creaks as he moves to glance at me again. His gaze is intense, even all this way, but fleeting.
“It’s fine.”
And just like that, he’s out of my sight, concealed once more.
I feel the electric excitement that shoots through my fingertips moments before it fades. His pheromones fill the room, but something about the scent has changed. It still smells like sage and blackcurrant, but there's a note of bitterness that's growing stronger and more overwhelming by the second. Even the air is heavier, somehow.
Am I making him uncomfortable?
Just as I consider apologizing, I hear steps behind me. I turn sharply to a familiar face that I can’t quite put a name to, poking into the doorway with a curious expression.
“Everything alright here?” the man asks. I’m pretty sure he’s one of the senior engineers.
The mysterious omega doesn’t respond. Letting out a quiet sigh, I finally take the hint and step out of the office, facing him. “Hey. Sorry, I was… Madison needs you to have a look at this and amend—”
Before I can even unlock the tablet to show him, he rolls his eyes and sighs.
“What is it now? Come, follow me,” he grumbles, nearly pulling it out of my hand. I glance into the small office one more time, the apology still on my tongue, but I swallow it and leave with the man instead.
Why do I feel so disappointed?
I rub the back of my neck, looking over his shoulder as we pass through the hall toward the office department. “You’re, errr…Theo, right?” he mutters as we go.
“Yeah.”
“Madison’s sending the pretty young boys up here now, thinking that might smooth things up, huh? She knows I’m married,” he says with a bitter chuckle. I hang my head and catch up so that I walk next to him instead of behind.
“I offered. She seemed to have a lot on her plate.”
He gives me an incredulous side-eye. “Mhm…” The more I look at him, the more familiar he seems. The balding head, sharp jawline, and strangely vivid tie. I think I’ve seen him back on the floor a few times, bickering with Madison, and in some of those boring HR meetings. He notices my stare and smirks. “Kyle.”
“Right!” I blurt out with a grin. “Right. Sorry.”
“Anyway, I guess this one was our fault,” he notes in a low tone as he scrolls down the report on the tablet. We’re already turning to his cubicle, where he throws himself into his leather office chair and rests back. “Give me a minute to fix this.”
Nodding, I awkwardly lean against the wall and rest my hands together. “Yeah, take your time.” I glance around, seeing pinned photos of him and a man who looks a little too much like his sibling, but who I assume is his husband, as well as two cats. It takes only a few moments of stillness until I can’t help myself and open my mouth again. “I wasn’t sure who to go to, so I just wandered into that office. I think I’ve upset, umm…?” Trailing off in a questioning tone, I hope Kyle catches on.
“Sam, you mean? Oh, no. It’s-it’s fine, I think,” he says with a glance toward me before looking to the computer screen again.
Sam. Part of me purrs with joy over the knowledge of his name. Another, the rational one, shakes its head in disapproval.
“He’s quite reserved, he is. Doesn’t leave that room much unless someone drags him out for lunch,” Kyle keeps talking, almost absent-mindedly, while editing terrifyingly complex-looking files and adding long notes under a few sections at a maddening speed. His fingers glide across the keyboard as if it’s made of butter. “Good worker, though. From what I can tell, anyway. Has only been here for like two…three weeks?”
“Aha.”
“Maybe it’s some medical thing? Some weird side effects of an omega pregnancy and all that? Don’t really know much about all that, if you get me.” After a pause, Kyle turns to me with a raised brow, like he only just realized or remembered I’m an alpha. He makes an awkward smirk and clicks a few more things quickly before returning the tablet to me. “Who knows? Just heard they made a point to act with care around him, and it wasn’t us betas who got that special talk,” he says, shrugging.
I accept the tablet, nodding with a thankful smile.
I don’t know much about omega pregnancy, either. Never thought about it.
“Give Madison my deepest, sincerest apologies for the mistake,” he adds with a heavy dose of sarcasm, making me snort.
“I sure will.”
Kyle leans back in his chair, resting his hands over his stomach, and I walk back the way we came.
Once again, I feel like I’m in some sort of haze as I pass through the hall, replaying the few blurry images of Sam carved into my mind from before—his cautious gaze peering from behind the monitor like a rabbit frozen among the strands of tall grass.
I return downstairs and return the tablet to Madison, hardly even keeping the focus to joke and converse with her about Kyle and his slight dig. I excuse myself, testing the limits of my time away from work as I slip into one of the less-used toilets, where I hum an unsteady melody of a may-be-song into my phone.
Resting the back of my head against the tiled wall, I stare at the ceiling with the spiderweb in the corner of it. When we started dating, Emily told me, with this infatuation in her wide, bright eyes, how beautiful she found it that I had made a song about her. She said it was the most romantic thing in the world that her presence made art blossom inside of me.
But that hasn’t happened in a while. There hasn’t been much magic happening inside of me, much inspiration blossoming in this way in my life recently. Looking at her hasn’t made me feel anything in months. The songs I play when I perform have been stale at best. And I miss making new music.
I let out a controlled exhale, realizing how stupid this entire situation is.
All I know is his name. All I’ve got is his scent. Comforting and alluring in a strangely, deeply intimate way, but that isn’t enough. That isn’t logical. I’m being completely unreasonable.
Still, it brings one thing into focus.
What I’m feeling, no matter how illogical, finally gives me the courage to act. Opening the message window I’ve been dreading since earlier, I take a deep breath.
Can’t keep going like this, Ems
We need to talk
Chapter 4
Sam
This has been a long week, hasn’t it? I can hardly believe it’s been nearly a month since I started here. The first three weeks were marked by endless anxiety as I tried to catch up and learn everything. With a constant stream of new names, places, and experiences… I’ve barely had the mental energy to unpack all my things, coming home every evening tired and hungry and completely drained.
Now that I’ve finally settled a bit, it’s my body that’s giving me trouble.
“Almost Friday,” I whisper, rubbing my forehead while I rest my elbows on the table. The truth is, I still have most of the day left, but I try to convince myself that Wednesday lunchtime is close enough to the weekend for me to survive.
Still, my head’s killing me. I haven’t felt this bad since the first month or two when I had constant nausea.
I take a sip of the water next to me, hoping it’s just dehydration. It doesn’t help much with the headache or the strange sense of unease, so I just shake it off, swallowing hard and focusing back on the screen.
“Sam?”
I jolt and quickly look over the monitor toward the door.
Kristoff stands there with that friendly, hopeful smile. I already know what he’s going to ask before he opens his mouth. “Want to go for lunch?”
The usual split-second reaction of discomfort flashes over me. I quickly push it aside, wondering if maybe having something to eat might make me feel better. After all, I haven’t eaten anything since morning.
“Sure,” I say, standing up slowly. This room’s getting stuffy, anyway. I dread to think about how bad it’s going to get in the coming summer months. But by then, I imagine that everything is going to be insufferable to me.
Kristoff chats away about some trip he’s going on with his friends, but I scarcely listen as we make our way to the cafeteria. I have my own shit to worry about. With each passing month, I get more and more stressed about all the stuff that needs to be sorted and bought, and all the knowledge I have to absorb to be the best parent I can be. The best person I can become.
I need to get my life together by the time the baby’s here, and that time doesn’t feel as impossibly far in the future as it did even a couple of weeks ago.
We get downstairs and enter the massive room buzzing with voices and the clinking of cutlery against plates. I try not to let the sounds overwhelm me, keeping my head down and my breath steady. Every time I get out of that safe space of mine and I’m thrust among people, it feels like everyone’s staring at me. They probably are; some of them, at least…
The middle-aged ladies from the office sit together at the largest table, tirelessly chattering like some hive-mind, and when I pass by, I can almost sense their excited urge to come up to me and ask about all the silly things they want to ask.
Questions about the baby. How am I doing? How far along am I? The intrusive small talk that I genuinely have no mental capacity for.
One of the big disadvantages of pregnancy when you’re an antisocial introvert.
A part of me feels bad for coming off as so distant and unfriendly, but I’m taking everything one day at a time right now. If I have only enough energy for either doing my work properly or being friendly with my coworkers, I will choose the one that pays the bills.
Thankfully, Kristoff usually lets me keep my distance. I sit with his little group in the corner of the cafeteria as usual. They’re all younger guys and somewhat awkward. The good thing about that is that they leave me alone and don’t try to force a conversation most of the time. It’s an arrangement I’m satisfied with.
I poke the meat on the plate. Is the uneasy feeling at the bottom of my stomach nausea? Anxiety? Food irritation? I can’t even tell anymore.
Sighing, I close my eyes briefly and rub my forehead, trying to relieve the uncomfortable pressure. The people from Manufacturing are so loud I can hear their laughing and hollering all the way from across the room. Lowering my head, I press my index and middle fingers against my temple.
Come on. You’re fine.
But there’s something not-okay about my body. It’s not a panic attack. I know those well enough now. No, this is something else, and not knowing exactly what is happening to me starts to build the dread inside my chest.
“Are you alright, Sam?” one of the guys asks.
I don’t like how all their attention turns to me, so I face away. “Yeah, I’m…I’ll be right back,” I say while standing up. The sweater I’m wearing suddenly feels like a straitjacket and a furnace at the same time. Wiping away the droplets of sweat pooling on my forehead underneath my hair, I walk toward the restroom.
By the time I open the door, I feel so unwell I don’t even pay mind to that sense of sharp, tense discomfort that now lives within me whenever I go there. Any lingering memories are overridden by the goddamn hot flushes passing over me and the lightness of my head that makes me shaky on my feet.
I lean over one of the sinks with the long mirror running across the wall above it. Hell, I look pale.
What’s going on with me? These symptoms almost feel like when I’m going into heat, but…I’m pregnant. This shouldn’t be happening, right?
No one’s around, and at least it’s quiet here. Not counting the dripping from one of the toilets that irritates me more than it should.
Hanging my head between my shoulders, I take some deep breaths before pulling off my sweater so that I don’t combust. I feel sticky and sweaty, but upon checking in the mirror, there are no sweat patches under my arms. Is it all in my head?
“Come on,” I mutter to myself. When the light-headedness doesn’t subside after a few minutes of diligent calming techniques, I sit down with the wall against my back. As much as I don’t want anyone finding me like this and giving me weird looks, I’m starting to worry whether this is normal, so I pull out my phone to do a quick search.
‘Heat-like symptoms are fairly common in the first half of an omega’s pregnancy.’
Rolling my eyes, I rest my head back with a tense grimace. I don’t remember the doctor telling me about this during my checkups. Then again, there’s been a lot on my mind recently.
‘Due to the hormonal imbalances, the gestational parent might experience severe symptoms, release excessive pheromones which they are unable to control, or, in some cases, temporarily lose the ability to sense pheromones.’
My hormones feel pretty out of whack right now, yeah.
‘An omega might unexpectedly enter a short state of heat, lasting for 12 to 28 hours.’
My insides tense up painfully as I read that sentence. I know my body, and I know this uncomfortable, nagging sensation. Still, it terrifies me. It terrifies me because I thought I would have at least nine months to deal with what happened before going through another heat. Instead, my trembling body screams at me that it’s going to happen now, and that sets off the powerful beast of panic that’s living inside me.
“No, no, no,” I whisper, shaking my head, breath hitching.
Surely, it’s just the symptoms mimicking a heat. I can’t be in heat. I don’t…want to. I can’t.
As if I’ve only now realized where I am, the reality of it hits me—the white walls, the lack of windows, the faintly sterile smell. Widening my eyes, I quickly try to build a wall between myself and the memories that could come flooding in at any moment. I don’t want to be out of control again. I don’t want to think about it.
I have to calm down.
The sound of the door opening makes me twitch. Voices. Steps. People.
My mind splits in two directions: one half of it still sane, trying to get me to stand up and not embarrass myself in front of whoever enters, while the other plummets even deeper into despair and frenzy.
