Page 5 of For All My Effort
I felt the stress drain from my body. I inhaled deeply, taking in his apple scent mixed with lavender. No wait, that was me. Leaning forward, the male let me inhale by his neck, where scents were the strongest. I hadn’t noticed it before. He’s been claimed already.
“Are we mates?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Guilt. That was a new emotion for me. At the OC I refused to make any friends. For starters, their families came to visit, whereas mine stopped being welcome after I went into a teeny tiny rage the first week after my imprisonment. Then there was the fact that I snuck out of the facility to attend protests, and I didn’t trust a single omega in the compound to not tattle. I was bitter, refusing to trust anyone.
I never considered that I’d find a mate. My plan was to live at the OC until I figured out how to survive on my own. I hadn’t figured out how to do that yet, nevertheless it was in my plans.
But knowing I had mates. And forgot about them. It felt like I had abandoned them. Treating them worse than my parents had me. I’d claimed them. I could scent my perfume embedded in their scents.
Tears burned my eyes, making my head hurt even worse.
Then I felt it. A vibration in his chest that stopped the tears in their tracks. A purr. I’d heard them before in my mandatory omega lessons. In the OC shoppette, you can actually purchase recordings of the sound in blankets.
Those always felt wrong. It was just a noise like any other.
This one was like the best drugs in the world. Not that I’d actually ever taken drugs. But I would do terrible, sinful things for him to keep going.
“Well, it seems even if bits of your memory are missing, your instincts are still intact.” The doctor’s voice ruined the blissful state I was in.
Pulling back, I reached up to wrap my fingers around the male’s wrist, keeping his hand around the back of my neck where I wanted him. I was starting to think I should get everyone’s name if I was going to be so dramatic in front of them.
I would’ve sworn my emotions were more stable than this. I couldn’t even remember the last time I cried—outside of enduring painful heats by myself.
Coming to stand next to me again, the beta doctor started flashing a little light in my eyes. “I’m going to get a technician ready for some scans of your brain. Memory loss isn’t uncommon with head injuries. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know if it’s permanent or not.”
“What about other side effects?” the blond alpha asked. He wasn’t close enough that I could take in his scent fully, but I was getting something tropical. Not beachy, more foodwise.
“Let’s not borrow trouble, yeah?” the doctor said. “I’ll leave you all alone for a bit to get your images all scheduled. If you need anything, Hannah, there’s a button on the bed rail you can press for a nurse.”
The doctor left, and that time, I didn’t flinch from the hallway lights. Progress.
“So…” I started. “I kind of need to know your names.”
The alpha with the berry scent and tattoos spoke up first. “I’m Zeke.”
“Han,” the handsome, pumpkin scented alpha added.
Fingers tightened around my neck slightly, physically turning so I was facing him. “Jackson.”
I blushed. Heat rushing to my cheeks at the intensity of Jackson’s gaze. When I turned away, he easily let me.
The last male looked like he was in pain. He was the lightest of all the alphas with his dirty blond hair, perfectly unperfect like he’d purposefully ran his fingers through the length in order to style it. As he stepped closer, his tropical scent became stronger, letting me pull out notes of pineapple and guava. Mostly the latter.
In some ways, he was similar to Han in the way both alphas held themselves, prim and proper like they’d been trained to walk with sticks up their asses. Only this alpha, he never relaxed.
“Sebastian,” he finally said. “My name is Sebastian. But you usually call me Seb.”
His voice almost broke. And it felt like my heart was breaking right along with him.
“Should I call you that?” I asked. That instinct to comfort them, to give them what they wanted was pulling at me like the memories were simply hiding inside my head, attempting to fight their way out. I tried, imagining hands inside my brain clawing their way toward the memories, ignoring the pounding in my head that was getting stronger.
“Hey, no, don’t hurt yourself.” Seb said, rubbing his fingers against my temples. It wasn’t where the pounding was, but it still felt good to have his fingers on me. If there was any doubt that he was my mate beyond our marks, the fact that my body simply obeyed his command was proof enough that I instinctually trusted him.
“Well,” someone said, clapping their hands. I turned away from Seb to look at Han who kept saying, “I feel like we’ve had our morbid moment but it’s time to look at the positives. Hannah is awake, and so far, only her memory seems to be hurt. As far as I’m concerned, we can make new memories.”
Next to Han, Zeke started nodding. “A few hours ago, I would have agreed to memory loss if it meant you woke up.”