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Nakhun’s eyelids fluttered. Bright, fluorescent light. A thin, hard mattress under his back. The harsh, phenolic scent of antiseptics. Hospital, he surmised, and a glance left and right confirmed it.
“Sir, how are you feeling?” Sila stepped into view.
As Nakhun attempted to sit up, a sharp pain from where the bullet had struck him, now dressed in gauze and tape, gave an answer. Still, he replied, “I’m fine.”
“The doctors have given you and Phatsa clearance to leave,” said Ai, standing on the opposite site of the bed from Sila.
“Phatsa?” This jolted the alpha out of the last lingering haze of sleep.
“We had them check him just to be safe, sir. They say he just needs to rest.”
Nakhun’s eyebrows raised as an idea occurred to him. “We’re going to Phatsa’s condo. Call his father and tell him his son is ill and needs him. No other details.”
Ai and Sila exchanged a glance. “Yes, sir.”
Who the hell was calling him at four AM?
Chakjetsada fumbled for the ringing phone on the bedside table, dragging it across to his one open eye. Phatsa?! He jabbed at the pulsing green button and lifted it to his ear. “Son, what is it?”
An unfamiliar voice replied, “Mr. Chakjetsada, this is Mr. Phatsa’s assistant. Your son has been in an accident; he’s fine, but he needs to rest. We’re bringing him to his condo.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Yes, thank you Mr. Chakjetsada. Goodbye.”
As he pulled on his clothing, his thoughts roiled. If this was a trap, they’d learn the same lesson he taught that bitch Lamai twenty five years ago. If they harmed his son… Chakjetsada set his jaw, grabbed the car keys off the dresser and hurried out to the elevator.
As soon as he slammed the door to his truck, he had to brace himself, white-knuckled, against the steering wheel. A sudden pheromone memory of frangipani and incense ash crashed over him like a wave, filling his lungs, diffusing through his veins. Chakjetsada breathed in deeply as he struggled to banish it and regain control of his body. He broke the bond decades ago. He was free, had been free for decades. The choking miasma faded as quickly as it had appeared, and he stabbed the key into the ignition. No time for this; his son needed him.
Only the earliest of commuters were on the road at this hour, when the city’s eastern horizon was still dark, but he took the expressway anyway. Not far past the toll plaza, Chakjetsada felt a lurch in his stomach and a sudden rush of blood to his head. He pulled over onto the shoulder just in time for a second wave of unwelcome memories to engulf him.
They came in flashes, as they always did. Abducted, bundled unceremoniously into the trunk of a car by masked men. A seemingly endless drive in complete darkness. A dazed, unsteady walk through a large house before facing a dour woman in flashy jewelry who examined him like a soup chicken in the market and said something about a debt being cleared. Pain that turned instantly into craving as she pulled his head to one side and closed her jaws around the most sensitive point in his neck. The first time that cloying scent of frangipani and ash had spread through his body. Months and months sunk into the world of pure instinct, trapped in a room in that estate but not wanting to leave – except in brief, terrifying moments of clarity. The first time he felt Phatsa inside his womb. Frangipani, salt spray and rain as Lamai bit through the umbilical cord and placed their newborn son on his chest.
His mate announcing that she was taking Phatsa away from him. Uncontrollable, white-hot rage. Alpha and true omega locked in battle. His hands around her throat, feeling like he was being electrocuted but unwilling, unable to let go. The breaking of the bond with her final, dying gasp, like being hit by a shockwave. Terror like he had never felt before, stuffing her jewelry into his pockets, ransacking her purse for cash, wrapping Phatsa in his blanket and fleeing barefoot into the palm plantation around the house. Dry thunder and lightning strobing above the crowns of the endless rows of trees. Flashing, flashing--
Chakjetsada’s eyes snapped open. A frowning traffic cop was pounding on the window, sweeping his flashlight across his face. He turned away for a moment, collected himself and rolled down the window.
“You can’t park here. What’s the problem?”
“Sorry, sir. Feeling nauseous. I think it’s food poisoning.” Lest the nosy officer keep questioning him, he gave a pulse of unpleasant pheromones. The man in the tight-fitting brown uniform suddenly looked like he was struck by the same bad stomach.
“There’s an exit two kilometers up. Use the facilities there.”
“Thank you, officer.” He rolled up the window as the man returned to his motorcycle. He had no intention of stopping; the interruption had broken the vortex of memory. He was Chakjetsada, he was free and his son needed him. As the sky began to turn a lighter shade of purple, he pulled his truck back onto the road.
The guard in the black suit stepped out of Chakjetsada’s way before he could ram him aside, meeting his glare with a bland smile. No time for that, he reprimanded himself as he hurried into the bedroom. There, under the dark blue duvet, was the still, pale form of his son. He sank into the chair at the bedside and stroked the auburn-dyed hair that lay fanned out on the pillow framing his face. A soothing tide of sea salt enveloped the sleeping young man like he was back in the safety of the womb. He automatically answered with his own fragrant shower of rain and vetiver. Color began to reenter those sallow cheeks.
Chakjetsada’s eyes were drawn down to his son’s neck, where a double row of teeth marks seemed to mock him. This is your fault, they said.
No! It shouldn’t have been possible. It just shouldn’t. Pure omegas were so rare that some believed them to be pure legend. What were the odds that one would give birth to another? When young Phatsa had shown signs of alpha-like vigor and prowess, it had never even occurred to him that he might be a pure omega. It had filled him with the sort of fear he hadn’t felt since he had fled through the oil palms – his own son, doomed to be to be as vicious and brutal as Lamai and her henchmen. That’s when he had sent him to Bangkok, with the excuse that business kept him out of the country most of the time, allowing only for occasional visits to renew their bond. His caretakers were chosen for their ignorance of the world of alphas and omegas; his son would inevitably become a monster, but until then… Until then…
But he had been so wrong, and the cruel garland on Phatsa’s neck was proof. That had been his one consolation: that his son would never experience what he had to endure.
Only this could bring Chakjetsada back into the world that he had so carefully avoided for so long. He had considered killing the alpha who did it, but the Devathitirats were something very different from the creditors and debtors, unfaithful lovers and backstabbing business partners he usually dealt in – different, too, from the thuggish little alphas of the countryside like Lamai. His identity would have been revealed, and… No, it was too terrible to think about.
But wasn’t he risking the same just by being here? What if that damned alpha showed up, asked too many questions? What if his whole family barged in and cornered them both like rats? No, he couldn’t think about that. Chakjetsada placed his hand over the grotesque mark on his son’s body, as if hiding it would erase the damage. His story would hold, the Devathitirats would never suspect him as anything but a disreputable rural alpha, and Phatsa would never know that frangipani and ash were anything but the scents of a gentle omega mother who had loved his father without the animal cruelty of a bond.