Chapter 6: Bloodlines
John woke to the scent of old paper and the dry, comforting crackle of a fire. He was still on the sofa, but the fleece throw had been replaced by a heavier wool blanket. The dizzying view of the city was gone, replaced by floor-to-ceiling shelves of dark wood, crammed with books.
His head was pillowed on something firm and warm. He shifted, and a hand settled on his hair, stroking slowly.
“Finally.” Derek’s voice came from directly above him. John was lying with his head in Derek’s lap.
He jerked upright, scrambling back until he hit the sofa’s arm. The movement made his head swim. Derek let him go, watching with those unnervingly calm blue eyes. He was seated in a wingback chair that had been pulled close to the sofa, a thick, leather-bound volume open on his own lap. The firelight danced over the sharp planes of his face.
“Where are we?” John’s voice was gravelly from sleep and crying.
“My library. You were restless. The fire seemed to help.” Derek nodded toward the hearth. “And the books contain… relevant information.”
John wrapped the blanket tighter around himself. He was wearing soft, unfamiliar sweatpants and a t-shirt. Derek must have changed him while he was unconscious. The thought made a hot flush creep up his neck. “I want my own clothes.”
“They were ruined. These are yours now.” Derek said it with finality, as if gifting John with sweatpants was a settled decree. He closed the book on his lap with a soft thud. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been hit by a truck. Then reversed over. For good measure.” The honesty slipped out before he could filter it. The nausea was a dull, waiting presence, but the bone-deep fatigue was worse.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Derek’s lips. “Accurate. It will get better. Then, according to these, it will likely get worse again before the second trimester.”
John’s gaze fell to the book. The cover was embossed with a symbol he didn’t recognize—a stylized wolf and crescent. “What is that?”
“A history. My history. Our history, now.” Derek leaned forward, placing the book on the low table between them. He opened it carefully to a page marked with a silk ribbon. The paper was thick, yellowed at the edges, the ink a faded brown. “This is a record of the Blackwood line. Alphas and their mates. Births and deaths. Going back three hundred years.”
John didn’t want to look. He looked anyway. The script was elegant, flowing. He saw names, dates. Eleanor, Omega of Alpha Alistair, bore twin sons, 1842. Perished in childbirth. His breath hitched.
Derek’s finger trailed down the page. “Here. My grandfather, Alpha William, and his mate, Daniel.” He turned a few pages. The script became more modern. “My father, Alpha Richard, and my mother, Clara.” His voice tightened, just for a second. “She died when I was ten. A rogue alpha attack. Not related to… this.”
He turned another page. John saw Derek’s name, entered in a strong, black hand. Derek Alistair Blackwood, Alpha-Heir, born 1994. Next to it, the space for a mate’s name was blank. Until now.
“You’re going to put me in there,” John whispered. It wasn’t a question.
“You are already in there.” Derek turned to the very last page, which was fresh, the paper pristine. In the same black ink, still gleaming faintly, was an entry.
John Peterson, Omega of Alpha Derek, Claimed 2024.
Below it, a single, stark line waited. Heir, anticipated 2025.
John stared at the wet ink. It felt like a sentence. His fingers, seemingly of their own accord, drifted to his stomach, pressing against the soft cotton of the t-shirt. Still flat. Empty. But not empty. A life, and a ledger entry.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“So you understand.” Derek sat back, his gaze intense. “This isn’t a mistake. It’s not a lab accident. It’s a pattern repeating. A biological imperative. Your hidden bloodline called to mine. The project was just… a convenient catalyst.” He gestured to the shelves, to the hundreds of books. “They’re all histories, genealogies, studies of our kind. You have a right to know. To know what you are. What we are.”
“I’m a person,” John said, but the protest sounded weak even to him.
“You are. And you’re an omega. And you’re carrying the next Blackwood alpha.” Derek said it without arrogance, as a simple chain of facts. “These things aren’t separate. They’re layers of the same truth.”
John pulled his knees to his chest, making himself small. “And what if I don’t want this truth? Any of it? The throwing up, the biting, the… the expected heir?” He spat the last word.
Derek was silent for a long moment. The fire popped. “You think I wanted this?” he finally said, his voice low. “To find my fated mate as a stranger sick on my bathroom floor? To have my legacy secured by a corporate research screw-up?” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I fought this. For years. The pressure from the family council, the endless introductions to suitable omega families… it was a business transaction. Then you walked into that clinic.”
He leaned forward again, elbows on his knees, his eyes capturing John’s. “I didn’t want a transaction. And then, there you were. Smelling like desperation and cheap laundry detergent and something else… something that reached into my chest and twisted. I knew. The moment I saw you, before the change, before the bite, I knew. It was the most inconvenient, frustrating, undeniable thing that has ever happened to me.”
John searched his face. The frustration there was real, raw. It mirrored his own. It was the first thing that felt like common ground.
“So what do we do?” The ‘we’ felt foreign on his tongue.
“We proceed.” Derek nodded to the book. “We learn. You eat what you can keep down. You rest. You let your body adjust. And you let me take care of you.” He said it not as a request, but as the first step in a necessary, mutual strategy.
“I’m not a thing to be taken care of.”
“No. You’re a liability if you’re not,” Derek said, bluntly. “A sick, underweight, stressed omega is a risk to the pregnancy. My job is to eliminate risk. So, for now, that means care. It’s not a luxury. It’s a biological requirement of the bond. Your instincts will crave it. Fighting them will only make you sicker.” He paused. “You felt it last night. When you stopped fighting.”
John remembered. The helpless surrender, the shameful comfort. He looked away, toward the shelves of secrets. His life was one of them now, pressed between leather covers, waiting for the next entry.
“Can I…” he began, hesitantly. “Can I look at one of the other books? Not the family one. Something else.”
Derek watched him for a beat, then stood. He moved to a shelf, his fingers tracing the spines before pulling out a slimmer, less ominous-looking volume. He handed it to John.
“Physiological Adaptations in the Omega During Gestation,” John read aloud. It sounded dry. Clinical. Maybe that was easier.
“Start there,” Derek said. His hand came down, not on John’s shoulder, but on top of his head, a brief, heavy weight. “I’ll have some food brought. Something plain.”
He left then, moving silently out of the library. John sat alone in the circle of firelight, the weight of the book in his hands. He opened it. Diagrams, charts, dense paragraphs. He skipped ahead, his eyes scanning. A heading caught his eye: Scent-Bonding and Proprioceptive Reassurance.
He read a few lines. …the alpha’s proximity and tactile contact provides a neurological feedback loop that reduces cortisol and stabilizes hormone fluctuations in the pregnant omega…
He let out a shaky breath. So it was science. Biology. A script written in his DNA, being acted out in this gilded library. He wasn’t going crazy. He was just… following the script.
His thumb smudged the entry on the fresh page of the Blackwood history, blurring the date of the claim. He closed the genealogy book, pushing it away. But he kept the clinical text in his lap, his fingers tracing a diagram of a placental connection that looked nothing like a human’s.
Outside, the last of the storm clouds cleared, revealing a sliver of cold, white moon. It shone through the glass wall, laying a pale stripe across the floor, right to the edge of the sofa where he sat, caught between firelight and moonlight, between one life and another, turning a page.