“Adam,” Sam breathed as he blinked at him again, the concept of living with him again turning over and over in his mind. “I don’t,” he wanted to say, ‘I don’t want to impose upon you,’ but he knew that he had few other prospects at the moment; it was such a sudden thing that he’d had no time to even consider living arrangements, let alone what was going to happen with his bond mate—they might have just had a falling out, but Sam was still technically marked until he had formally removed it himself. He had to resist the urge to touch his mark—the familiar bite scar on the side of his neck, by his scent gland. He’d had it for years now, and though he knew that it was going to be gotten rid of—because he wanted to end things with Dustin for his own safety, as well as his baby’s—the thought of it not being there made him feel strange. It had been a part of him for the greater part of his adult life thus far, and the thought of there being a scar there, rather than a mark, made him feel a spark of white-hot shame in the pit of his gut. “I don’t want to be a burden,” he finally settled on saying.

It wasn’t outright denying the offer—he was in no position to do so—but it was still the truth; him moving in with anyone, even Adam, would have to imply that, should his prospects not get better, his roommate to be would have to be fine with the possibility of his baby living there as well after it was born. He couldn’t blame anyone for thinking that as a deal breaker—children were a weighty thing to have to potentially take care of, doubly so when they weren’t yours. Sam was reluctant to have to make anyone else shoulder that responsibility even remotely—especially Adam.

“Please,” Adam said as he smiled at him in that same solid, safe way he always had. “You and I were practically roommates in college.”

It wasn’t entirely untrue; while there had been a dorm specifically for Omegas, Sam had opted out, instead staying in the coed dorm that had men, women, Alphas, Betas, and Omegas all under one roof. It was a lesson in cohabitation, of having to live around one another without fear; it was likely they would, someday, have a neighbor in an apartment building or neighborhood that was an Alpha or an Omega, and they needed to learn how to coexist without their baser instincts kicking them in the heads and overtaking them. As such, that dorm was something of a halfway house to reality, and that was where the both of them had lived all throughout college.

“True,” Sam said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “But that was a little bit different. I mean,” Sam gestured to his own stomach, “I wasn’t pregnant, and there wasn’t the possibility of you having to worry about a baby that isn’t yours.”

“Implying that I’m worried about it at all.” Adam commented with a shrug. “I’m gonna accept it either way because it’s yours, all right? And besides,” he flashed a toothy grin, “this townhouse is absolutely fucking huge.” He gestured vaguely with his arm. It wasn’t an untrue statement; the townhouse had three floors, with a total of four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Neither of them would want for privacy, that much was certain. “Even if I wanted nothing to do with the baby, it’s not like I would even know it was here half the time.”

Sam couldn’t rightly argue with that statement—Adam had kept his childhood bedroom in the loft on the top floor of the town house; his parents had renovated the attic into a full fledged third floor in anticipation for their expanding family, as they had planned on having more children than just Adam. However, those dreams had gone unfulfilled as Adam’s mother had taken severely ill not long after he had been born, and pregnancies were deemed too high a risk for her to take with her declining health. So, he had practically grown up with a third of the house to himself—rather, himself and Sam, for how frequently he had been over as they grew.

“I,” he swallowed around another wave of tears that threatened to take over him, touched that Adam was still so fiercely protective of him despite not being his mate. “Thank you…” He straightened his back, suddenly needing to make his stance on the matter clear. “I promise, I’ll pay rent, and help with the groceries and the dishes and—”

“Slow down there, hon,” Adam soothed, his large hand rubbing comforting circles into his back again. “One step at a time, all right? First things first, we have to get your stuff here.”

“Right,” Sam said, mostly to himself as he took a shuddering breath and counted down to ten as he let it out slowly. “...How do we go about doing that? I don’t think the two of us would be enough to get it all out before Dustin came home…” Provided he even left for work in the first place, Sam swallowed that horrifying thought, hoping that Dustin wouldn’t call off of work to wait for Sam to come home and finish what he started.

“Already ahead of you on that,” Adam said as he waved his phone in front of him. “I’m gonna call some of our friends, yeah? I’ll keep details to a minimum, but they can help us move shit out.” He paused, then amended, “Well, we’ll move your stuff. You just point to what needs to be taken out, and we’ll take it out for ya.”

“What if,” Sam swallowed, “what if he’s there?” It wasn’t a scenario he wanted to think about, but it was also one that he couldn’t deny as a distinct possibility; he had to be ready, or as ready as he could be, to face Dustin again.

“Then we’ll be muscle for more than just moving,” Adam said with a grin. “No matter what, we’re gonna protect you.” The Alpha shifted, sitting up from the couch. “Just gimme a sec to make some calls, yeah?” He paused to consider for a moment and then turned to him again. “Do you want to be here when I make those calls? Like, do you want to hear what’s going on?” He flinched. “I want to protect you and be there for you, but this is also your thing, so I don’t want to, like,” he faltered, shrugging a shoulder. “I dunno, I don’t want to, like, take control of the situation from you.” Sam smiled, his chest feeling warm at the consideration—he couldn’t honestly remember the last time anyone, let alone an Alpha, took the time to consider what he wanted.

“Yeah, I’d like to hear it.” He shrugged. “It’s just better if we all know what’s going on, right?”

“Right,” Adam agreed with a nod of his head. “Right, yeah, that makes sense.” He angled his head toward the kitchen. “Go ahead and make yourself another cup of cocoa if you want while I look over who might be able to help us out tomorrow.” Sam nodded and padded into the kitchen, ladling the sweet drink into his mug. He opted against more marshmallows—he could swear there were still bits of them stuck in his back teeth—and returned to the living room in time to see Adam adding contacts to a group chat. “Heya, Sam,” Adam grinned. “Just shooting a message to everyone who might be up at this hour; if we can just have a group conversation, it’s fewer calls we gotta make, right?”

“Makes sense.” Sam nodded, taking a drink of his cocoa before pulling his own phone out. “Add me, too, so I can help give details if they’re needed.”

Adam seemed to hesitate for a moment before nodding his head.

“As long as you’re comfortable with that,” Adam finally said after a pause. Sam nodded; much as his stomach churned at the very idea of even having to deal with this, he knew he was going to have to. Now that he was likely going to be a single parent, he was going to have to deal with things that made him uncomfortable.

If not for himself, then for his child, he swore, wrapping his free arm around his middle and sitting down beside Adam. If he continued to raise his threshold for what he was willing to put up with, eventually his child could get hurt from his poor decision making—even potentially winding up in their own abusive relationship as an end result, and the thought didn’t sit well with him in the slightest. This was not going to be a cycle he was going to start—it started and ended with him.

His phone dinged to let him know Adam had invited him into a chat room, and he accepted, scrolling through the names that had been added. From the looks of it, it was mostly their circle of friends from high school and college that were still living in the area. That was probably for the best; they’d need the least amount of explaining for the situation. He watched as Adam typed out a message, and vaguely wondered what it would say. After a few moments, he checked the screen on his phone when it dinged to let him know a message was sent to the group.

“Hey guys, anyone up and available tomorrow? Need some help moving some things. Willing to pay in money, food, or beer.” Sam read the message aloud. It was vague enough that there would be questions, but it would suffice. He sipped at more of his cocoa and leaned back into the couch.

“What do you think?” Adam asked. “Sound okay?”

“Sounds fine enough.” Sam shrugged, setting his mug down. He paused long enough to bite his lip before asking what was really on his mind. “...Are you sure, Adam?”

“Sure about what?”

“About, well,” he said as he sniffed. “About me moving in.” He shrugged. “I know that it’s only gonna be temporary—”

“Sam.” The Omega looked up at Adam, into his exasperated smile. “It’s for however long you want it to be, all right? I’m not gonna push you to leave.”

“That’s kind of you, but,” he couldn’t pretend this was something that he could hold off on talking to Adam about. “But I’m gonna be having a baby. I mean, yeah, that’s in like eight months from now, but it’s still going to happen.” He sighed. “And I’m not about to just make you deal with that.”

“You wouldn’t—” Adam’s phone began to ring, cutting his comment off. “Hold on,” he glanced at the caller ID—Aranea, it read. One of their high school friends, and one of the people that had been in the group chat. “Huh.” He answered the call and put it on speaker phone so they could both hear and speak. “Arie, thanks for getting back to me so quick. How are you?”

“I’m all right,” she responded, though her tone was all business. “Got your text—I’ve got some of the boys and Ellie here with me for some drinks. We all got your message, so we figured just calling would be easier. What’s going on?”

Adam let out a sigh and moved the phone away from him slightly.

“Do you want me to give her the bare bones description?” Adam asked Sam softly, too quietly for the phone to pick up.

Sam shook his head and silently held his hand out to be handed the phone, which Adam did so, if with a worried expression on his face.

“Aranea?” Sam said hesitantly.

“Sam?” She sounded surprised. “Is everything okay, sweetie?” She likely suspected something was seriously wrong; she had always had this wicked sense of intuition that was so rarely wrong the group had always been half convinced that she could read minds.

“No, it’s not.” He admitted as he took a deep, if shaky breath and tried to keep things short. “Dustin…Dustin tried to hurt me, and I need help getting my stuff out.” There was a long enough pause that for a moment, Sam thought the connection had dropped. “Arie?”

“I’m still here.” She spoke up, though her tone had dropped a few pitches, enough that they knew she was furious. “Do you want me to send him to the hospital while we’re at it?” Sam didn’t doubt she would; being the only Alpha with actual martial arts experience in their group, he didn’t doubt for one second that she would be willing to do that for him. “It wouldn’t take me much, you know.”

“Arie, that’s not necessary,” Sam said with a sigh, hoping it would be enough to placate her.

“But would it make you feel better?” She asked. “‘Cause you say the word, and I’ll break every part of him I fucking can.”

“Arie, no,” he said, trying to swallow the tears that sprang forth. The situation was upsetting, but the fact that his friends were so supportive was an immense comfort. “No, I just want to get my stuff and get out.”

“All right, sweetheart,” she said, softening her voice—she must have picked up on his distress. “Gimme a second, all right?” There was a shuffling sound, almost like she was moving the phone away, and then they heard her shouting, if distantly from the speaker. “Hey! Sam needs us to move his shit tomorrow before the game, all right?” There was a chorus of assent, a myriad of other guys giving their go ahead, and then the phone was being moved again. “What time are we doing this?”

“Um,” Sam thought for a moment. “Nine o’clock? Dustin should be at work by then, so if we don’t have to deal with him, I’d rather we not.”

There was more shuffling noises from the phone.

“Nine in the morning, guys and gals! Off to bed!” Aranea was something of a leader in the group, even amongst the Alpha males, and Sam admired her for her strength. The phone was moved back to her ear. “I’ll harass the others in the chat group that aren’t here, see if we can’t get more muscle involved, but I’ll keep details brief; what any of us need to know is up to you, honey.” There was a pause. “Adam,” taking that as a cue to give him the phone back, Sam handed it over. “Are we meeting at your place, then?”

“Makes the most sense,” he nodded. “I’ve got the van, but if Ellie or Ben could bring their trucks around, that would make things move faster.”

“They’re both here,” Aranea said almost absentmindedly. “I can have both of them drive their trucks to your house in the morning. The more we get packed in one go, the less moving there has to be.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Adam agreed with a nod.

It was astounding, Sam noted, to hear the Alphas in the group coordinating to help and protect him on so very little information, and he was humbled by their steadfast friendship. He was also looking forward to seeing everyone again; it had been a while since he had seen most of them, longer still to see them all at once. Though, he noted sadly, he wished it were under happier circumstances. Adam finalized plans with Aranea for a little while longer and ended the call, stuffing his phone back into his pocket and letting out a sigh.

“Things got all set up?” Sam asked—he’d sort of spaced out when he was done talking for his part of the conversation. Adam nodded, stretching his arms behind his head.

“Good to go—everyone’s meeting up here, then we’re heading to your place to grab your stuff.” Sam wanted to ask who all was coming along, but a yawn escaped him the moment he opened his mouth to speak. “Looks like tonight’s worn you out.”

Adam regarded him with a worried expression. Sam briefly considered denying how tired he was but knew there was no point; he didn’t have to look in a mirror to feel the bruises under his eyes and how his bone deep weariness radiated from him. He had run for so long, and the fear had held him by the throat for what felt like an eternity, that being allowed to just breathe let his exhaustion catch up to him, and suddenly all he wanted was a bed. Or, at least, a blanket—he knew from past experience that Adam was a wonderfully comfortable and willing mattress...

“Yeah, I guess so,” he finally settled on, too tired to even pretend anymore.

He wasn’t okay, and he had to remind himself that was normal; being with Dustin for as long as he had, he’d forgotten that he didn’t have to pretend he was something that he wasn’t—not being okay usually led to Dustin grilling him for what was wrong until Sam just caved and said he was tired or some other easy excuse that skirted their issues—issues they had done a spectacular job of avoiding for far too long, looking back on all of it now.

“Come on—I got your bedroom still set up,” Adam said softly as he gently pried Sam off of him and rose, inclining his head toward the stairs in the hallway.

Sam nodded as he followed, having to stop himself from correcting the Alpha. The room wasn’t his; it was a guest bedroom that he had helped Adam decorate, and ever since, Adam had dubbed it as his room. He had a vague thought to correct him but realized that no, that was his room now; he lived here. This was…home.

Sam found that he wasn’t sure what to make of that—on the one hand, considering this place his home was hardly a stretch for how many years of his life he had spent with Adam running up and down these very same halls, but actually living here was a new and alarming thing that he wasn’t sure he was even ready to begin to process. But then, what other option did he have, really? And honestly…as strange as it was to think about, it had been something that a younger him that hadn’t been so hurt had easily thought of as a second home, so why not just make it his primary one, at least for now? That thought was a touch easier to stomach, he decided.

“It’s…wow,” Sam noted softly under his breath as he stepped into the room. “You really…really haven’t changed much of anything since I last stayed here.” Neither of them made a comment on the last time he stayed: on Sam’s “bachelor” night, before he and Dustin got marked. They’d had a bachelor party here, with everyone coming in and partying well into the night. The two of them had stayed up all night talking, with Adam helping talk Sam out of his fears for the bonding. Everything was still decorated the same, with a large, plush bed and tasteful decor that filled the space. Though now, there were a few bookshelves lined with books that he had never seen before on the wall opposite the bed. That was new, though nothing else in the room had changed.

“I haven’t really had a need to change it, in my defense,” Adam commented with a shrug, and Sam could hardly blame him; they’d decorated the room with the intent of it being able to accommodate anyone that might stay in it, with soft grays and blues adorning the furniture and the bedding in a calming and welcoming way. It was cool, and comforting, and it was exactly what Sam needed to surround himself with. Grays and blues were soft, indifferent, and helped to soothe him as he stepped further into the room. “Those blankets all right? You want me to grab you some extra ones from the hall closet?”

“Nah,” Sam said, shaking his head. “This set’s super comfy, if I remember right.” They had snagged this particular comforter on clearance, he recalled. It was a downy soft feather comforter that kept itself at the perfect warmth without overheating him throughout the night.

He had half wanted to ask for it as a present for his bonding ceremony with Dustin but he was glad that he never did now; Dustin couldn’t taint this bed with his scent from wherever the hell he was, and that’s just fine with Sam, he decided as he slid the comforter back. He nearly dove into bed right then and there when he realized that Adam was still standing there, regarding him with that concerned look in his eyes. “Adam?”

“You’re sure you’re okay with being alone right now?” The Alpha asked softly, but must have seen how Sam tensed if the way that he flinched was any indication. “I just mean…” He sighed. “If you didn’t want to be in the room alone, I could just, I dunno,” he gestured vaguely. “Sleep on the floor. Or we could sleep on the couches in the living room like we used to when we were kids—it wouldn’t exactly be the first time we’ve done it.” Sam grinned at the memories, all jumbled together, with them being varying ages in each of those recollections but always ending in the same place; in the living room downstairs, in the dark, talking about anything and nothing with a raw honesty that only came with being awake together until three in the morning, until they both drifted asleep. Adam stepped closer, close enough that Sam could reach out and touch him if he were so inclined—and admittedly, he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t inclined to, even as he kept his hands to himself. “It wouldn’t be a big deal; if you don’t want to be alone, I won’t just leave you by yourself.”

“I’ll be all right for tonight.” Sam reassured him as he shrugged a shoulder. “But if tomorrow morning goes how I’m afraid it’ll go…ask me again tomorrow night.” Adam looked like he wanted to comment further and even went so far as to open his mouth to say something but must have thought better of it, because he swallowed and nodded. “But if I’m lucky…it won’t come to that.”

“Right, yeah, of course.” Adam agreed. Neither one of them said what it was that Sam was fearful of, but they both knew what he meant. “If you need me, you know where my room is.” Just down the hall, the Omega noted to himself; he may not have been upstairs in Adam’s house for a few years now, but he had come here so often when they were children he knew every inch of the townhouse. Adam seemed to hover, as if fighting within himself, before he finally closed the distance between them, wrapping Sam up in a comforting hug and pressing a quiet kiss to his forehead. While it wasn’t anything new for them, it felt different now, and Sam felt his heart flutter in his chest at the contact. It hardly lasted longer than a moment before Adam pulled away again, putting more distance between them once more as though nothing had happened. “Goodnight, Sam. Sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Adam,” he sighed. “I’ll…I’ll try.”

Sam thought to reach out, to pull him back to his own body and feel his warmth—there was…there was something tugging at Sam’s heart, something he didn’t dare name, not yet, that desperately craved having Adam near. But he knew to open that particular can of worms right now would be a bad decision, considering everything that he was still sorting through himself. Adam nodded and left the room, still looking like there was more that he had wanted to say.

Sam made the mental note to ask him about it later, and vaguely hoped that he would still remember to ask after tomorrow—tomorrow might take a lot out of him—but he still didn’t want it to leave him discourteous to Adam and what he was feeling; it would make him a poor friend to have, were he to ignore that.

With no one but himself left in the room, he flicked the light off and shed his jeans, slipping into the bed and sighing at the pleasantly soft and cool fabric of the comforter sliding against him. Closing his eyes against the dark, he did his best to will the thoughts consuming him out of his head, just long enough to fall asleep, but they were loud and demanding, and so he tiredly sifted through them to find the source of it all: his fears for tomorrow. He groaned and rolled onto his side, bringing one of the pillows with him and placing it over his head.

Tomorrow would be a stressful enough day if he was lucky and Dustin wasn’t home; he was going to have to fully separate from three years worth of a home he had built with his mate, he was going to have to emotionally rip himself from the relationship he had formed with his mate over almost ten years. Through it all, he might be lucky enough to not have a breakdown. He was going to have to end a life that he had once thought was going to be his forever, with someone that he had thought of as his other half, and he wasn’t even sure if he was ready for that, never mind considering that that was the least stressful scenario he could have to potentially face. If Dustin was home…

If Dustin was home…it would mean confrontation—even if it was nonviolent, it would still have to mean facing him again after such a terrifying experience. Strange as it sounded, now that he knew he was going to be surrounded by friendly Alphas and otherwise well-built and protective friends, he wasn’t afraid of the confrontation getting physical; he would be defended if it did. No, what he was dreading, as much as he knew it needed to happen, was the emotional confrontation that would have to happen. It would be the fact that he would have to look his attacker in the eyes and tell him that he wanted to sever their bond, that made his stomach churn unpleasantly.

Because he would nullify his mark.

His hand found his mark in the quiet dark of the room without him opening his eyes, the pads of his fingertips lightly running over the small, circular divots that Dustin had left with his teeth when they had become bonded mates some years ago. Ending their bonding would require him to, in effect, scar over the bite marks; sure, he could wait until he could schedule a cosmetic surgery to remove the scar, but that was costly, too costly, and it would take too long to go through. He would have to do it the old fashioned way…even if that meant he would be ostracized for it.

Bond marks with a scar through them, or even merely marks that had been removed, were considered the brand of “damaged goods,” and it rarely mattered that the person had moved on, or that they had separated from their former bond mate, that crossed out mark meant that they had been taken, and whoever would follow them would be getting the table scraps of a bad relationship. While not socially outcasted, as it was still something of a private affair, it meant, more often than not, that the Omega that had been marked would struggle immensely with finding someone else to share his life with. Going through with it would mean that Sam would have to accept the fact that he would likely be raising his child as a single parent for the rest of his life.

Considering the alternative, he was fine with that.

What he was even more worried about was the “drop” that would come with the severing of their bond. Alphas notoriously survived the ending of a bond with minimal damage and rarely struggled to find another mate of some description, but the Omegas were often left utterly ruined for ending a bond in both an emotional and a social sense. The social aspect of it didn’t matter to him; the friends he had made cared more about him than a mark, revoked or otherwise, but it was the emotional drop that gave him pause. The severing of a bond left Omegas feeling empty, he’d heard, and desolate. Cast off, succinctly put, though how long the drop was supposed to last tended to vary. The popular theory was that the closer the Alpha and Omega were at the time of their bond severing, the worse the drop would be, and the longer it would take to pull themselves back from.

Admittedly, over the last few months—years, if he was being completely honest with himself—he and Dustin had been struggling to be close on an emotional level. Part of that had been due to the promotion Dustin had gotten at his job; there was more money in the house, though that meant Dustin had simply been home less often, and Sam had begun feeling that keenly in the months that followed. With that absence, Dustin’s possessive streak had swiftly turned ugly, and soon accusations of cheating began to get tossed Sam’s way. Being a remote worker, as opposed to an office worker like Dustin, the Alpha had always been somewhat bitter about Sam’s career, mainly because Sam could work from the comfort of home and he couldn’t. With the longer hours, evidently Dustin had been left to dwell on the thought that Sam could have been straying from him and being unfaithful. Never mind that Sam had never done such a thing and had no inclination to do so—Dustin’s paranoia and jealousy grew no matter what Sam said or did.

Oh, they had certainly tried to work on their relationship—and would see some positive results for brief periods of time, even. It was during one of those upswings, when Dustin was actively trying to work on himself and how he dealt with his feelings, where they had grown sexually active again—and when Sam had gotten pregnant. At the time, when Sam had found out, he had been foolish and thought that it could be a good thing; he and Dustin had talked of children before, back when their relationship was going strong. He had hoped that this would be the turning point for them, where they really came together and became a proper family. That was why this whole scenario had hurt as much as it had—he had hope before it all came crashing down and Dustin showed him how ugly he had become.

So while they had a long history together, and had at one time been as close as two people could be, time, tiredness—and now violence—had driven enough space between them that Sam sincerely doubted that the drop itself would be as bad as it could be, and while he was certain that he was made of tough enough stuff to endure it, however bad it could wind up being, he would rather not have to if there was an option.

Though, as he rested a hand on his stomach and drifted into an uneasy sleep, he wondered if there truly was an option with anything he did anymore.