Overnight••√•• a foreign omega”

chapitre : 14

• ஜ • ❈ • ஜ •

The wedding preparations, which had begun in a joyful flurry, soon entered a more concrete phase, and with it, its inevitable share of stress. For Smith, it was a dizzying plunge into the complex customs of his new world, a labyrinth of traditions where he stumbled at every turn.

The euphoria of the first days choosing the tablecloth colors, tasting the cakes, listening to the music gave way to a more arduous reality. Mrs. Croft, beaming, presented him with a thick, leather-bound notebook.

"It's the guide to matrimonial traditions for Alpha-Omega couples, darling. There are a few protocols to observe."

Smith opened the book with curiosity, which quickly morphed into mild anxiety. These weren't simple suggestions, but rituals codified with clockwork precision.

"The 'Root-Walking Ceremony'?" he asked, perplexed. "What's that?"

"It's a ceremony where the families of both parties bring a handful of soil from their garden," Nam explained, looking over his shoulder. "You'll mix them in the same pot to plant a tree, symbolizing your union taking root in both lineages."

Smith felt a slight pang in his heart. Bringing soil from his family… but which one? The Crofts', whom he barely knew? That of his other world, which didn't exist here? It was as if he was being asked to prove an ancestry that wasn't his.

Then came the matter of the "Blood Offerings."

"Each Omega must offer their Alpha, on the eve of the wedding, a cloth imbued with their own scent," Julien whispered to him, embarrassed. "It's a pledge of… welcome. Of comfort. To soothe the Alpha's hunting instinct before the union."

Smith turned scarlet. It was disconcertingly intimate, almost primitive. In his old world, a wedding was about suits, flowers, and speeches. Here, it was a negotiation between instincts and ancestral rituals.

The stress peaked during the meeting with the planner, a Beta of formidable efficiency.

"And for the 'Bond Dance', have you chosen the choreography?" he inquired, stylus poised over his tablet. "There's the classic version, which highlights the Alpha's protection, or the contemporary one, which emphasizes reciprocity more."

Smith looked at Day, lost.

"I… I don't know how to dance," he admitted, miserably.

"It's not a dance in the way you think, Smith," Day reassured him gently. "It's a sequence of symbolic movements. I will guide you."

But Smith felt the weight of the gazes. The planner's discreet one, and the more benevolent but equally present one of his mother. He felt like an ill-prepared actor on a giant stage, forced to play a role whose script he hadn't mastered.

One afternoon, exhausted by hours debating the type of flowers that "best suited the energies of a nascent Alpha-Omega couple," Smith broke down in the kitchen, alone with Julien.

"I can't do it, Julien," he whispered, his head in his hands. "Everything is so… alien. These traditions, they don't speak to me. They belong to someone else. I feel like I'm preparing the other Smith's wedding."

Julien sat beside him and poured him a glass of water.

"These traditions, they're not here to trap you, Smith. They're here to surround you, to give you a framework. But that framework, you have the right to bend it to your image."

"How? By refusing the Root-Walking? By not giving the offering? I don't want to hurt your family or disappoint Day."

"Day doesn't care about the soil or the cloth, Smith!" Julien exclaimed affectionately. "What he wants is you. As for the Root-Walking… bring soil from the garden of your home. The one you live in today. The one where you found love. Those roots are just as valid, if not more, than ones that are a hundred years old."

Julien's words sank in. Later, Smith talked to Day about it as they walked hand in hand.

"I'm afraid of doing it wrong," he confessed. "Of not being up to these customs."

Day stopped and turned to him, cupping his face in his hands.

"Smith, my promise, I made it to you. Not to a book of traditions. The Root-Walking, if it makes you uncomfortable, we don't have to do it. The Bond Dance, we can invent our own. Our union is not a spectacle to satisfy conventions. It's the celebration of our love. In our eyes."

The relief that flooded Smith was so intense his legs went weak. He threw himself against Day, snuggling into his chest.

"I just want it to be our day. Ours."

"And it will be," Day murmured against his hair. "I promise you."

Together, they resumed the preparations, but with a new approach. Smith, instead of enduring the traditions, began to question them, to discuss them with Day and their families. They decided to keep the tree planting, but Smith would choose a fruit tree, a symbol of life and sweetness to come, rather than the imposing oak traditionally suggested. For the offering, he proposed to Day that they create a unique scent together, a blend of both their scents, in a vial they would keep, rather than following the ancient ritual.

Each adaptation was a small victory, a reclaiming of control. The stress didn't disappear completely there was still an endless list of things to do but it was counterbalanced by the joy of building something that resembled them. Smith was learning to navigate this new world, not by bending to its laws, but by finding his place within it. It was no longer about erasing the other Smith, but about affirming, with gentle firmness, the irrefutable presence of this one.

••√••

Day's assurances had been a balm, but they hadn't sealed the fissure. On the contrary, as the wedding date drew nearer, the old world, like a wounded beast sensing its prey escaping, intensified its calls with a cruel determination.

It began insidiously. Smith would search for his keys for ten minutes before finding them on the kitchen table, though he could have sworn he'd left them in the hallway. A photo of him and Day, framed in the living room, was suddenly askew, as if a hand had moved it. He shrugged it off, blaming fatigue and the stress of the preparations.

Then the fleeting apparitions began.

One afternoon, while folding laundry in his room, he looked up into the mirror. For a split second, he didn't see his reflection, but the grey, sparse bedroom of his old apartment. The vision was so brief and so shocking he dropped the t-shirt he was holding, his heart hammering wildly. He blinked, and his normal reflection was back, his face pale and shocked.

Another time, returning from shopping with his mother, he spotted, across the street, the familiar, stooped silhouette of his former father, turning a corner and disappearing. An icy chill ran through him, and he had to stop, bracing one hand against a wall.

"Smith? Are you ill?" his mother worried, placing a hand on his forehead.

"No, no, just dizzy," he lied, his voice trembling.

The worst was the feeling of dissonance. Sometimes, in the middle of laughing with Julien or sharing a tender moment with Day, a wave of absolute sadness, a despair that had nothing to do with his present, would overwhelm him without warning. It was as if a poisoned emotion from the other world was leaking through the crack to contaminate him. He would feel disconnected, a spectator of his own happiness, unable to touch it.

One night, he had a nightmare so realistic it left him shaken for the entire next day. He dreamt he was at his own wedding, dressed in his finest suit, Day radiant beside him. But when he spoke his vows, his voice was that of the other Smith, flat and resigned. And when he looked at the guests, the faces of his family and friends decomposed, becoming those of the Chois, his old colleagues, his mother with her disappointed gaze. Day, beside him, turned into a indifferent stranger.

He woke with a muffled scream, drenched in sweat, and this time, even Day's arms couldn't fully comfort him. The echo was too loud. The shadow had become a tangible presence, a cold fog trying to engulf him.

The peak came two weeks before the wedding. Smith was in the living room, writing thank-you cards, when his phone the right one vibrated. It was a reminder for a work meeting he had scheduled months earlier, in his old life. "Project Selene Meeting - 10 AM - Main Offices."

He stared at the screen, horrified. This wasn't a nightmare, not a fleeting vision. It was concrete data, a planned event that belonged to another reality, and it had just appeared in this one. The boundary between the two worlds wasn't just porous; it was beginning to blur uncontrollably.

Panicked, he grabbed the phone and threw it with all his might against the wall. The device shattered with a crash of glass and crushed plastic. He stood there, trembling, staring at the debris, breathless.

Day, alerted by the noise, came running.

"Smith! What happened?"

Smith couldn't speak. He just pointed a trembling finger at the pieces of the phone scattered on the floor. Day looked at the debris, then at Smith's distraught face, and understood. A cold, protective anger washed over him. He crossed the room and took Smith in his arms, not with gentleness, but with a fierce firmness.

"That's enough," he murmured, his voice a rumble against Smith's ear. "I won't let them take you. Not anymore."

He forced Smith to look at him.

"Do you hear me? This is our reality. Here and now. This wedding, this life, it's ours. These ghosts have no power here. You are strong, Smith. Stronger than they will ever be. You weathered the storm to get to me. I won't let you drown in a fog that no longer exists."

Day's words were anchors. Smith clung to them with all his might, feeling the panic slowly recede, chased away by the warmth and certainty of his Alpha.

"I'm so scared," he confessed in a whisper.

"I know, my love. I know. But you're not fighting alone anymore. We are a team. We will face this together."

Day didn't stop at words. He spent the rest of the day with Smith, taking him for a walk in the park, holding his hand without ever letting go, filling the space around them with their shared presence, as if to saturate Smith's senses with their reality.

The old world hadn't given up. Smith could feel it, lurking in the shadows, waiting for its next opening. But that night, curled against Day, feeling the unique, personal ring against his skin, Smith realized one thing: he was no longer fighting to deserve this life. He was fighting to keep it. And it was a battle he was willing to fight, because for the first time, he had something and someone to fight for that was infinitely worth it.