Chapter 2
Alex
I've been on the floor outside her door for six hours.
My back is against the wall. My legs stretched out in front of me. Every muscle in my body is locked tight with the effort of staying here instead of going in there.
Low-grade rut.
I name it like Dr. Reeves taught me. Acknowledge the physical state. Decide what to do with it.
My heart rate is elevated. Adrenaline spiking. The scent coming from under that door is doing things to my nervous system that a decade of therapy can't fully override.
I want to go in there.
I want to help her.
I want to put my hands on her and make the heat stop hurting her and hold her through it until she can think clearly and then lay every card we have on the table and let her decide what she does with all of it.
I want to give her the full picture. I want to give her the choice that nobody has bothered to give her in… ever.
But if I open that door right now, she doesn't get a choice.
She gets me. Heat-drunk and six hours past my limit, with all my instincts clawing toward that door. She gets the version of me that exists before reason catches up. And everything that we've spent months building goes up in smoke.
So I stay on the floor.
I breathe in through my nose. Out through my mouth.
The anger isn't the problem. The anger is the alarm.
It's telling me my omega is in distress and I'm sitting here doing nothing. It's right. And it's wrong at the same time. Doing nothing is the only right thing I can do right now and it is costing me.
Another sound comes through the door.
Low. Desperate. The specific pitch of an omega in heat who is past asking nicely.
My hand presses flat against the wood.
I breathe.
Finn appears at the end of the hallway an hour later. He's carrying water bottles and protein bars, doing what he does when everything is falling apart—finding something practical to manage. His expression is neutral in the careful way that means he's working to keep it that way.
He sits down next to me without asking. Hands me a bottle.
"How's she doing?" I ask.
"Malcolm's got her." He uncaps his own water. Takes a long drink. "She's responding to him despite everything. He's doing well with her."
"He's exhausted."
"He'll manage." Finn adjusts his glasses. "Two alphas would be hard enough for a delayed heat, but one... at least she's stable for now."
Stable.
The word sits wrong. Like calling a forest fire contained.
"She asked for you," Finn says. Quiet. Not accusing.
I don't answer.
"Twice in the last hour."
"I know." I heard it both times. I will probably hear it in my sleep for the rest of my life. "I'm not going in."
Finn nods. He doesn't argue. He knows where that line is. He's always known.
The hallway light flickers above us as we sit in silence, punctuated only by what filters through from her room.
Every morning I woke up in this house next door and knew she was just a few feet away and I couldn't do a damn thing about it.
All those months of watching her get smaller and quieter while we waited for Chase to build something strong enough to matter.
We waited too long.
I knew it when Jasper's reports started to change tone. I knew it when Ragon destroyed her nest and she went silent in a way that was different from her earlier silences. I should have pushed harder. Found another way.
I press the back of my head against the wall and stare at the ceiling.
The door opens.
Malcolm slips out. He looks like the wreckage of a man—hair destroyed, shirt somewhere inside the room, moving on nothing but will and instinct. He pulls the door shut behind him and leans against the wall across from me.
Her scent follows him out.
Vanilla and wildflowers and underneath it the thing that belongs specifically to an omega in heat. My vision blurs. The rut that's been simmering at the base of my skull for six hours threatens to tip into something I won't be able to manage.
I close my eyes. Count backwards from ten.
Name it. Acknowledge it. Decide what to do with it.
When I open them Malcolm is watching me. His eyes hold a look that says he understands exactly what this is doing to me.
"You okay?"
"Fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I'm not going in there."
"I know." He runs a hand through what's left of the order in his hair. "I wasn't suggesting you should."
Finn disappears down the hallway toward the bathroom. Malcolm slips back into the room with her. The door clicks shut.
I'm alone with her scent still hanging in the air.
My hand curls into a fist at my side.
I look at the knuckles. The old scarring there. I look at it sometimes and think about the night everything changed. The choice that set all of this in motion. The reason we are here in this house in this particular way—close enough to smell her through a door, too far away to do anything about it.
I made the right call that night.
I'd make it again without hesitation.
For him.
Always for him.
But sitting on this floor at two in the morning listening to her suffer ten feet away… it costs me every hour I stay.
And the hours bleed.
I don’t know how many it’s been before a sound comes through the door.
High and broken and so unmistakably her that my body is moving before my mind catches up. I'm on my feet. My hand finds the door handle.
The knob holds.
Barely.
I stand there with my hand on the handle and my forehead pressed to the wood and I breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
She needs you, my alpha says. She's right there. You can help her. Open the door.
I know.
I know she needs me. I know I can help. I know she's right there with nothing but a door between us and that every second I stay out here she's suffering through things she shouldn't be suffering through alone.
I drop to the floor.
Run my fingertips over the frame.
"I'm right here," I say. Quiet. Maybe too quiet for her to hear.
Silence on the other side.
Then I hear it—a scrape moving across the floor. Slow. Like someone moving on their hands and knees.
My throat closes.
I push my fingers through the gap at the bottom of the door. Stretch toward her.
Her fingers find mine immediately.
Her skin is burning. Her fingers are shaking. She holds on the way you hold on when you're afraid of what happens if you let go.
"Alex." She sounds wrecked. "Please."
My thumb finds her palm and starts moving in slow circles. "I've got you."
"Please come in." I can hear tears in it. "I need you."
"I can't."
Every cell in my body screams to turn the handle, to go to her, to answer that broken sound with everything I am. But I know what waits on the other side of that choice—for both of us.
"I don't understand."
"You will." I keep the circles going on her palm. Slow. Steady. "When your heat clears I'll explain everything."
A cramp hits her. I know because her grip spasms around my fingers and the sound she makes is the worst sound I've ever heard. The sound cuts through me—raw need and suffering that calls to the protector in my blood, making my muscles coil with the urge to break down the barrier between us.
I need you, Alpha. Come help me.
I growl.
Low and wanting and barely controlled. The sound rips out of me.
Her grip tightens.
"I'm right here," I say. I will my voice steady. I drag it back from the edge. "I'm not leaving."
"Please." She's crying now, full and desperate. It goes through me like a sharp knife. "Please, it hurts. I need you."
"I know." I keep tracing. Keep moving. Give her the only thing I can give her right now. "When this is over. When you can think clearly. I will explain everything. I promise."
"I can think now."
"No, you can't." Gentle. Certain. "And I won't take advantage of that."
She sobs.
The heat is burning through her and I am on the other side of a door. But I won't open it and I am fully aware of what that costs her right now. I carry that. I'll carry it after. But I won't move.
I hear footsteps behind her. Malcolm's voice, low and soothing.
"Come back to bed." His purr starts up. "Let me help you."
"I want Alex." Her grip on my fingers goes fierce. The words break apart on their way out. "I want Alex."
"I know." Malcolm's voice is careful. Patient. "But he can't right now."
Her fingers tighten around mine for one more second.
Then Malcolm lifts her and she has to let go. I feel her grip fight it before distance takes over. My fingers stay in the gap until there's nothing to hold.
I watch her shadow disappear from under the door.
***
I don't know how long I’ve been sitting there before I hear the noise.
I'm on my feet and down the stairs before the knock comes, taking the steps three at a time, my shoulder clipping the wall as I round the landing.
My body shifts—spine straightening, shoulders squaring—battle-ready before my mind catches up.
The first pound against the wood sends a shot of adrenaline through me that sharpens everything to crystal clarity.
I can already smell him through the door—pine smoke and the edge of an alpha still coming down off rut.
Jagged around the edges. Not thinking clearly.
I open the door before he can take it off the hinges.
Ragon.
He looks terrible. Same brown hair, disheveled now, same broad build. But his expression is barely contained. I recognize it because I've spent years learning to manage the same thing in myself.
He tries to push past me before I've fully opened the door.
I put my hand flat against his chest and stop him.
He's bigger than me. It doesn't matter.
Dominance has never been about size. It's about who flinches first. Who believes in themselves more completely in the moment it counts.
I don't flinch.
"You're not coming in."
"Where is she." Not a question. His eyes are scanning the space behind me like he can find her by looking hard enough.
"Safe."
"She's mine—"