Chapter 17
seventeen
JULIA
The heat suppressants were finally burning out of my system, and my body was demanding back pay for every year I’d kept it locked down.
I woke up feeling like my skin was two sizes too tight.
A relentless ache lived in my joints, every blanket I touched felt like sandpaper, and even the air moving across the room made me want to claw my way out of myself.
My blood ran too hot, simmering just beneath the surface like water preparing to boil. I kicked the heavy duvet off my legs, but the sudden exposure to the cool morning air made my sensitive skin pebble and ache.
I forced myself to sit up, and the friction of my oversized t-shirt sliding against my nipples made me suck in a breath. Oh God… Everything was too loud, too bright, and too intensely tactile.
Stumbling out of bed, I crossed the room on unsteady legs and hit the button that closed the curtains, sighing in relief when the room plunged into muted shadows. I leaned my forehead against the wall and focused on my breathing.
You’re fine. But the lie that had kept me sane for six years was starting to feel hollow. It’s just a flare. You can handle this.
But when I turned around, my body proved my brain completely wrong.
I looked at the huge bed, and clawing need surged through my chest. The pillows were wrong.
The blankets were scattered. Without a conscious thought, I fell to my knees at the edge of the bed and started rearranging.
I grabbed the duvet, dragging it into the center of the mattress, then snatched the two extra pillows from the armchair in the corner, shoving them against the headboard.
My hands moved like they had a mind of their own, twisting a fleece throw blanket into a curved barrier along the central area of the mattress I had claimed as mine.
It took me a solid five minutes of aggressive rearranging before I realized what I was doing.
I was nesting.
I froze, my hands buried in a soft throw blanket.
I had spent my entire adult life telling the OMA exactly where they could shove their domestic Omega curriculum.
I refused to nest at the facility and took a heavy dose of suppressants to tame those biannual urges.
I wasn’t that kind of Omega. I refused to be governed by my designation.
Yet here I was, practically panting, trying to build a fluffy haven out of cotton and fleece.
I sank into the center of the makeshift ring, bringing my knees up to my chest. It didn’t help. The nest felt hollow. Empty. Wrong. The fabric smelled like laundry detergent and my own pheromones—now overwhelmingly sweet with the sour edge of distress.
There was no coffee. No golden oak or graham cracker. No toasted marshmallow, cardamom, vanilla, or dark chocolate. The absence of the pack’s scents in my space felt like physical deprivation, leaving a gaping hole in my chest. I buried my face in my hands, fighting the ridiculous urge to cry.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand, the harsh buzz scraping against my over-tuned nerves.
I scrambled for it, my heart doing a frantic stutter-step. Addy.
I snatched the device off the wood and unlocked the screen, only to find a promotional email from a boot company. The notification banner slid away, leaving my text thread with Adeline sadly unchanged. My last four messages sat there in a block of blue, staring back at me. Delivered. Unread.
The familiar weight of guilt dropped directly into my stomach, turning the pre-heat ache into something colder.
I hadn’t asked for the scent match with the Double T, but fate didn’t care about fairness, and Adeline was the one paying the price for my dumb luck.
The absolute silence from her end was starting to scare me.
She wanted a pack more than anything. The rejection she’d faced was brutal on a good day.
Dealing with it while your best friend accidentally walked away with the exact future you wanted was an entirely different level of hell.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I couldn’t send another unanswered apology. It felt patronizing. Instead, I swiped back and opened my thread with Demi.
Me:
Hey. I’m getting really worried about Addy. She still isn’t answering. Can you please check on her? Tell her I love her. Just make sure she’s okay.
I hit send and tossed the phone into the tangled blankets.
I curled in on myself, resting my chin on my knees while a tidal wave of way too many emotions crashed over me.
My skin flushed with another wave of heat, making my breath hitch, and yet I refused to move.
Even though it was of my own making, I felt alone in a house full of men I was terrified of wanting too much.
A rap of knuckles sounded against the heavy wooden door.
“Julia?” The voice was sweet, unhurried, and blessedly calm. Gideon.
I swallowed hard, trying to locate my voice. “Come in,” I managed, sounding far more fragile than I intended.
The knob turned with a quiet click, and Gideon stepped into the room. He was wearing his usual—a faded flannel over a plain t-shirt that hugged his muscles and a pair of jeans that highlighted his perfectly biteable ass.
Down girl. Don’t bite the Beta.
Then again… that didn’t sound like such a horrible idea.
While I argued with myself, he paused just inside the threshold, shutting the door behind him with a soft thud.
I expected him to flick the light switch, to flood the room with artificial glare and ask me why I was hiding in the dark. I expected him to comment on the mess of pillows and blankets I was currently sitting in the middle of.
But he did neither.
Gideon’s clear blue eyes swept the room, taking in the closed curtains, the mess of the bed, and the way I was curled in the middle of it all.
As the Beta of the pack, he could read the emotional temperature of a room faster than anyone else, and with my pre-heat pheromones saturating the enclosed space, I knew exactly what he was smelling as he took a shallow breath.
The sour distress. The thick, aching desire.
The overwhelming panic of an Omega losing control of herself.
I was an absolute mess.
Without another moment’s hesitation, he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the mattress, bringing his warm sandalwood, earthy vetiver, and comforting cinnamon and nutmeg scent with him. Instantly, my shoulders eased. It was perfectly balanced, steady and safe.
Without waiting for an invitation, I uncurled my legs and crawled across the mattress, collapsing against his side.
Gideon let out a low hum, shifting his weight to accommodate mine.
He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his lap and pressing me against his chest, and buried his face in my hair.
The solid, unyielding heat of his body was pure bliss.
I gripped the front of his flannel, burying my nose into the crook of his neck, and simply breathed him in.
“This is what I was worried about. You’re burning up,” he murmured, his hand smoothing down the long, tangled waves of my hair.
“I’m fine,” I lied into his collarbone. “Just... a flare. It’s a pre-heat thing. I can manage it.”
“You don’t have to manage anything anymore.
You have a pack now, Sweetheart.” His fingers worked a gentle rhythm at the base of my spine, easing some of the cramping tension.
He pressed a soft kiss to the crown of my head.
“Your scent is all over the place, Jules. Do you need me to go get Stetson? Or maybe August?”
I pulled back just enough to look up at him.
The sincerity in his blue eyes was painfully genuine.
He was the one who held them all together, the one who constantly monitored the pack’s needs, and he was fully prepared to step aside if he thought an Alpha’s presence would soothe my instincts better than his own.
I framed his jaw with both hands, my thumbs tracing the line of his neat, short beard. “No,” I told him, my voice gaining a fraction of its usual strength. “I don’t want them right now. I want you, Gideon. You’re exactly what I need. You’re just as important to me as they are.”
A beat of absolute stillness stretched between us. Gideon stared down at me, the quiet conviction in my words landing exactly where they needed to. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, a flash of vulnerability cracking through his steady exterior.
“Okay,” he whispered.
He didn’t redirect. He didn’t offer a dry joke to deflect the emotional weight of the moment. He simply leaned down and captured my mouth.
The kiss started as a question, gentle and exploring, but the second my lips parted for him, the dynamic shifted.
Gideon groaned, the rough sound rumbling deep in his chest, and shifted me in his lap.
I straddled his thighs, my knees digging into the mattress on either side of him as his tongue swept into my mouth.
He tasted like he smelled—sweet masculine spice in the fall, the cinnamon and nutmeg notes blending into the perfect comforting blend that teased all my senses.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, kissing him back with a desperate, clumsy hunger, chasing the friction of his mouth against mine.
My hips rolled forward involuntarily, grinding down over the growing hardness behind his jeans.
Gideon broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. He kept his hands firmly on my waist, holding me in place as my hips rocked again. His blue eyes had turned to sapphires as he watched me through heavy lids.
“You’re restless,” he observed quietly, his thumbs smoothing over my hip bones through the thin cotton of my shirt. “I did some reading on what happens after scent matching, and I think your body is fighting back against years of heat suppressants.”
I swallowed and nodded. “I know. And it’s a bitch. If they hadn’t been worth it for all these years, I’d be pretty angry right now, because this sucks.”