Forty-Four
FORTY-FOUR
Mia
I DIDN’T MANAGE to successfully corner Luca until Saturday morning. I’d spent the last three days very carefully not freaking out about the way he’d withdrawn from me, because, in the end, neither of us were twelve years old.
Sometimes omega instincts made it hard to remember in the moment, but I was a grown-ass adult, and I did, in fact, understand that people around me could be upset about something without it meaning they were angry with me personally.
Luca was upset, and who could blame him? Hell, I was upset. It wasn’t as though I could waltz into Nat’s office and say, “Oh, by the way, I completely fucked up acquiring my heat blockers this quarter, so I guess we’ll have to close the restaurant for the better part of a week, sorry.”
The only difference was that I had an extra week to figure something out, and Luca didn’t. I’d been scouring the shadowy corners of the internet in every free moment, trying to reacquaint myself with the places where people discussed the black market for omega hormones in veiled terms.
So far, I’d gathered that the new trend was to smuggle heat blockers under the auspices of selling ‘appetite suppressants,’ which was either bitterly ironic or someone’s idea of dark humor. I’d also learned that anyone needing blockers fast was going to have to look beyond the U.S. The short shelf-life of the pills outside of specialized medical storage meant it had taken little more than a week for the existing inventory stateside to disappear.
I’d spent a couple of hours late last night arguing with myself about the wisdom of using a scammy-looking website based in Mexico, which claimed to have the ‘appetite suppression pills’ everyone was looking for. For one thing, the price was eye-watering even before adding cross-border shipping. For another, the pills could be fentanyl laced with rat poison for all I knew.
I was leaning toward taking my chances and relying on my nose to decide if the pill smelled the same as I was used to. But my pocketbook was already limping around on metaphorical crutches and covered in bandages. It really didn’t need to take another hit.
Luca was alone in the kitchen when I stumbled in for coffee after another night of poor sleep. I paused in the doorway, not entirely sure I was welcome in his space.
He looked up with bloodshot eyes.
“Zalen still hasn’t been able to find any pills,” he said, by way of greeting. “But he scored two syringes of birth control. They’re in the fridge. Just in case .” Bitterness laced the final words.
I swallowed a useless ‘ I’m so sorry’ before it could escape. Luca already knew I was sorry. After my fourth apologetic text on Wednesday, I’d received a terse, ‘ I’m not angry at you... I’m just angry ’ in return. He’d been avoiding me since then, it was true—but I had no reason to think he’d been lying.
So, instead of babbling out another unnecessary apology, I came over and rested my elbows on the edge of the breakfast bar, standing across from him.
“I’m paying a Mexican website for something that may or may not show up at all, and may or may not be a heat blocker if it does,” I said. “If I end up tripping balls and jumping off the roof because I think I can fly, please engrave the words ‘Here lies Mia Dimitriadis; she may have been a Michelin chef, but she was also dumb as a post’ on my tombstone.”
“That’s a pretty long epitaph. Sounds expensive,” Luca said.
“So’s the pill,” I told him, and earned a wan half-smile for a second before it faded.
Taking that for the victory it was, I sobered as well.
“Luca, please tell me you’re going to stay here where it’s safe. Let the alphas rock your world for a few days, instead of doing anything dangerous,” I begged, hoping that he was finally in a place to hear it.
Luca’s already pale face was even paler than usual this morning—his porcelain skin almost translucent except for the blue-gray smudges underlining his green eyes.
“I’m not actually an idiot, Mia,” he said, without much heat behind the words. “No one around here has any blockers, including the gangs. And I’m not stupid enough to lock myself alone in my room for several days of agonizing cramps and mental torture.”
I let out a slow breath of relief. “Okay. I still feel awful that this happened, but I’m really glad you’re going to let the others help.”
He didn’t reply directly, but he didn’t look away either. “What about you?”
The question was pointed, and I didn’t like the squirming sensation of discomfort it raised in my stomach. I hesitated, chewing the inside of my cheek.
“I’m... not sure yet,” I said. “Hopefully the Mexican drug cartels will end up doing me a solid.”
“And if they don’t? Will you go back to Nat?” Luca asked, not letting it go.
It was a reasonable question... probably. But I couldn’t go crawling back to the husband who’d deep-sixed our marriage at least partly over my lack of natural heats.
“No.” My voice cracked on the word, and I cleared my throat.
Luca didn’t give an opinion... didn’t grill me about my intentions toward his alphas a scant few days after they’d be leaving his heat nest. He only nodded, lifting his glass of juice in salute. “To the Mexican drug lords,” he said, like someone proposing a toast.
“Here, here,” I replied, with feeling.
On top of the heat-blocker debacle, there was also the Princess debacle—as though we needed more incredibly depressing crap in our lives to further bring us down.
I blamed my compulsive need to focus on something else besides the money I’d just thrown into a Spanish-speaking black hole. That was my excuse for spending almost two hours after work on Saturday night scouring adoption and found pet websites for young, gray female cats.
St. Clair County, where East St. Louis was located, wasn’t exactly a beacon of modern infrastructure and governance. From what I could tell, they had an animal control division, but none of the website links on the page worked properly. Worse, a Google search for the stated name of the animal adoption arm of the department only brought up a couple of social media accounts that hadn’t been active in almost six years.
Even so, I made up a document with links to all the gray cats listed on every private rescue site I could find in the Gateway metro area. When I made my way to the kitchen on Sunday morning, headachy and sleep-deprived, Emiel was there eating a bowl of cereal.
He looked up warily at my entrance.
“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went looking for Princess on local animal rescue sites,” I said, in lieu of a ‘good morning.’ “I thought because she’s so friendly, maybe someone picked her up. I made a list of gray cats that fit her description if you want to look at it later?”
Emiel’s brows drew together. Apparently, I’d surprised him. Then his expression smoothed back into its blank mask.
“The private rescues only take pets, not feral cats,” he said. “I’ve been checking the website for the adoption center that partners with county animal control every day. She ain’t there.”
My heart sank. “I’ll give you the list I made anyway,” I told him. “You can at least check; make sure none of them are her.”
He shrugged listless agreement, his dark eyes already going distant and dead again.
“Did you call the adoption center and talk to someone directly?” I asked, following a hunch.
“No,” he said.
Right. Of course he hadn’t. The idea of calling and asking someone who worked there for help probably hadn’t even occurred to him.
“We need to do that,” I said. “In fact, we should do that right now.”
“It’s Sunday,” he pointed out. “They’re closed.”
“Crap.” I thought for a second. “What’s the place called? I’ll send an email. We’ll phone them and follow up first thing in the morning.”
Again, he shrugged—humoring me, but clearly without any hope that it would yield results. I got the impression that he didn’t place much faith in random people being helpful for the sake of it. Or in happy endings, for that matter.
“First thing in the morning,” I repeated sternly, and went to make toast.
Work was thankfully uneventful, and one of the busier Sundays we’d had recently. There was no reply to my email when I got home, but I hadn’t really expected there to be.
I slept poorly again, trying very hard not to think about the blissful nights I’d spent curled up with Luca... or with Luca and Byron together. My heart might have felt like those nights were the start of something, but my brain had understood that it was stolen time. And no one in the house was in a frame of mind for that kind of thing at the moment.
When I dragged my sorry carcass into the kitchen a few minutes before nine a.m., Zalen and Emiel were both already there. The smell of high-end coffee greeted me.
“Hi,” I said blearily. “Let me get caffeine, and I’ll call the adoption place as soon as they open.”
Zalen tilted his head. “What adoption place?”
I jerked my chin in Emiel’s direction. “It’s the rescue that does all the adoptions for the county animal shelter. I thought maybe someone there might know about Princess, in case she was picked up and taken to the pound.”
Zalen’s expression morphed into understanding. “That makes sense. Good idea. Em—isn’t that where you donate all the fight winnings I’m not supposed to know about?”
And... say what , now?
“Yeah,” Emiel said.
I stared at him. “And you didn’t think to call and talk to them in person?”
He blinked at me, bewildered. “She’s not listed on the website.”
Shaking myself free of my own bewilderment, I glanced at the clock. Nine-oh-one.
“Okay, then.” I pulled out my phone and dialed the number I’d entered last night. “Hello? Yes, I can hold.”
I ended up holding for quite a while before a harried woman picked up. I quickly put the phone on speaker so the others would be able to hear.
“ Gateway East Animal Adoptions ,” she said. “ How can I help you? ”
I glanced at Emiel. “Hi. I’m looking for information about a small gray female cat that might have been picked up by animal control.”
“ Have you filed a lost pet report? ” the woman asked.
“She’s feral,” I explained, not sure how much information would be too much information. “A friend of mine has been taming her. He was planning on bringing her home as a pet when she suddenly disappeared.”
There was a short pause. “ I’m sorry. We don’t generally deal with feral animals. Your friend should try putting food out for the cat —”
“I understand he’s a rather large donor to your organization,” I said, interrupting her. “My friend, I mean.”
Silence. It stretched for a couple of seconds.
“ Hold, please .”
I waited, crossing my fingers.
A new female voice picked up—younger than the previous one.
“ Hello. My name is Mandy. I’m the organization’s liaison with St. Clair Animal Services. I hear you’re looking for a feral cat that might have been picked up? Could you describe the animal, please? And also, the area where she was last seen .”
I relayed the information a second time, reading off the address of the Hope Project that Zalen jotted down on a notepad for me.
“ A gray female? No markings? ” asked the woman.
“That’s right,” I said, fighting the urge to hold my breath.
“ Okay. Please understand that I can’t promise anything... but we did have a cat of that description come in last week. A gentleman has been trapping feral cats in that area recently, but he’s refused to join the TNR program .”
“TNR?” I asked, confused.
“ Trap-neuter-release ,” said the woman. “ It’s the preferred method for dealing with feral cat colonies. It’s not mandatory in the city or county, though. And this person indicated that he wants the cats gone from the neighborhood permanently .”
I set that information aside, focusing on the important part. “But you have Princess there? The, uh, the gray female?”
I could feel Zalen and Emiel burning holes in me with their intent gazes.
“ No ,” the woman said with evident regret. “ I’m so sorry. She was here for a couple of days, but I’m afraid she’s no longer being held at this facility .”