Chapter 10
JESS
Islip in through the back door and toe off Cassian’s boots, setting them neatly against the wall.
The borrowed leather still ghosts around my feet, and the intimacy of it makes my chest tighten. His scent lingers. Leather, amber, and black pepper with just enough bite to make something in me want to know more, to find out how it changes with his moods. With me.
My pulse hasn’t steadied since the bedroom…
since his fingers brushed my wrist outside and lingered half a second too long.
I tell myself it’s just biology, Omega instinct responding to an Alpha’s proximity, but this feels different.
More dangerous. Like standing at the edge of something I could fall into and never climb out of.
The small first-aid kit dangles from my fingers, suddenly heavy with what it represents. Proof that I touched him, tended him, and how he made me want things I shouldn’t.
I cross the narrow hallway and stash it in the half bath, tucking it back into the cabinet where I found it.
When I step out, the low murmur of the TV draws me toward the living room. A basketball game plays at conversation volume—the squeak of sneakers, the rise and fall of commentary.
Rowan sits on the couch, posture relaxed, one ankle crossed over his knee. If he senses me watching, he doesn’t react. Beside him, Eli flips through a stack of recipe cards, probably planning lunch and dinner before I’ve even thought to ask what’s next.
The casual assumption that I’ll still be here for meals wedges under my ribs—gratitude and guilt knotted too tightly to separate.
Cassian’s nowhere in sight.
Maybe that’s for the best. My heart’s still stumbling from earlier, from the way he looked at me with those whiskey-colored eyes like he could read every thought I was trying to bury.
His lips hovered somewhere between a threat and a promise, the corners tilting like he knows he’s getting under my skin.
And that teasing—God, the way his voice went rough and sexy when he said my name, like he was tasting it. Like he knew exactly what it did to me.
I press a hand to my stomach, trying to settle the stupid little spark curling there—want, not heat, but my body refuses to get the memo. And completely inappropriate for someone who’s been here less than two days.
I shouldn’t want to find him. Shouldn’t want to ask him to finish what he started when his fingers traced my wrist.
But the thought curls in anyway—uninvited, relentless, dangerous.
A commercial breaks through the quiet, bright colors and practiced smiles lighting the screen. The Omega Institute: where Omegas are trained to be better.
My stomach knots.
The professional voice rolls on, warm and reassuring, promising programs and support systems and new beginnings.
God, my friends. Are they okay? Do they know I made it out, or do they think I’m dead in a ditch somewhere?
The questions pile in my throat until breathing hurts.
I could ask Rowan. He’s right here, close enough that I’d only have to take a few steps and speak, but the idea of facing another Alpha, of letting any of them see the ache I keep hidden, makes something in me twist.
Not fear exactly. Something deeper. More primal.
Just being in the same room as them makes me hyper-aware of every shift, every breath, every trace of scent in the air.
That instinct I’ve spent years suppressing wakes up and stretches under my skin, restless and reaching toward them like roots seeking water.
And that terrifies me more than almost anything the Institute ever did.
No. Better if I handle this myself. Better if I don’t owe them any more than I already do.
I glance down the hall to the one that ends at the office I’d glimpsed during yesterday’s house tour. The door is cracked open just enough to tempt me.
Inside waits the cherrywood desk, a sleek silver laptop, and the scent of Rowan…sandalwood and rain is everywhere.
My heart picks up again, but this time it’s different. Purposeful. I can do this. I can find out if my friends are okay, if there’s any trace of what happened to them. I can take one small piece of control back.
Before I can second-guess myself, before fear or guilt can talk me down, I move.
The screen wakes under my fingers, glowing pale blue in the dimness.
Password required.
Of course.
Rowan doesn’t seem like the type to use anything cute or sentimental, but desperation makes people stupid.
I try his last name. Denied. The team he was watching. Denied. Something simple—Eli. Still wrong. Damn it!
The box blinks red: One attempt remaining.
My breath catches in my throat, heart suddenly loud in my ears. One more wrong guess and the laptop locks. Maybe alerts him. Maybe ruins the only chance I have to—
I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. But stopping feels worse than failing, and my friends’ faces are burned into my mind. Our whole lives, after we tested positive as Omegas, and skipping classes at the Omega Institute. The last night out together.
My finger hovers over the keyboard.
“Don’t.”
The voice turns my blood to ice.
Rowan’s in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, shoulders filling the space with an ease that makes the room feel smaller. The hallway light cuts across his profile—sharp jaw, dark eyes.
But it’s the calm in his expression guts me.
“I—” The words scrape against my throat raw. “I just needed—”
“You’re about to break the terms of your contract.” He steps inside, movements unhurried. The door clicks shut behind him with a finality that tightens the air in my lungs.
“My what?” The words come out too high, too defensive.
“The ninety-day trial you signed with Nexus.” His tone stays even; tension rides his shoulders. “No outside contact. No messages. No attempts to reach anyone from your past—no friends, no family, no one. It’s not a suggestion, Jess. It’s the first line of defense keeping you off their radar.”
Heat floods my face: part shame, part anger. “I didn’t read that part.” Actually, I didn’t read any of it; I was just happy to be out of Nexus even if my stay had been super short.
“Then you should start reading things before signing.” He says it without cruelty, just matter-of-fact, and somehow that makes it worse. Like he expected this. Like I’m predictable.
The anger wins. “Safe, right? That’s what you all keep saying. Like isolation’s the same thing as protection. Like being cut off from everyone I care about is supposed to feel like freedom.”
“For now, it is.” He stops a few feet away.
Close enough that I catch the scent of rain blooming between us—petrichor and ozone and something uniquely him.
His voice drops, goes quiet in a way that feels oddly private, like we’re the only two people in the world.
“The people who ran that place would track your heartbeat if they could. Contact draws attention. Attention draws audits. Audits mean they find excuses to revoke your placement and drag you back.”
“My friends aren’t dangerous.” My voice breaks on the last word, and I hate it. Hate the weakness. “They’re probably terrified. They probably think I’m dead or worse.”
“Nexus won’t care.” He tilts his head slightly, studying me. “They care about compliance. About control. One email, one message, one digital footprint leading back to you, and they have grounds to claim you violated terms.”
“So I just—what? Forget them?” My voice cracks despite my best efforts. “Pretend they don’t exist? That our friendship means nothing?”
Something flickers across his face—there and gone so fast I almost miss it. “For these ninety days with us,” he says, softer now. “Yes.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” I hate how small my voice sounds. “You still have a life. You have Cassian and Eli and this house and your work. You didn’t lose everything.”
The silence that follows feels like a held breath.
His jaw works once, twice, a muscle ticking like a countdown to detonation. “You’re not the only person in this house who’s had to burn their old life down and start over from ash. The only difference is I didn’t have a choice about the match.”
The rawness in his voice stops my breath. There’s a story there—something jagged and unhealed that he’s wrapped in silence and distance.
“Then help me,” I whisper. “Please. I just need to know they’re okay. That’s all.”
He closes his eyes briefly, and I watch him weigh it. Watch the calculation happen behind his expression—risk versus compassion, rules versus humanity. When his eyes open again, something’s shifted.
“Give me their names.” He exhales slowly. “I’ll look into it quietly. Carefully. But you don’t touch this again. Not the laptop, not my phone, not anything. Understood?”
Relief nearly buckles my knees. “Understood.”
He reaches past me to close the laptop, movements controlled and precise. Our fingers meet on the edge of the screen—skin against skin, the contact so simple it shouldn’t mean anything.
But it does.
Heat crawls up my arm like a lit fuse, every nerve ending lighting up, aware and hungry in a way that terrifies me.
Neither of us moves. We just stand there, fingertips pressed together over cool metal, while something dangerous builds in the air.
His eyes darken, considering it…a war play out across his features—the slight tightening around his eyes, the way the vein in his neck jumps.
“You should leave now before—”
“Rowan,” I whisper, and I don’t know if it’s defiance or a plea or an invitation. Maybe all three.
His gaze drags up to mine, slow as honey, dark as smoke. The space between us folds in on itself until there’s nothing but sandalwood and skin and the electric taste of ozone in the air.
“You’re looking for trouble,” he says quietly. “And if you don’t leave now, I can’t promise that you’ll be able to.”
I should step back. Put distance between us. But my body won’t cooperate. “Maybe trouble’s looking for me too.”
His jaw tightens. “Jess—”