Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mia
It’s not the slow build I remember from previous cycles. It’s a flashover fire.
“No,” I gasp, rolling out of bed. My legs shake so hard I almost hit the floor. “No, no, no.”
It’s too early. It’s too fast.
Heat presses up through my nerves, making my skin feel sensitive all over. I grip the edge of my bathroom vanity.
“I am not—” I gasp as another little wave hits, “—doing this right now.”
My body disagrees.
Definitely heat. Too sharp for arousal, too all-over for stress.
It settles behind my navel and starts to build slowly.
I’ve been through this enough times to know it all boils down to this: If you feel like you’re crawling out of your own skin and every scent is dialed up to fourteen, congratulations.
“You are kidding me,” I whisper to no one.
Options flip through my mind like a grim little Rolodex.
Omega Center? Booked weeks in advance. I already have my appointment there for twelve days from now. I could contact them as an emergency drop in, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to fit me in.
The ache spikes.
I do the only thing I can think of. An ice-cold shower.
The water hits me like knives. I stand under it, gasping, clutching the wall tile, letting it beat against the overheated skin of my neck and shoulders until my teeth chatter.
It slows the throb a little. Numbs the edges.
For approximately twelve minutes.
By the time I’m towel-dry and wrestling into clean leggings and an oversized shirt, the heat is back. Worse.
I stand there in my bedroom, towel in hand, heart racing, every nerve ending screaming and my stupid body chanting one word on repeat.
Alphas.
Absolutely not.
Nope.
I make it until nine AM before my prudent, responsible brain grabs my keys, my purse, my list of “heat emergency supplies” from the drawer where I keep important papers. Heating pads, electrolytes, easy calories, scent blockers. My doctor would tell me to stock up and bunker down.
I can bunker. I have bunkered. I’ve done three solo heats since Julian.
I can do one more.
My hands are shaking as I lock the front door behind me. The air outside feels too bright, too sharp. Every scent in the neighborhood hits me like someone’s turned the gain up. Fresh-cut grass, dryer sheets from someone else’s laundry, a burger on someone’s grill four doors over.
Their house smells like them. Even from here.
I don’t look at it.
The drive to the market is a blur of white lines and the rushing sound of my own pulse in my ears.
I park all the way in the back of the lot, as far away from the automatic doors as I can get, needing a second before I face the assault of scents waiting inside. My hand shakes violently as I yank my phone out of my purse and hit speed dial.
“Pick up,” I whisper, staring at the heat already shimmering off the asphalt. “Pick up, pick up.”
“Hey,” Sierra answers on the third ring, her voice bright and professional. “You’re supposed to be working. If this is about procrastination, I’m charging you.”
“It’s not work,” I say, voice tight. “It’s early.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “The deadline?”
“My heat.”
“Oh.” The playfulness vanishes instantly. “Oh, Mia. But your cycle is like…always on time.”
“Well, not this time.” I scramble out of the car, clutching the phone like a lifeline against my ear. “I’m at the grocery store. I need supplies.”
“Mia, forget the grocery store. Go home. I’m leaving the office right now.”
“No,” I say, walking fast toward the entrance, keeping my head down. “Don’t come. You’re busy. I can handle this.”
“I have assistants. I can come. You shouldn’t be alone if it’s hitting this fast.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, stepping through the sliding doors.
The transition is brutal.
Icy air conditioning hits my overheated skin like a slap, making me shiver.
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, too bright, too sharp.
But it’s the smell that nearly knocks me over.
The grocery store usually smells like nothing, just sanitizer and floor wax.
Today, it’s a riot. Rotting fruit in the produce section.
A stream of copper coming from the butcher’s counter.
The sweetness of the bakery. And underneath it all, the soup of a hundred strangers’ pheromones roiling around me.
I grab a basket, tucking the phone between my ear and shoulder to shield myself from the noise. “I’m getting the essentials now. I just need to bunker down. Lock the doors, close the curtains, and ride it out.”
“Okay, bunker plan. I can work with that.” I hear the sound of Sierra moving, keys jingling, a door closing. She’s not listening to me; she’s on her way. “What do you have? Do you have heavy-duty painkillers? Heating pads?”
“I’m getting them,” I say, turning down the aisle. I grab a box of patches and toss them in. “I’m getting electrolytes. Oatmeal. Easy stuff.”
“What about relief?”
I pause, hand hovering over a box of protein bars. “What?”
“Relief, Mia,” Sierra says, her voice dropping to a practical, no-nonsense register. “You’re doing a solo heat. Your hormones are going to be jagged. Do you have toys? Batteries? Because willpower isn’t going to cut it when the heat really hits.”
“Sierra,” I hiss, ducking my head as an elderly beta woman pushes a cart past me.
“I’m serious! I can swing by the shop in the city on my way out. I’ll pick up the high-end silicone ones I know are good. Maybe a rechargeable rabbit? You need equipment, Mia. You need something to take the edge off or you’re going to be climbing the walls by midnight.”
I turn the corner into the pharmacy aisle, my face heating so fast I feel lightheaded. “I am in public. Please stop talking about rabbits.”
“I’m just being a good friend! I don’t want you suffering in there like a monk. There is no medal for getting through a heat without an orgasm.”
I scan the shelves frantically, my vision swimming slightly. “I’ll be fine,” I insist, grabbing a bottle of ibuprofen. “I just need to—”
“I’m coming over,” she overrides me. “I don’t care what you say. I’ll bring the supplies. I’ll drop them on the porch so you don’t have to see me or smell me, but I am not letting you do this without backup.”
“Mia?” The voice comes from behind me.
Low. Male. Familiar.
I freeze.
Every hormone I have does a full-body flinch, my skin prickling with sudden, terrifying awareness.
No. No. Not here. Not now.
Sierra is still talking in my ear, her voice tinny and loud in the quiet aisle. “—and I’m bringing the extra batteries, because if that thing dies on day two you’re going to cry—”
“Sie, I gotta go.” I stab the red ‘End Call’ button so hard I nearly drop the phone.
Silence.
I turn slowly, like maybe if I move gently enough, reality will hold.
It does not.
Eli stands in the middle of the pharmacy aisle with a basket of his own, jeans and a grey button-down rolled to his forearms, looking at me with those steady blue eyes that see straight through things.
Of course. Of course the universe sends the beta with the least patience for my self-sufficiency fantasies.
“Hi,” I squeak.
It is not my best work.
His gaze drops to the basket dangling from my hand and his nostrils flare. It’s subtle. Just a tiny flare at the edges of his nose as he inhales once, twice. Then his jaw tightens, muscle ticking in his cheek.
His eyes drop to the basket again. To the blockers. The heating pad. The unmistakable scent of distress rolling off me.
The realization hits him visibly. His expression shifting from unreadable to sudden, sharp concern.
“It’s not—” I start automatically, then abort because lying to a beta this tuned-in is pointless.
“It’s…early,” I say instead, voice about as steady as jello.
“It’s not supposed to happen for another two weeks.
The app says—” I fumble for my phone like showing him the little “12 DAYS” will magically reset my biology, “—but stress must have…I don’t know. I just need to grab some things and—”
“Who helps you?” he asks.
The question is a clean cut through my babble. Low. Even. And very, very serious.
My fingers clench around the handle of the basket. “What?”
“During your heats.” He sets his own basket down on the nearest shelf with slow care, never taking his eyes off me. “Who helps you?”
The aisle hums quietly. Somewhere a child laughs. A cart squeaks. The world keeps going while my heart skids.
“I…” My mouth tastes like cotton. “No one. I don’t— I can handle it myself.”
Those light-blue eyes go sharp.
“You’ll handle it,” he repeats, like we’re testing a hypothesis, “yourself.”
“Yes.” I try to put steel in it. It comes out tinny.
He steps closer, cutting the distance in half like it’s nothing. Up close, I can smell him over the minty medicinal reek of the aisle. Warm oats and clean cotton and a thread of coffee.
“Mia.” His voice drops, rougher now. “You live next to four men who would consider it the privilege of their fucking lives to kneel at your feet for five days.”
My breath stops dead.
Words clog in my throat.
“Don’t you dare,” he adds quietly, dangerously calm, “do this alone.”
The please that follows is silent, but I hear it.
My chest cracks along an old hairline fracture.
“I can’t—” The denial wobbles on the way out. “We barely… This isn’t… I can’t just show up like some feral omega and—” My voice breaks on a half-laugh, half-sob. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“This was never about owing,” he says. His hand lifts until it hovers near my shoulder. “This is about the fact that the idea of you suffering through this alone makes me want to put my fist through a fucking wall.”
He says it so quietly, so calmly, that it takes my mind a beat longer than usual to actually register exactly what he just said.
My vision blurs for a second. I blink too fast.