Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Lab Rats Gone Wild
Riot
The air in Lilac’s living room didn’t have enough Cass in it.
Riot was aware, on some level, that this was not a rational complaint. Air was air. It contained oxygen and nitrogen and whatever else made lungs work, and the presence or absence of one particular Omega’s scent should not fundamentally alter its breathability.
His hindbrain disagreed. His hindbrain had decided that air without Cass was defective air, and every cell in his body was staging a full revolt in response to this unacceptable atmospheric deficiency.
He’s thirty feet away. Behind a door. Being helped by people who know what they’re doing.
This was objectively good. Orion had experience with his own brutal cycles. He was qualified. He was competent. He was not currently fighting the urge to tear through drywall with his bare hands, which put him several critical qualifications ahead of Riot on the “appropriate caretaker” list.
Riot dug his nails into his palms, reopening the crescents he’d carved earlier.
His cock throbbed in time with his heartbeat and the ache of it had settled into his bones, become background noise beneath the louder desperation. His whole body was wound so tight he felt like he might shatter if someone touched him wrong.
Or touched him right.
Don’t think about the car. Don’t think about how he felt in your lap, how wet he was, how your fingers were right there—
“You need to go home,” Lilac said.
Home. Right. The word had meant something once—a bedroom in a shared house with Prepper and Stave, a place to store his spare suppressants, a door he could close against the world.
It worked perfectly well. Then he’d spent three days in a pocket universe where nothing existed except Cass, and the whole framework quietly collapsed like a building with its foundations removed.
Real life was a distant concept, something that happened to other, less stupid people.
Now real life was pressing back in, and Riot wanted to shove it away with both hands.
“Can’t,” he managed, pacing the living room.
“You can and you will.” Lilac moved into his line of sight, positioning herself between him and the hallway. “Mira, you’re barely holding it together. What happens when you lose control with an Omega in heat in the next room?”
What happens is I go to him. What happens is I put my hands on him and my mouth on him and I don’t stop.
Riot shook his head sharply, trying to dislodge the thought. “I’m fine.”
“That’s the least convincing thing you’ve ever said, and I once watched you claim you weren’t bleeding while leaving a trail across my kitchen floor.”
Fair point. Riot had no defense for that one. His track record with accurate self-assessment was, he had to admit, not great. Somewhere between “catastrophic” and “clinically delusional.”
From the bedroom, he heard a sound. Small. Pained. Distinctly Cass.
Every muscle in Riot’s body went rigid.
The jealousy that followed was immediate and irrational and he was fully aware of both things and neither of them helped in the slightest. Dante was in there.
Dante, with his sharp gray eyes and his competent hands and his Alpha instincts that were probably responding to every whimper, every shift of Cass’s heat-flushed body.
He knew Dante and Orion were solid. Committed.
Genuinely in love in that irritating way that made other people’s relationship prospects look like failed corporate mergers.
But he also knew what Alphas were capable of when an Omega in heat was involved.
He knew what he was capable of. And if Cass’s heat triggered Orion, and Dante was right there with two desperate Omegas—
He wouldn’t. He’s not like that.
But the darker part of Riot’s mind whispered, You don’t know that. You don’t know what anyone’s really like when control slips. You know what YOU’RE like.
“Don’t spiral,” Lilac said quietly. “Focus on something else.”
“Granny Lu.” Riot grabbed onto the anger because it felt safer than the jealousy. Anger, at least, had a target. “She had no right to talk to him like that.”
“She didn’t know—”
“She didn’t care to know.” He couldn’t stop moving, pacing the small living room like something caged. “He was already terrified. Already in pain. And she just looked at his robes and decided that was enough to call him trash.”
The memory of Cass’s face in that moment—the way he’d tried so hard to stand straight, to be brave, even as his body betrayed him—made something in Riot’s chest ache with a ferocity that had nothing to do with his modifications.
He’s so fucking brave and he doesn’t even know it.
Another sound came from the bedroom. Cass’s voice this time, saying something Riot couldn’t quite make out. He took a step toward the hallway.
“No.” Lilac grabbed his arm. “Absolutely not.”
“I just need to check—”
“You need to sit down and get your shit together before you do something we all regret.”
Then the front door banged open.
Riot spun, violence coiling in his muscles, ready to put his fist through whoever had just made themselves a target—
Stave and Prepper filled the doorway.
For one horrible moment, relief and rage warred in Riot’s veins.
His brothers. His family. The only people in the world who understood what it meant to wake up screaming from dreams of the lab, who knew how to talk each other down from the edge, who’d held each other through the worst of the withdrawal when the black market suppressants ran out.
But they were also the last people he wanted to see right now. They were reality—the life he’d been conveniently ignoring while he existed in that bubble with Cass. Their presence meant the bubble was done. Popped. Reality arrived and it hadn’t even bothered to knock.
Then Cass’s scent hit them both.
Riot watched it happen—watched Stave’s nostrils flare, watched Prepper’s pupils blow wide, watched their eyes catch the dim light and reflect it back in that familiar golden glow.
Two more modded Berserkers, responding to an Omega’s heat.
Three total, now. Because what this situation really needed was more Gensyn-manufactured predators in a confined space. Excellent. Ten out of ten.
Stave and Prepper had gone still in the doorway, both of them clearly fighting the same battle—instinct clawing at control, demanding they respond to the scent flooding the house.
But they held. They didn’t move toward the hallway.
Not like last time. We’re better than last time.
The snarl that tore out of Riot’s throat surprised him—low and territorial and not directed at the Omega scent, but at the two Alphas who’d just gotten a lungful of it. Mine. He’s mine. They can’t have him.
“Well,” Stave said, his voice flat as ever despite the gold bleeding into his eyes, “this is a shitshow.”
“Get out.” Lilac had positioned herself in the center of the room like a referee at a bar fight where every participant outweighed her by a hundred pounds and could bench-press a truck. She did not appear to care. “All of you. Out of my house. Now.”
“We came to check on you,” Prepper said, but his gaze kept drifting toward the hallway.
He caught himself, shook his head hard, and deliberately looked at the ceiling instead.
One hand had drifted to the burn scars that twisted down the left side of his face.
“Heard there was some excitement at the gates. Wanted to make sure everyone was—fuck, that’s a hell of a scent. ”
“The scent is handled,” Lilac snapped. “What’s not handled is three Berserkers in my living room responding to it. Leave.”
Stave hadn’t moved from the doorway. His expression was the same flat mask it always was—the one that made people uncomfortable because they couldn’t tell if he was bored or calculating how quickly he could kill everyone in the room.
Probably both, knowing Stave. His left hand rested against his right wrist, fingers tracing the thick scar tissue there.
The bite marks had healed badly, which happened when they declined medical attention on the grounds that they deserved the scars.
They’d all made that particular decision at least once.
“Your suppressants,” Stave said to Riot, ignoring Lilac entirely. “When did they stop working?”
This. This was what Riot didn’t want to deal with. Not now. Not while every nerve in his body was oriented toward a bedroom like a compass needle that had been magnetically reprogrammed to point at one specific Omega.
“This morning. Double dose.”
“And before this morning?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Stave’s head tilted slightly—the only tell that something was processing behind those flat eyes. “Same batch as ours?”
The question landed like a stone in Riot’s gut. He knew why Stave was asking. If Riot’s suppressants were failing, it could mean the batch was bad. It could mean their mods had outpaced the chemistry.
It could mean they were all fucked.
And Riot couldn’t make himself care or make the math feel urgent when every synapse was already dedicated to tracking the muffled sounds from Lilac’s bedroom.
Catastrophic pharmaceutical failure affecting surviving Endeavor subjects?
Sure. Important. File it under “problems for a version of Riot who isn’t slowly losing his mind. ”
“Yeah,” he said reluctantly. “Same batch.”
Stave and Prepper exchanged a look.
“Well, that’s not great,” Prepper said. He’d given up on the ceiling and was staring at Riot, his scarred face twisted into a grimace. “You look like shit, brother. When’s the last time you ate something?”