Chapter Nine
Rhea
L ucian’s movements are smooth and silent, but they land like thunder in my bones. Each step tightens something low in my gut - not attraction, not want, just… inevitability.
He stops just short of my space. He doesn’t have to make contact - his presence invades everything.
“I knew I caught something back there. I just didn’t expect it to be this… obvious.”
Ash sighs. “She’s not a threat.”
"She’s the threat," he says. "Not in control. Half a step from breaking wide open."
"And she’s still not yours," Ash says, voice like ground stone.
Lucian’s jaw tightens. His posture sharpens enough that even I feel the crackle of tension slicing through the air.
Their gazes lock. Two Alphas, both holding still, both coiled in different kinds of violence.
Ash radiates restraint. Grounded, firm, coiled like a wall you can’t climb. Lucian, though - he’s fire under glass. Controlled only because he chooses to be.
Lucian finally shifts his focus back to me, and the weight of it pins me where I stand.
"You’re in heat," he says, as if it's a decision I made. His voice is low, intimate, cutting. "Clearly unmarked and unclaimed, scenting up a ballroom like you’re calling to every Alpha in a hundred miles."
I feel the flush rise to my skin, heat and fury and helplessness crashing together.
“Fuck you.”
Lucian’s mouth curves - not quite a smile. More like satisfaction.
“There it is.”
"You think I wanted this?" My fists clench, nails biting into my palms. "You think I chose to fall apart surrounded by strangers, cornered by Alphas who see me as something they can take ?"
He tilts his head, that cold elegance sharpening.
"No," he says, with maddening certainty. "But you chose to hide. And now you've been found."
My heart slams against my ribs.
"Back off, Vale," Ash growls.
Lucian doesn’t so much as glance at him.
Instead, he steps forward again - just one deliberate shift - and it hits me like a blow.
The heat inside me spikes, roaring through my chest, clawing down my spine. My muscles tense against the pull, but it’s too strong.
My knees buckle slightly. My thighs clench. My breath shudders out of me.
No.
I shove backward. Hard .
“Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Me.”
Lucian halts, mid-step; but not because he’s cowed - because he’s choosing not to move.
I can see it in his eyes: the calculation, possession. This isn’t about instinct, this is about decision.
He wants me, and he also wants Ash gone.
The realization slides cold through the molten chaos of my body: they’re not just competing - they’re preparing to fight.
And if I stay between them, there’s only one way it ends.
My instincts scream at me, raw and desperate.
So.
I bolt.
Again.
I shove past Lucian, a whiff of cologne and hubris, and nearly take Ash down in the process. Neither stops me, but I can feel them tracking me with their eyes - the kind of attention that sears.
The heels were a mistake. I’m all panic, sweat, and fury, skidding down marble floors.
I only make it a few more seconds before a shrill voice slices through the air, cutting directly through the chaos, all sharp and horrified.
“RHEA?!”
Lexi.
She rounds the corner like she’s preparing to fight god, and her shoulders sag the moment she locks eyes with me.
“There you are - what the hell?! I thought maybe you’d been kidnapped or decided to elope with a suspiciously tall waiter -”
“I don’t have time to explain,” I say as I grab her wrist. “You need to run with me.”
“ Run ?! From what? ”
“From heat. From instincts. From alphas. From life. Just - run !”
We stumble together, heels clacking, lipstick sweating, like two drunk bridesmaids fleeing a cursed wedding. Honestly, we really are a sight.
My scent is full-blown chaos now - sweet, thick, impossible to ignore - and Lexi chokes on air beside me.
“Oh my god,” she says, her eyes widening. “Are you...? No. You’re not. You can’t be. Rhea," she slows down, then comes to an abrupt halt when I continue to try and drag her along. “RHEA.”
I sigh, stopping for a moment so that I can look right back at her. “I know.”
“You’re an OMEGA?!”
“I said I know !” “You told me your biggest secret was once crying during a toothpaste commercial -” “Lies! All lies!” I admit, throwing up my hands in defeat. “Welcome to the nightmare.”
She opens her mouth to question me again, but I shake my head.
“Lex, there's no time,” I tell her. “I'll explain everything later, I promise. Just - come on!”
She frowns at me for a beat longer before she falls into step beside me again, and we pick up the pace once more. The walls are too narrow, the ceiling too low; my own heat too loud inside my head as I move as fast as I can, hand-in-hand with my best friend.
We turn another corner, and I could cry at the sight of the glowing red EXIT sign overhead and the huge fire exit doors beneath it.
Salvation .
I lunge for the doors, grabbing the handle, pushing against it, and -
Nothing.
I blink. Then slam my shoulder against it, trying again.
Harder .
Still nothing.
“ Shit .”
I spin, breath wild in my chest, searching for anything - another door, a stairwell, a window -
But it’s just me, my scent; and the sound of fresh footsteps echoing behind me.
“ Damn ,” a voice drawls a beat or two later.
Kai rounds the corner with the easy confidence of someone who’s never had to chase something he didn’t catch - open jacket flaring, shirt clinging to his chest, hair a mess of waves and intention.
A grin is already stretched across his face; wide, wicked, and feral .
“You run fast for someone in heels.”
Lexi, bless her feral little soul, screams and throws a punch.
It lands. Square in his cheek.
Kai stumbles back a step, eyes wide, touching his face like she just handed him a blessing.
“What the - where did you - did you just HIT me?!”
“I thought you were about to lunge!” she shrieks. I watch as her chest rises and falls before she shakes her head. “You can’t just prowl around corners like a damn jungle cat with bedroom eyes!”
He blinks. Rubs his jaw.
Then grins.
“Wow. That's hot.”
“Oh my god,” Lexi hisses, waving her hand in the air. “Now my knuckles smell like aftershave and bad decisions.”
“You’re welcome,” Kai says.
“I’m gonna need antibiotics.”
Kai flashes her a grin, teeth bright and dangerous. “You free next Saturday?”
She blinks. “What - are you flirting with me?”
“You hit me harder than most alphas. I’m a little turned on.”
“Oh my god,” she mutters. “Do you flirt with every woman who tries to break your face?”
“Only the talented ones.”
“Jesus.”
“Technically, that wasn’t him. But I get the confusion.”
I make a noise halfway between a whimper and a wheeze.
Kai's still grinning as he takes a step closer, ignoring both our panic and Lexi’s flared-nostril fury.
“So, this your friend, Omega? She hits hard. I like her.”
“Back off,” I growl, stepping in front of Lexi like I’m suddenly brave and not one shallow breath from melting into the floor.
The ache in my body is sharp and liquid at once. My scent is everywhere , slick and sweet and screaming need , and Kai inhales it deeply; head tipping back, eyes fluttering to a close before he exhales a low whistle, pleased and awful.
“Found her,” he calls out, voice echoing against the walls, not even pretending I have anywhere left to run. “And fuck, she smells good.”
Behind him, footsteps multiply - Lucian stalking forward like the specter of capitalism, Ash exuding menace. Kai steps forward, and the others move in unison with him like a twisted pack.
Not pouncing, but circling.
The tension triples.
And in the middle of it all, Lexi glares at Kai, a typically oblivious beta who can't pick up on the instinctual tension going on around her.
She shakes her sore hand out. “You owe me a drink.”
Kai looks away from me for a beat to throw her a wink. “Only if I can buy you breakfast after.”
She gags. “Try that line on someone who doesn’t carry pepper spray in their bra.”
“I love a woman with plans.”
“Try loving a woman with pepper spray.”
And somehow, absurdly, I laugh.
Just once. Breathless. On the verge of collapse.
Because everything’s unraveling, and I’m one second away from becoming public scandal number one, but my best friend just punched an alpha in the face, and that alpha is now flirting with her like he’s into it.
But then the heat surges.
The walls tilt, and I groan, leaning back against the door.
It still doesn’t open.
Lexi catches the look on my face and curses.
“Oh no. No, no, no. Don’t you dare go into full-blown Omega meltdown on me,” she hisses, grabbing my arm.
“I’m not - I’m trying -”
“Your pupils are gone, babe.” She squints. “And your thighs are doing something... weird. It's like you’re trying to hold in the apocalypse, or something.”
“I think I am,” I croak.
Kai takes another step forward, and I snarl; a low, unfamiliar sound that comes from low in my belly and surprises myself and Lexi.
“Easy, now,” Kai murmurs, eyes raking over me like I’m already on my knees. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”
“Speak for yourself,” Lexi snaps, positioning herself between us with all the effectiveness of a sequined sandbag. “You take one more step and I will break you with my eyelash curler.”
Kai blinks. “...Do you carry that around?”
“I’m a woman at a gala. I carry everything .”
Meanwhile, my teeth are grinding so hard I’m amazed they haven’t turned into glitter, my whole body tight and vibrating.
But I will not surrender. I will not submit.
I will not let Kai hot-gremlin Reed smirk me into a puddle.
“Shit,” Kai says, voice low, eyes gleaming. His boots echo against the floor, and I flinch at the sound. “You’re shaking.”
“No, she’s vibrating,” Lexi mutters, then waves a hand. “Omega buffering. Or rage. Honestly, it’s fifty-fifty.”
I clamp my thighs together like they’re guarding the crown jewels, but the heat pulses low and deep anyway. My skin is slick, my breath short, and Kai is way too into it.
“Those eyes,” he muses, head tilted like I’m a fun science experiment. “All wide and wild. You always look like that when you panic? Or is it just me?”
“She always looks like that when she’s near cats,” Lexi offers helpfully. “Also traffic. And commitment.”
“I’ll add myself to the list, then,” Kai says, grin lazy. “Definitely the dangerous one.”
I want to tell him to shut up. I want to move.
But my mouth is too dry, and my brain has packed a bag and left me alone with nothing but instinct and Lexi’s emotional support chaos.
“ Bambi ,” Kai says softly, eyes gleaming with something sharp and smug. “That’s what you are. All legs and fear and big, wide eyes.”
The word sticks like a burr under my skin.
“Are you nicknaming her while she’s going feral?” Lexi chokes. “Are you trying to imprint on her, or something?”
Before I can process that or fire back with something scathing, Kai reaches out and cups my chin.
His touch is rough and calloused, and it detonates under my skin.
I freeze.
First touch. First alpha touch.
The air is gone. My knees threaten mutiny as the heat snarls inside me, and Lexi stands frozen in place, clearly torn at what to do.
Kai tilts my chin up, forcing me to look straight into blue eyes, noting the way that they glint with amusement and hunger.
"Pretty little thing," he murmurs. "Bet you don’t even know how sweet you smell right now."
My stomach twists - panic and something darker coiling low.
Behind us, Lucian growls.
"Take your hand off her," he says, voice cold and lethal.
Kai obeys, hands raised, grin unbothered. “Relax, Vale. It was just a little touch.”
Lexi puts both hands on her hips. “How about you keep your hands to yourself, Motorbike Barbie .”
But the damage is done.
My skin burns where he touched me. My heart pounds like I swallowed a war drum, and the hallway crackles around us with alpha tension.
"Hey!”
A new voice cuts through the tension like a toddler with scissors.
Too loud. Too nasal.
Too beta.
A man rounds the corner in scuffed dress shoes and a staff shirt that looks like it’s been ironed by a lawnmower. There’s a blinking comm piece in his ear and a clipboard under one arm, like he’s cosplaying authority.
“What’s going on back here?"
Of course. Just my luck.
A hall monitor with delusions of grandeur.
He takes one look at the scene - three alphas, one sweating, glassy-eyed omega, and Lexi standing like she’s about to drop a skincare routine and a body - and freezes.
Then the scent hits him.
His nostrils flare, his mouth drops open, and he goes pale like the moment before a fainting goat collapses.
“Oh shit,” he breathes.
Yeah. No kidding.
His gaze bounces between the alphas - Kai too close, Lucian sharp as a blade, Ash coiled in restraint - and then lands on me.
The trembling. The sweat. The too-wide pupils.
“She’s in heat,” he mutters, utterly horrified. “She’s not tagged - not claimed. This is - this is a violation o-of several protocols -of safety measures. We need to report this. I have to-”
His hand twitches toward his comm like it’s a panic button.
I lurch back a step.
“ Don’t ,” I cry out, but he’s already turning - already lifting it -
Crack.
Kai moves like he’s been waiting for this moment since puberty.
One brutal punch, clean as sin, lands square in the guy’s jaw. The beta goes down like a sack of potatoes
and hits the floor - hard - clipboard skittering across the tile like it’s trying to escape the drama.
I gasp.
Lexi shouts, “ Holy shit !”
Kai exhales, rolling out his knuckles with a low, satisfied sound.
“I mean,” he says, glancing at Lexi with a cocky grin, “ that’s how you throw a punch.”
“That man is unconscious!”
He shrugs. “Yeah, well, I could have been too after you cold-cocked me. Fair’s fair.”
“You startled me!” Lexi hisses. “You came out of the dark like some kind of sexy, haunted raccoon!”
“I take that as a compliment.”
“You shouldn’t!”
“You said sexy.”
I genuinely have no clue what's going on anymore. This cannot be real.
How am I actively melting into the floor while the alphas look like they’re about to break into a dominance tango, and Lexi and Kai are debating punch etiquette over a body?!
The Beta groans on the ground, dazed and bleeding from the nose.
“Was gonna call someone to report you,” Kai says, this time softer, his eyes finding mine. “You didn’t want that. I saw it.”
Lucian watches, face unreadable at first - cold and regal - but something ugly stirs beneath the surface.
Ash shifts beside him, fists tight.
The energy spikes.
Because every alpha instinct in them is screaming protect, and they all know what I know:
One call. One report. One file opened in the OMB system.
And I’m gone.
But Kai Reed - chaotic, stupidly hot Kai Reed - just punched bureaucracy in the face for me.
For a heartbeat, everything holds.
Then Lucian moves.
He stalks a step closer to Kai, voice low and lethal .
“You’re in my way,” he says, the words low and sharpened to a knife’s edge.
Kai doesn’t flinch. Just lifts one lazy brow and flashes a grin that could probably get him arrested for public menace.
“Relax, Vale. I was helping.”
Lucian’s eyes narrow. “You touched my Omega.”
“Okay, wow . Possessive much?" Lexi chirps up from beside me. “Did she sign a lease I didn’t see?”
Kai’s smirk twitches, but only for a second.
Lucian steps forward again, voice dropping like a guillotine.
“You laid a hand on what’s mine,” he repeats, quiet and cold. “You’re lucky I don’t tear your fucking throat out.”
Kai sighs, like he’s deeply inconvenienced by the conversation not being about him anymore.
“Technically, the beta's right,” he drawls, “she hasn’t signed any paperwork.”
Lexi bristles like someone just stepped on her heels.
“Uh, the beta is right here, thanks,” she snaps, stepping forward. “And the name’s Lexi, not ‘ token background extra .’”
Kai flashes her a quick, amused grin. “Apologies, Lexi the beta. Excellent right hook, by the way. Very clean form.”
“I was aiming for your throat.”
“Even better.”
Ash lets out a sigh that sounds like it’s being filtered through a thousand years of repressed trauma, but Lucian doesn’t budge. His full, glacier-carved fury stays locked on Kai.
“You think this is a game?” he murmurs, stalking closer. “You think you can interfere, sniff around, touch ?”
Lexi leans in close to me, muttering under her breath.
“Jesus Christ - somebody get this man a sedative, a stress ball, and maybe a long walk into the ocean.”
I want to laugh, I really do, but I can't.
Lucian doesn’t blink. “You’ve mistaken my tolerance for permission,” he says, smile razor-thin and full of violence dressed in couture.
Kai rolls his neck with a loud crack, bouncing on his heels like he might actually throw a punch just for the fun of it.
“And you’ve mistaken your tone for something that scares me. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. ”
And that’s when my heat slams into me again. Hard .
Like the universe heard “ fight me ” and decided “ oh, you like that? ”
It folds over me, all syrupy-sweet and absolutely not convenient, sweeping through my body in a rush that makes my knees wobble and my thighs clench like I’ve just been hit by a wave of hot alpha chest hair and bad decisions.
Because, apparently, two grown men squaring off in a hallway over my unregistered omega ass?
Yeah. That’s the thing that does it.
Not flowers. Not love notes.
No - threats of violence and disrespectful eye contact.
Fantastic.
I let out a sound that could generously be described as a strangled wheeze, and Lexi glances over at me once before doing a double-take.
“Oh my god. You’re into this?!” she mutters.
“I didn’t mean to be!” I hiss, gripping the wall like it might save me from spontaneous combustion.
“You need holy water and a therapist.”
“I need them to stop glaring at each other like foreplay!”
Lucian growls, and my knees start to buckle. My vision blurs heavily, and I have never wanted to punch my biology in the face more than I do right now.
Lexi hisses as she pulls me upright.
“Okay, I love you, but if you collapse here, I am never forgiving you,” she says. “This hallway smells like gym socks and testosterone. Pull. Yourself. Together.”
“I’m trying ,” I bite out.
“Try harder , babe. I am knee-deep in Alpha dick-measuring and we haven’t even made it to dessert.”
My knees buckle. I hit the door behind me again, desperate now.
It still. Doesn’t. Give.
I can’t do this. I can’t -
“ Enough .”
The hallway stills at the sound of the new voice, and all eyes turn toward him.
Theo.
He moves into view with that quiet steadiness that somehow cuts sharper than yelling. He doesn’t need theatrics - his presence alone resets the temperature in the corridor.
He takes in everything with one sweep: the unconscious beta, Kai’s bloodied knuckles, Lucian practically vibrating with murder, Ash a living wall of restraint, Lexi standing with me against the door -
Then his gaze finds mine, and everything in his face changes.
His nostrils flare. His jaw flexes. His hands curl once at his sides before relaxing again.
But his rage isn’t toward me - it’s for me.
“Back off,” Theo says to the others, his voice even, but commanding in a way that leaves no room for argument.
His gaze stays locked on Kai, just a little longer than strictly necessary.
Kai sighs - dramatic and theatrical, like he’s being personally victimized by basic consequences - and holds up his hands in exaggerated surrender.
“Fine, fine. I’m backing up. No need to alpha at me, bro.” He actually steps back, hands still up. “Some people don’t appreciate helpful public service.”
Lexi, still gripping my arm like she’s ready to commit battery in a gown, scoffs. “You punched a man unconscious.”
Kai shrugs. “And yet, I did not punch Lucian. Growth.”
Lucian makes a sound low in his throat that suggests growth is about to get him killed.
Theo doesn’t break eye contact with Kai until he’s satisfied. Then - finally - he turns to me.
His voice lowers, soft and reverent as he moves closer.
“Omega,” he says, like it’s a promise and a prayer all at once. “Can I touch you?”
Lexi blinks. “Okay, that’s hot,” she mutters under her breath. I shoot her a look, and she just widens her eyes at me. “What?! I’m just saying. If I were in heat and hadn’t just punched the other one -”
“Lexi,” I breathe, shaky. “Not. Helping.”
“I am helping. With moral support and light commentary.”
But I don’t hear the rest of her snark, because Theo is still watching me.
I nod.
And everything finally starts to shift.