Forty-Two – Wyatt
Forty-Two
Wyatt
“ C ome on, save,” I ordered the damned recruiting spreadsheet on my office computer. “Wrap it up. Time to go.”
Paperwork was my least favorite part of the job. Recruiting interviews? Loved them. I could talk about the program all day. Fundraising cold calls to alumni? A breeze so long as you followed the script. But I would rather dislocate a rib than type detailed notes. At least the computer had spell check.
It was just after nine when I walked out of the side entrance of the gymnastics building. The campus was dark and mostly quiet, except for the rustle of dry leaves and the distant sound of drunken laughter. It was an unspoken rule in college that weekends began on Thursdays.
Only a handful of cars remained in the lot—including Morgan’s. No, that couldn’t be right. The women’s basketball game ended hours ago. And yet… I halted, looked at the car again to ensure I wasn’t imagining things, and headed over.
It was Morgan’s boxy black sedan. The windows and tires were all intact. No oil was leaking on the pavement. Everything seemed to be in working order—but I didn’t like it.
Maybe she was working late or had to escort a player to the hospital, I thought as I dialed her number. The call went to voicemail. Rather than leave a message, I opted to send a text.
Where are you ?
Nothing. As much as I wanted to believe I was being paranoid, Morgan was a creature of habit. A stickler for routine. And she never stayed out late on weeknights—especially if she was feeling under the weather.
Could someone have picked her up? Kelsey and Rory were in Tacoma… With a short-lived jolt of excitement, I remembered that Piper was in town—but I didn’t have her number. While I could get it from Joaquin or Alijah, that would take too much time.
Cal was my best bet, even though I’d been ignoring his texts asking when I planned to come clean to Morgan about my waning syndrome diagnosis.
Is Morgan with you?
Thankfully, the parking lot was deserted, so no one saw me jump when my phone started to ring. Why was I surprised? Cal was a normal human being who knew how to communicate via telephone, unlike my brother.
“What’s going on?” Cal demanded.
“Did you pick Morgan up after the basketball game?”
“No. She texted me just before seven. Said she was packing up and turning in early. Why?”
“Her car’s still in the lot,” I said, jogging toward the fieldhouse, fueled by dread.
“She never left?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. And she’s not answering her phone.”
I skidded to a stop at the front door, fumbling with my staff badge. Did I even have access to the fieldhouse? No clue—but there was only one way to find out. A quick swipe across the security sensor resulted in a metallic click. Bingo. I barged in, scanning the lobby for directional signs.
“She’s not replying to my texts either,” Cal said, voice rigid with tension. “What are you doing?”
“Just walked into the fieldhouse.” The sight of a medical cross icon and an arrow pointing left were all I needed. I took off down the hallway at a brisk pace. “Going to take a look around.”
The hallway hit a dead end. I hesitated, scanning left, then right, my eyes darting about for more signs. Which way should I go?
That’s when it hit. A sickly sweet tendril of overripe pheromones snaked around my ankle, pulling me to the right.
The scent was familiar, yet—wrong. Horribly wrong .
I choked on a breath tinged with heavy metal, and the air seemed to grow humid, clogging my lungs. Helpless to resist, breathing harder with every step, alien desperation writhing in my veins, I went further down the hallway until I reached a nondescript door.
My sweaty palm grappled with the handle.
“Why are you out of breath?” Cal asked.
“Because…” The answer clung to the tip of my tongue. My alpha screamed at me to admit what I was tryingso hard to deny. But I couldn’t.
The door creaked open, unleashing an oppressive wave of pheromones. Rusted metal corrupted any hint of exotic pleasure. The stench of decomposing flowers coated my skin. No, not flowers.
Just one flower.
Orchid.
Rotten orchid.
A grotesque distortion of the scent I’d been physically craving for a decade. Gone were the subtle complexities of Morgan’s lush and velvety pheromones, the hints of vanilla and star anise, leaving nothing but decay in their place.
Wrong. Something was very wrong.
I swallowed hard, fighting back the urge to vomit, and kicked the door open wider.
Morgan lay sprawled on the floor. Unconscious. Arms limp. Eyes closed. Unmoving.
Just like Montreal.
“Wyatt. Wyatt!” Cal snapped like a whip, dragging me back to the present moment. “Talk to me.”
“S-she’s passed out. On the floor. What do I do? Cal, what do I do?”
“Is she breathing?”
Terror paralyzed me. “What?”
“Check if she’s breathing. Hold your fingers under her nose.”
Too scared to think, I could only obey. Falling to my knees beside her, I held two fingers beneath her nose. “Y-yes. She’s breathing.”
“Is there a chance she hit her head?”
“I don’t know.” The floor was hard and cold—an unchecked impact could have done damage. She was too far from the desk to hit it on the way down, but the exam table…
It was padded— just like the vault .
“I don’t know!”
“Okay, it’s okay.” Cal took a fortifying breath that seemed to steady us both. “Wyatt, we’re going to hang up now. You need to call an ambulance. Go to the Harborview ER. I’ll meet you there. Understand?”
“Y-yeah. Got it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Call an ambulance. Harborview ER.”
“Good. Keep me posted.”
Adrenaline kicked in, strong enough to shred my stomach lining, forcing me to act. Time blurred into a chaotic haze—paramedics asking me questions I couldn’t answer, disorienting medical jargon, sirens, and flashing lights. Before I knew it, I was in the back of an ambulance, holding Morgan’s hand as we sped across town.
Her fingers were too cold. Face bloodless. Shallow breaths coming in uneven spurts. Overlapping with my worst nightmare—which I’d already suffered through once. We’d only just reconnected. I couldn’t lose her again.
Why was I such a fucking coward?
I should have told her we were scent matches when I found out. No—long before that. I should have told her that day in Arizona. Because I knew it then, on some level, even though I didn’t fully understand that she was my other half.
I should have kicked Ethan in the shin, grabbed her, and ran off together. Should have never let her go.
My mother’s endless disapproval echoed through my head, urging me to admit I was nothing more than a fuck-up—who didn’t deserve a second chance.
For once, I didn’t listen. Morgan needed me.
“Wake up, Morgan. You’ve got to wake up. Or I’ll call Kelsey. You don’t want that, do you?”
She could curse me, rip into me, tell me I didn’t care about her enough, to fuck off forever. I could survive that. I had survived that.
But she had to wake up first.
Morgan had to wake up.
A nasty bump in the road jostled her, and my hand shot out instinctively to cradle her head—but I was too afraid to touch her. Terrified that the slightest touch could break her.
That the damage had already been done.
“Please, please…” My voice cracked as I threaded our fingers together.
Pressing my forehead against our joined hands, I whispered, “Baby, you’re scaring me.”
** *
“They won’t talk to me, Kelsey, but I think she had a seizure.” Cal stood outside Morgan’s room in the ER, watching her through the glass while repeatedly clicking a retractable pen, every muscle in his large frame wound too tight.
I sat on a bench across the hall, trying to make myself as compact as possible so I wouldn’t bother anyone. All the focus needed to be on Morgan right now.
“There’s no chance of you getting a flight back tonight,” Cal continued. “Joaquin will bring Piper over as soon as possible, but she’s still in rehearsal. It could take a few hours. So, I need you to sign the proxy authorization. Please.”
I couldn’t distinguish the words, but Kelsey’s tone was even and measured. She was the only person I knew with more grace than Morgan under pressure.
They exchanged terse but respectful words for a few minutes. Then, Cal finally played his ace.
“There’s a chance one of her medications had a bad reaction to her new suppressant. If you want to be certain, there’s no one better than me. No one.”
Game, set, match. All Kelsey could do was agree.
Cal asked her to repeat her email twice while typing it into his phone. “Thank you for trusting me. I’ll let you know what I find out as soon as possible—oh, one more thing before I let you go. Do you mind if Wyatt goes to your place to feed the cats and gather some essentials?”
I looked at Cal in confusion, feeling exceptionally dumb. How was I supposed to get into their loft?
“No need. He has a code.” Cal turned and raised a brow at me, still clicking that damned pen. “Don’t you?”
Code? What code—oh. That code. The one Morgan sent me to access their home gym because I made everything smell like compost. A code I never intended to use.
But there I was, an hour later, after taking a rideshare to collect my car from campus, standing in the foyer of Morgan’s loft, face-to-face with an enormous black and white cat.
I recognized him from Morgan’s social media, although he looked more like a mobile footstool than a feline in person.
“You must be Tenny.” I crouched down and held out my hand. He responded with an eager head butt, soft fur brushing against my knuckles. So far, so good.
“Hungry, buddy? Let’s get you some of the good stuff.”
I pulled out my phone and reviewed Cal’s hastily typed instructions. First up—feed the cats.
Open the tall cabinet to the far left to find wet food. Divide one can between two bowls. Set the cans on thedesignated mats on the kitchen floor. Top up the automatic feeder with kibble.
Check.
Next, retrieve themedication basket from the adjacent upper cabinet and photograph every bottle and label. Easy enough. But why were there so many of them? Morgan couldn’t possibly take so many medications every day, could she?
I knew the basics of what happened after her accident, but clearly, her case was more complicated than I’d realized.
Onto step three: fetch her phone charger, gray weighted blanket, and a few soft furnishings from her nest. Simple.
I hurried into the omega suite, running my hand along the molding on the third panel to the right, searching for the hidden latch that would unlock the door, just like Owen’s server room.
With a quick press, the panel swung open. Light from the suite foyer spilled onto a plush carpet littered with shards of glass and overturned furniture. I inched inside and eased up the dimmer switch. The full, devastating extent of the mess made the bottom of my stomach drop out.
Smashed vases and broken picture frames. Holes punched through a fabric dividing screen. A fake pothos plant torn to pieces, its dismembered vines scattered about. Bedding stripped from the mattress—ripped, and maybe even stained in a few places.
The walls were ruined. Entire sections of the green velvet paneling were shredded, exposing the padded infrastructure underneath.
I must have the wrong room. This wasn’t an omega’s nest—it was a disaster zone. A shambolic fallout shelter.
Nests were supposed to be sacred spaces. Intimate havens. A refuge. But this…
This was wrong . Just like her scent.
Betraying a total schism between Morgan and her omega.
The silent screams echoing through the room were deafening—a testament to her decade of pain.
The constant physical struggle. Being forced to abandon her dreams of winning another world title on vault or going back to the Olympics. Accepting her sudden fall from the greatest height of success in our sport—and yet refusing to give up on herself.
And she’d done it all without me.
She didn’t need me. Didn’t want anything from me. My trio of gift bags sat neglected on a credenza. She hadn’t even bothered to unpack them. Despite being her scent match.
The most glorious promise, delivered in an unworthy package.
I had no right to interfere in her life, to use our compatible pheromones as an excuse to force us together. But what if she didn’t pass out because of a bad interaction between her medications?
Overpowering pheromones had alerted everyone that something was wrong with me. Even after weeks on scent blockers, I still caught whiffs of noxious compost clinging to my workout clothes and towels—the same way lingering traces of rotten orchid and rusted metal now clung to my skin.
If she had endured for years—painstakingly rebuilding her life—only for my presence to trigger the onset of mate waning syndrome…
I stood petrified at the epicenter of her pain, feeling smaller and more insignificant than at any other point in my entire life.
The nails of my clenched fist dug deeper into my flesh. An oily trickle of blood, laced with our combined pheromones, ran down my hand and dropped onto the carpet, splattering against a torn photograph.
Morgan at nationals, holding a gold medal, her arm wrapped around a sturdy torso. My torso.
The blank space where my head and shoulders belonged mocked me. A glaring void created by my cowardice.
“No,” I ground out. “Not again.”
I refused to retreat a second time. We’d hurt each other enough. More than enough.
I may not be the alpha Morgan deserved, but I would be the man she needed for this moment, this new threat to her happiness.
Even if she cursed me—or forgot me entirely this time.
I would be damned before I left her alone again.