Chapter 19
NINETEEN
HOLLY
On the day my heat finally breaks—a full three days after it started—I wake to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar curtains, my body aching in places I didn’t know even existed.
For a moment, I float in that hazy space between sleep and wakefulness, where reality hasn’t quite solidified.
Then it all comes rushing back—the heat, the desperate need, and Noah.
Noah.
My hand flies to my chest, feeling for something that isn’t physically there, but still feels like a lead weight behind my ribcage.
The bond. It pulses between us like an invisible thread, humming with energy.
I’ve read about bonds in medical textbooks, clinical descriptions of the neurochemical processes involved, but nothing prepared me for the reality of feeling another person’s emotions echoing inside my head.
I sit up too quickly, wincing at the soreness between my thighs. The sheets pool around my waist, and I notice I’m wearing one of Kai’s oversized t-shirts. I don’t remember putting it on. Did Noah dress me after I fell asleep? The thought sends a flush of heat to my cheeks.
Jesus fuck, what have I done?
I’ve bonded with an attending at my job. A man who holds my career in his hands. The man who made it clear from day one that he doesn’t want me here.
Now he has every reason to want me as far away from him as possible.
The bond throbs in response to my anxiety, a dull ache spreading across my chest. Is this what it feels like to him too? Can he sense my panic from wherever he is right now?
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, noticing a set of my clothes neatly folded on a nearby chair.
I don’t remember folding them. Another thing Noah must have done while I was sleeping.
The thought of him caring for me while I was unconscious sends a complicated mix of emotions through me—gratitude, embarrassment, and something warmer that I refuse to examine too closely.
Standing on shaky legs, I make my way to the bathroom, avoiding my reflection in the mirror.
I don’t want to see what I look like right now, don’t want to face the physical evidence of what happened between us.
Instead, I turn on the shower and step under the spray, letting the hot water wash away the scent of sex and alpha that clings to my skin.
As I scrub myself clean, I try to make sense of the jumbled memories from the last few days.
Most of the recollections are so hazy that I don’t know if they are real or imagined.
Noah had left shortly after I took a bite out of him and hadn’t returned.
Grayson and Kai had been kind, I think. And I either was able to resist the urge to plant my teeth into either of them, or they were smart enough not to give me the opportunity.
But I have a crystal clear memory of the moments leading up to that claiming bite. Noah’s hands on my body. The taste of his skin. The overwhelming relief when he finally entered me. And then, at the height of pleasure, the irresistible urge to bite him, to claim him as mine.
I press my forehead against the cool tile of the shower wall. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking at all—that’s the problem. My omega instincts took over, and now we’re both paying the price.
The water runs cold before I finally step out, wrapping myself in a plush towel that still smells faintly of laundry detergent.
I dress quickly in the clothes that one of them pulled out of my bag, grateful that I at least look somewhat professional on the outside, even if I’m falling apart in the inside.
I pull my hair into a tight bun, the familiar routine helping to center me.
I need to focus on work. On my patients. On proving that I deserve this residency despite the mess I’ve made of things.
A knock at the door startles me out of my thoughts.
“Holly? You awake?” Kai’s deep voice comes through the door, muffled but recognizable.
“Yeah,” I call back, my voice steadier than I feel. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
I take one last look around the room, making sure I haven’t forgotten anything.
My medical bag sits by the door where I left it days ago, before the storm, before everything changed.
I pick it up, the familiar weight grounding me in my identity as a doctor.
Whatever else has happened, that hasn’t changed.
When I step out of the heat suite, Kai is waiting in the hallway, his face partially hidden behind his usual bandana. His eyes track my movements, assessing.
My first thought is to wonder if he knows, if Noah has already told them that the crazy omega they saved from a blizzard lost her fucking mind and marked him. I study his expression, looking for anything that might be disgust or pity.
“Morning,” he says simply.
“Hi,” I reply, clutching my bag like a shield. “Is…is Noah …I mean, Dr. Klinkhart…is he here?”
Kai shakes his head, face carefully neutral. “Left for the clinic early. Grayson and I went to get your car. It’s out front.”
Relief and disappointment war within me. I’m not ready to face Noah yet, but the thought of him leaving without saying anything makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with the bond.
“Thank you,” I say, trying to infuse the words with genuine gratitude. “For everything. For helping me during...” I trail off, unable to finish the sentence.
Kai nods once, giving me a small smile. “Want breakfast before you go?”
“I should get to the clinic,” I say, already moving toward the front door. “I’m late as it is.”
“Roads are still icy,” Kai warns. “Drive safe.”
I pause at the door, suddenly unsure if I should say something else.
The awkwardness in the air isn’t just in my imagination.
The only question is how much of it is just the strained morning after sexual encounters with strangers and how much is about my ill-advised and humiliating decision to bond my boss.
“Thanks again,” I say lamely instead, before stepping out into a winter morning so bright it’s assaulting.
The cold air hits me like a slap, clearing some of the fog from my mind.
Kai’s driveway has been shoveled, and my little sedan sits waiting, looking impossibly small and vulnerable against the backdrop of towering pines and snow-covered mountains.
I make my way carefully across the ice, each step measured and deliberate.
By the time I reach the clinic, my shoulders are knotted with tension, but at least the drive has given me time to compose myself. I park in my usual spot and take a deep breath, steeling myself for whatever awaits me inside.
I spend most of the drive down trying to assure myself that Noah isn’t waiting at the clinic to tell me I’m fired in front of witnesses. Or worse, he is already on the phone with the medical licensing board, reporting me for designation fraud.
Both those things are less than I probably deserve.
Nothing can stop the mantra I take up in my head as I navigate down the mountain.
He hates me. He hates me. He hates me.
And I can’t blame him for it.
But as I step through the clinic doors, everything feels exactly the same. Greta looks up from her desk, her smile wide as she takes me in.
“Good morning, Dr. Chang! I see you survived your first Heat Mountain storm,” she says, her voice carrying a note of curiosity I’ve never heard before. “Dr. Klinkhart is waiting for you at the nurses’s station.”
My heart rate spikes, and I feel a corresponding pulse through the bond. Is Noah feeling my anxiety right now? The thought makes me even more nervous.
“Thank you,” I manage to say, hanging up my coat and heading toward the nurses’ station.
Noah stands there, his back to me as he reviews a chart with one of the nurses.
Even without seeing his face, I recognize the broad set of his shoulders, the way he holds himself with such confidence and authority.
Something in me responds to his presence, the bond humming between us like a live wire.
He turns as I approach, as if he sensed me coming.
Our eyes meet, and for a moment, everything else fades away.
I feel a surge of emotion through the bond, a maelstrom that doesn’t allow for any single feeling to rise to the forefront.
Confusion? Anger? Hunger? I can’t tell, and his expression gives nothing away.
“Dr. Chang,” he says, his voice perfectly professional. “Good of you to join us.”
There’s no hint in his tone that anything has changed between us, no acknowledgment of the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago, I had my teeth in his chest, marking him as mine. The disconnect between that memory and this moment is so jarring that I swallow back a bout of hysterical laughter.
“I apologize for being late,” I say instead, matching his professional tone. “The roads are still pretty bad.”
Noah accepts my explanation without comment. “We have a full schedule today. The Frost twins are in Exam Room 1, waiting for their follow-up. Their bloodwork from the university was just faxed over and needs to be reviewed.”
Just like that, we slip into our roles as attending and resident, as if nothing has happened. But underneath the professional veneer, I can feel the bond pulsing between us, impossible to ignore completely.
Throughout the morning, Noah and I orbit each other carefully, maintaining a professional distance that feels forced and unnatural. We discuss patients, review test results, and consult on treatment plans, all without acknowledging the elephant in the room.
But I can feel his emotions leaking through the bond—frustration, confusion, and a yawning sense of grief that makes my already bottomless well of guilt sink even deeper.
It’s distracting, like trying to listen to two conversations at once.
I lose track of what patients are saying, having to ask them to repeat themselves.