Chapter 3 #3
I was annoyed on principle. Isak had jumped the gun, Miner had let him, and now we were committed to a heat response at my sister's wedding hotel while the reception continued downstairs.
The optics were terrible and the logistics messy.
Every operational instinct I had objected.
It would've been better to wait a day and let the wedding guests clear out.
I was also, privately, interested. The wedding had left me wound tight.
The dry catering was innocent. Three days of scent saturation, bonding energy, and watching other people's joy from the edge of my own had done the work.
I'd kept the restlessness under control through toasts, cake, and every required smile.
Then the alert replaced decompression with forward motion.
For the first time all evening, standing still became difficult.
Miner's phone chimed.
We all went still. Miner pulled it out, read the message, and looked up. "Duchess Suite. Twenty-ninth floor. Cobalt Meridian Hotel."
"Same building," Isak said. "She's upstairs."
"Twenty-ninth is almost the top floor," I said. "Restricted access."
"Ours should work." Miner held up his room key. "All suite guest keys work on the gold elevators."
He knew where we had access. Of course he did. It was why I hired him, why I kept him, why the three of us functioned at the level we did. He saw the gaps before they opened and filled them before anyone noticed they were there.
I took the bag from Isak, though he could've carried it easily. I needed my hands occupied; carrying gave them a job and quieted my brain. The bag was heavier than it looked. I tightened my grip. Isak had packed for a siege, not a night.
"Let's go," I said.
Isak all but skipped to the elevator. Miner swiped his keycard, and the doors opened on a car paneled in dark wood, lit with recessed gold. It felt richer than the one we'd ridden to this floor.
The numbers ticked toward twenty-nine in silence. Isak adjusted his collar while Miner checked his phone one more time. I stood with the bag at my feet, hands loose at my sides, trying not to think about what we were walking into.
The hallway on twenty-nine was narrower than the floors below, the ceilings lower, the carpet a deeper navy that absorbed sound.
Each suite had its own vestibule, a small recessed area before the door, and the Duchess was at the end of the hall past three other doors.
The air up here felt different, scrubbed by the same expensive filtration we installed at Stillwater.
I could smell her before we reached the door, and Miner pulled in a breath as he got close enough to knock. Could he smell her too?
Honeysuckle, like the cake. Something herbal underneath it, sharp and green, like crushed leaves.
The scent was faint through the door but unmistakable: omega, heat, distress layered under something sweeter, pulling me like a magnet.
Instinct identified danger before thought could interfere.
Underneath it came a hot, wordless pull toward the door.
I set the bag down.
The door opened inward on well-oiled hinges, and the first thing I registered was the darkness. The suite beyond was dim, lit only by the spill of hallway light and a single overhead bulb in the foyer. The air that rolled out was warm and thick with scent.
She was standing in the doorway. Robe, blush silk, loosely tied.
Her hair was damp, falling in waves that caught the hallway light and turned auburn at the edges.
Her face was flushed, her eyes wide, pupils dilated enough that the brown almost disappeared.
Her suppressants had failed, leaving her unmistakably mid-heat, body running hot and desperate for what she'd called strangers to provide.
I didn't recognize her.
The thought arrived clean and certain, almost refreshing.
I looked at her face and saw a stranger, beautiful enough to catch my attention in any context but connected to nothing I'd stored.
The hallway light was unforgiving. She stood half in shadow, one hand on the doorframe, the other clutching the robe closed at her throat.
Isak made a sound behind me. A small, sharp intake of breath, the sound of recognition arriving before words.
"Holy shit," he said. "Nitsa?"
The name landed. Nitsa. Celia's friend. The one with the markers, the one who'd been underfoot in our garage when we were teenagers and she was what, twelve?
Thirteen? I'd seen her at the wedding: bridesmaid, ultra-tight dress, standing beside Celia through the ceremony with the steady composure of someone who didn't rattle.
I'd nodded to her across the ballroom. I hadn't spoken to her.
She was Celia's person, not mine, a childhood friend who existed in a category I'd never had reason to examine.
I stepped closer. Into the light. Close enough that the scent hit me properly.
Honeysuckle and herbs, warm and wild. The scent reached me as hers before it reached me as omega.
Underneath came the bright chemical response of two scent signatures matching.
Toasted pine meeting honeysuckle. Tangelo meeting something green.
My glands pulsed at my throat and wrists, repeating the same biological yes without permission.
Choice had no part in it. The reaction was real anyway.
My body had found the one scent it was wired to answer.
I froze.
My feet stayed planted. My hands abandoned the reach for the bag and went still at my sides.
Breath caught below my sternum and refused to move while my body ran the math I'd never asked it to do: scent match, omega in heat, Celia's friend, my sister's childhood best friend, the woman who'd designed the invites for a wedding I'd spent three days privately resenting.
My rut spiked hard, out of nowhere and everywhere at once, a wave of heat starting at the base of my spine and radiating until my skin tightened and my jaw locked.
The only thought left was mine. I never allowed myself that word about anyone, least of all my sister's best friend standing in a hotel doorway in a blush robe, heat-scent pouring off her in waves.
It arrived anyway, complete and absolute.
I wanted to handle her. The want was immediate and overwhelming: pick her up, carry her inside, close the door, solve the problem, make it better, make it stop, make her safe.
The blue-wave carpet and three days inside a weekend I couldn't manage had been scraping at my need for control since we arrived. Now that need latched onto her.
I did not move.
Isak was saying something, his voice warm and pitched low even as the words crowded one another, every sentence trying to arrive before the last one finished. "Nitsa, hey. It's Isak. Denil's pack. We met… well, we sort of met when you were kids, but?—"
Miner's hand landed on my shoulder, neither hard nor restraining, only steady through my shirt. The touch asked nothing of me and stopped me anyway. He stayed whole while the rest of us came apart.
"Stop," Miner said. He didn't raise his voice. Isak cut off mid-sentence, and I held where I was. Neither alpha moved closer to Nitsa. "Everyone stop."
The hallway went quiet. Nitsa stayed in the doorway, one hand on the frame, her gaze moving from me to Isak to Miner and back again. Heat had widened her pupils without slowing the inventory. I recognized the sequence from my own risk checks, though I'd never run one under conditions this bad.
Miner stepped forward and stopped beside me, shoulder even with mine. He blocked neither the suite nor the hallway. The charge in the corridor eased. He looked directly at Nitsa and waited.
"My name is Miner," he said. "I'm the one who responded to your alert. These two are Denil and Isak. We're a pack. We have experience with heat response. You called for help. We're here. But before we come in, I need you to tell me what you actually asked for."
Miner asked the clean, simple question Isak and I had missed three sentences earlier. I'd been too busy having a biological event in a hotel hallway; Isak had been too busy recognizing someone he barely knew.
Nitsa's voice came lower than I expected, roughened by heat. She delivered the requirements one at a time, each term distinct. Under conditions that would've broken most people, she was still setting the terms. "I asked for a heat response. Experienced. Discreet. That's what I need."
"Are you comfortable with all three of us coming in?"
A pause. Her eyes moved to me and held a beat too long. Maybe she was placing me now. The alpha in her doorway was also the brother of the bride she'd stood beside six hours ago. Then her gaze moved to Isak, to Miner, and back to the middle distance between us.
"Yes," she said. "All three. But I need—" She stopped and swallowed.
Her throat moved in the hallway light. The heat in my blood noticed, so I looked away before the sight made restraint harder and kept my gaze on the carpet until she spoke again.
"I need this to be professional. I have a business. A life. This can't?—"
"It won't," Miner said. "We're professionals too. This stays between us. No bites. No commitments. That's the standard."
She nodded once, sharp, but she didn't step back. The threshold remained between us while she worked through the decision.