Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
WREN
Less than twenty-four hours after I got to my destination, I’d already run out of things to organize.
Not for lack of trying.
The cabin was small, tucked into the side of a wooded slope just east of Yellowstone—barely a dot on any map, and even less on cell service.
The snow made it beautiful. The silence made it perfect.
The remoteness made it safe—from cameras, from gossip, from men with sharp eyes and sharper instincts.
But mostly, from myself.
I’d gotten in late the night before, half-frozen and fully wired from the drive. The first few hours alone had been easier than I expected—almost peaceful. There’d been no buzzing crowd, no scent-thick locker room, no weight of alpha gazes dragging across my skin. Just trees. Cold. Stillness.
I thought it would help.
I was wrong.
Because now, on day two, my skin itched. Not in the way you scratch and move on—in the bone-deep, nerve-bright, jump-out-of-your-own-body kind of way. The kind that kept me pacing across the hardwood floor like a caged animal.
I wasn’t in heat yet. I knew what that was. I’d been through that twice. The first time had been absolutely brutal, and the second had been a misery. Forty-eight hours of hell and eventually it passed. I’d started on the suppressants not long after that second heat.
Despite all these years, I hadn’t forgotten the build-up, the excruciating experience itself, followed by the come down. This wasn’t heat yet.
This was the build-up.
This was the beginning of what my body had been trying to do for years—shove past the drugs I’d force-fed it, rip down the walls I’d built, and flood me with everything I’d spent a decade pretending I didn’t need.
My scent was already different.
I could smell it in the throw blanket I hadn’t meant to curl up in the night before, in the collar of the worn hoodie I’d pulled out of my bag this morning. Not theirs. One of mine. Clean. Neutral.
But it didn’t stay that way.
Everything I touched started to smell like me again—and I hated it. Not because I wasn’t used to it, but because it felt… loud. Like I was shouting into the empty cabin, calling out to no one.
The worst part?
I kept answering myself.
I folded the same towel three times before I was satisfied with the corner. Rearranged the firewood. Sorted the snacks. Stacked the books I’d brought by topic, then by size, then color-coded the spines until I wanted to scream.
This wasn’t nesting.
Not really.
I wasn’t fluffing pillows with purpose or scent-marking surfaces like some omega fantasy story.
I was just trying to feel normal.
To keep moving before the ache swallowed me whole.
I hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before. Couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, my body kicked. Hot one minute. Cold the next. My jaw ached from clenching. My thighs ached from nothing at all. And my thoughts kept drifting back to the guys.
To Roan, arms crossed, always calculating.
To Jay, too quiet, too perceptive.
To Rhett—smiling like he wasn’t constantly two steps from combusting.
The way they looked at me.
The way I wanted them to look at me again.
No.
I shut the thought down.
Walked to the kitchen. Opened a cabinet I’d already checked twice and stared into it like something new might appear. It didn’t.
Outside, wind shoved snow across the windowpane in slow, silencing waves.
I pressed my palms to the edge of the counter and exhaled. Long. Shaky.
“I’m fine,” I said to no one. “This is fine.”
The problem was, I wasn’t entirely sure who I was trying to convince. It was the lack of activity that was driving me mad. Work, I told myself. Get it done. There was plenty to prep for the playoffs. It was why I’d brought the laptop in the first place.
I managed half a page.
Maybe less.
I stared at the screen long enough for the cursor to mock me, blinking steady and bright in the middle of a sentence I didn’t remember writing. My outline sat untouched beside me. The comms calendar was open, color-coded, and somehow still blurry.
None of it made sense.
None of it mattered.
The Howlers could set themselves on fire and I couldn’t string three damn thoughts together right now. Every part of me was too aware of my own body—tight skin, flushed nerves, scent bleeding into the air with every breath. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t sit still.
I shoved the laptop away and stood up again.
Shower number two.
The first had been this morning—early. Before the sun was all the way up. I’d scrubbed like it would clear my head, like the water could drown out the pulsing scent rolling off me, the one that had started curling its way into every soft surface I touched.
This one? This one was desperation.
The water was near-scalding. The steam fogged the mirror before I’d even stepped in. I braced one hand against the tile and stood under the spray with my eyes closed, trying not to think about how hollow my chest felt. How restless I was. How the heat didn’t help the ache—it just warmed it.
The scent faded—slightly. Washed down the drain for now.
But not gone.
And not the only thing haunting me.
It started small. Like déjà vu.
The first time I met Roan, he’d just come off the draft. Fresh-faced and pissed off for reasons no one could pin down. His rep came first—ferocious on the ice, dead silent off it. The only player Marchand bragged about like he’d landed a goddamn wolf king.
He walked into the room and every single person went still.
Even me.
Not because he was the biggest alpha I’d ever seen—but because he was quiet. Still. Calm like a blizzard before it broke.
But his scent?
God. His scent had wrecked something in me.
I hadn’t even let it show. Not a twitch. Not a breath. But something in my chest had tilted sideways that day, and it never really reset.
It didn’t help when Rhett and Jay came on a season later—both of them chaotic in their own way.
Rhett was louder than life from the first handshake.
Called me “boots” for a solid month and winked every time he got away with it.
Jay, on the other hand, had barely said three words at first, but the way he watched everything, every shift of tone, every change in expression? It was surgical.
They weren’t quiet about liking me. None of them were. Not even Jay, when you knew how to translate the silences.
But Roan?
Roan never said a word.
Not once.
Even when Rhett flirted too loud, when Jay made one of those dry comments that landed like a scalpel in silk—Roan just stood at the edge of the storm, arms crossed, watching.
Managing.
There I was, watching him right back.
I wasn’t stupid. I saw it long before anyone else did—the way Roan eased around them.
How the hot-headed rookie who barked at refs and broke sticks on the ice suddenly stopped pacing.
How he started laughing—actually laughing—when Rhett lost a glove mid-practice and yelled “naked hand” like it was a goddamn emergency.
Jay would roll his eyes. Roan would smirk.
The three of them were chaos and gravity. Orbiting each other like planets. Pulling everyone around them into their strange, perfect rhythm.
Including me.
I told myself I didn’t care.
Most of the time, I didn’t.
I had work. I had rules. I had a plan.
But the memories didn’t give a shit about that.
Now, in this cabin, alone, exhausted and sore and strung out on a biological clock I couldn’t hold off anymore—those memories were everywhere.
I left the shower and sat on the edge of the bed in a towel, hair dripping, laptop still open on the table across the room. My scent was back already. Warm. Sweet. Edging darker by the hour.
Not full heat.
Not yet.
But it was close enough that I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
I wasn’t focused.
I wasn’t fine.
I wasn’t alone in my head—and that might’ve been the most dangerous part.
I drank another glass of water.
Third in an hour.
The giant flat I’d hauled in from the back of the SUV was half-drained now, bottles scattered like fallen soldiers around the cabin. Water was supposed to help. Hydration, balance, grounding. Or whatever bullshit mantra my doctor had tossed me before I left.
It didn’t help.
Neither did the protein bar I chewed like cardboard, jaw aching, stomach curling away from the idea of food. I wasn’t hungry. Not for that.
I paced.
The movie I’d tried to start was still running in the background—some indie romcom I didn’t have the energy to absorb. Too many soft looks. Too much chemistry. Too much of everything I couldn’t let myself want.
The blanket I’d wrapped around my shoulders fell to the floor again and I left it there.
My body was hot.
Not just flushed—but hot. Skin too tight. Too sensitive. Every movement against fabric scraped across nerve endings I didn’t know I had.
Even the hoodie I’d put on earlier felt like too much now. I stripped it off and threw it across the back of the couch, one bare arm wrapping around my ribs like I could hold myself together.
Touch-hunger, they called it.
I’d heard other omegas talk about it, years ago. Whispered, half-mocking stories about their first heat after suppressants—how their brains short-circuited when they couldn’t scent anyone else, couldn’t feel the comfort of a bond or pressure of skin-on-skin.
I’d rolled my eyes at the time.
But now?
Now I couldn’t sit down because the couch didn’t hold me. Couldn’t stop moving because the air was too empty. Couldn’t stop aching because my body didn’t want space—it wanted contact.
Not sex.
Not yet.
Just… touch. Heat. Scent. Them.
I closed my eyes and immediately regretted it.
Because I could feel them again.
Roan, all silent presence and iron will, scent like cold smoke and snow-damp cedar.
Jay—sharp, clean, quiet. A whisper under the chaos. A blade sheathed in silk.
Rhett—loud and sun-warmed, always moving, always two steps from wrapping himself around someone like it was his job.
My hands curled into fists. My breath caught.
This wasn’t fair.