Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
RHETT
Iwasn’t gonna sit around and do another lap on the ice like it would fix anything.
Roan could bark orders all he wanted—“keep your head in the game, Navarro”—but that ship sailed the second I realized she wasn’t just off the clock.
Wren was gone.
Not answering her phone, her private line, her backup number. No location pinned on her work calendar. No car in the arena garage. No familiar scent lingering near the media rooms or tunnels or even the stupid vending machines she hit when she forgot to eat.
She hadn’t just left for the day.
She’d left. Period.
Twenty-four hours later and no one seemed to know where the hell she went.
Except maybe…
I took the stairs two at a time, not even trying to hide the fact that I was headed to her office.
If security wanted to stop me, they could try.
I had a key. Technically. Sort of. Maybe it wasn’t mine, but I’d borrowed it once during that preseason charity shoot, and Wren had never asked for it back.
So that was her fault. Kind of.
I reached the top of the stairs, heart pounding hard enough to feel it in my throat—and froze.
Her office door was already open.
Light on.
Someone inside.
I stepped in fast, ready to throw down if it was Beckett or Marchand or some dumb rookie with a death wish—and found Jay.
Sitting calmly in her chair, desktop computer on, his fingers moving with surgical precision across the keys. His black hoodie sleeves were pushed to his elbows, expression unreadable, mouth a thin, focused line.
“What the hell,” I blurted. “You hacked her computer?”
Jay didn’t flinch. “Didn’t need to. Her access card was still in the drawer. Backup one, the spare she keeps in case her main gets demagnetized.”
He didn’t even glance at me. Just kept scanning.
I stepped farther into the room, shutting the door behind me. “And what—you're just going through her stuff?”
He finally looked up then, brows lifted like really, Rhett?
“She’s gone.” His voice was low, clipped. “Why are you acting like you didn’t come here to do the exact same thing?”
I didn’t answer.
Because he was right.
Jay turned the monitor so I could see her screen. “Calendar's clear after yesterday. But look—her upcoming out-of-office entry? ‘Personal medical leave.’ Starts today. Runs five days.”
“Five days,” I repeated, the words catching in my throat. “You think she’s in heat?”
But she wasn’t an omega. Why the fuck did my brain go straight to her being in heat?
Jay didn’t blink. “I think we don’t know what we don’t know.”
Which wasn’t a no.
“She’s not an omega.” I tested the words out, my understanding of them, and my knowledge of Wren. If anyone was an alpha, it had to be her. Right?
“You asking me or telling me?” Jay was such a cool-headed prick sometimes.
I scrubbed a hand down my face, pacing a slow line across the office while Jay clicked through her email tabs with surgeon-level calm.
“She’s too careful,” I muttered. “She wouldn’t just go off the grid like this. Not unless—”
“She didn’t want anyone to know where she went.”
Jay's voice cut through mine, clean and sharp.
I stopped pacing.
“She’s been planning this,” he added. “Check the sent folder—she rescheduled meetings, reassigned her PR rotation to the assistants, cleared the schedule for every major player interview through the weekend.”
“But she didn’t tell us,” I said quietly.
Jay’s mouth pulled tight.
In that moment, I saw it too.
The hurt.
He was the calm one, the sane one, the guy who never lost it—but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it. His silence wasn’t indifference. It was control.
And it was cracking.
“She didn’t trust us to handle it,” I said.
Or she was scared.
Or ashamed.
Or trying to protect us from something we didn’t even understand.
“She didn’t want witnesses,” Jay said.
I turned toward him, mouth open to argue—but then I caught the way his hands hovered just above the keyboard, not typing. Not clicking.
Just… tensed.
“It has to be a heat. She’s close,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Or maybe she thinks she will be. Then she didn’t want anyone to see it.”
“What if she went to help another omega with their heat?” The minute I asked the question, I kind of hated myself a little. Because the idea of her touching anyone else, even a needy omega just pissed me off. The anger was flash fire hot and incandescent.
“If she was helping an omega, she wouldn’t have to hide it.” Jay sounded so damn certain.
“How do you know?”
His shrug, even as tense and controlled as it was, wasn’t an answer.
I flattened my hands on the desk and glared at him.
It was like my temper just rolled off him, water against a rock. Frustrated, I straightened. “She’s not helping someone else. This is about her.”
“She wouldn’t go to this much trouble to hide her activities if it was anything else.”
My chest tightened.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
Jay stood up slowly, ejecting a flash drive from her computer before he shut it down. “We need to find her.”
“Where’s Roan?” We hadn’t spoken since the blow-up with Nate in the locker room.
Jay didn’t answer right away.
He slid the flash drive into his pocket, calm and clinical as ever, then finally said, “Roan’s looking into some things on his end.”
“What kind of things?” I asked, sharper than I meant to. “You think he knows more than we do?”
Jay tilted his head slightly, studying me like he was debating whether to tell me the truth or feed me something soft to keep me from blowing up again.
“He went to talk to Marchand,” Jay said finally. “Figured if anyone knows where she went—or why—he would.”
I scoffed. “Marchand doesn’t give a shit about any of us unless there’s a dollar sign next to it. He probably sent her off somewhere, just to keep her from being a distraction during the press storm he created.”
With a half-shrug and a raised a brow, Jay said, “Then Roan’s the one who might be able to get the truth out of him. So let him do his thing.”
My hands curled into fists. “His thing is being a cold, controlling asshole who refuses to admit he cares about her.”
Jay’s expression didn’t shift, but I caught the faintest pause in his breathing. Just a flicker.
“We all care about her,” he said.
“But we don’t get to show it, right?” I threw my arms out. “We have to pretend she’s just the PR rep who talks shit and wears leather boots and doesn’t drive us completely fucking feral.”
Arms folded, Jay leaned back against the edge of her desk. “You think I like this?”
“You’re acting like you do.”
He exhaled through his nose—barely a reaction, but enough to know I hit something.
“I’m not pretending,” he said. “I’m just waiting until I know what the hell is actually going on. Losing it isn’t going to help her.”
“You really think Marchand’s going to tell Roan the truth?” I asked, bitter. “That he’s just going to open a file and hand him a map and say, ‘Here’s where your missing PR manager is hiding while she explodes into an unclaimed omega heat’?”
Jay’s eyes flicked toward me.
And that—that little flash of narrowed, knowing focus—
“You do think she’s an omega.” I said it low.
Jay didn’t answer right away.
He didn’t have to.
“Fuck me,” I muttered, sinking down into the guest chair opposite her desk.
Blowing out a breath, he sighed. “I don’t know for sure.
I’m not saying I do. But… she’s been different lately.
Scent’s been off. She’s been twitchy. Quiet.
And now she’s vanished for ‘medical leave’ with no location listed and every trace of her presence scrubbed like she’s preparing to disappear. ”
“She didn’t even tell Roan,” I said.
“She especially didn’t tell Roan.”
That… hurt more than I wanted to admit.
I ran both hands through my hair and exhaled. “Okay. So Roan’s talking to Marchand. You and I are hunting records, emails, calendars. Maybe she used a team card to book gas or a hotel?”
“I already pulled up travel receipts for the last thirty days. Nothing yet.” Jay nodded to the flash drive. “But there’s one thing I haven’t checked. Marchand’s approval logs.”
“You think he signed off on something and thought no one would see it?”
“Or she tricked him into approving something vague that didn’t flag as personal.”
I stood. “Let’s dig.”
Jay followed. “You check logistics. I’ll check her flight records. If she used a corporate connection, I’ll find it.”
“And Roan?”
Jay’s tone cooled. “Let him deal with Marchand. He plays the long game. We don’t.”
I paused at the door and glanced back.
“She’s out there,” I said. “And if she’s about to go through what we think she is…”
I turned back to the desk and gripped the edge like I needed something to hold me to the floor. My mind was moving too fast now, connecting things I didn’t want to connect.
“She’s not an omega,” I said again, quieter this time. She couldn’t be. It was damn impossible to wrap my head around it.
Like saying it gently might make it more true.
Jay didn’t bother to respond. Just waited, still and sharp, like a knife laid flat.
I laughed once. Hollow. Bitter.
“Fuck.” I scrubbed my hands down my face. “You know who was just here? Beckett fucking Rylan.”
Jay’s eyes narrowed instantly. “What are you talking about?”
“The day she left,” I said. “Remember? He showed up. Like some smug bastard out of nowhere. Said Marchand invited him. But that wasn’t the weird part.” My chest tightened. “The weird part was the way he looked at her.”
Jay didn’t interrupt, he just watched me with that all-seeing sharp gaze.
“I thought he was just being his usual territorial dickhead,” I kept going. “Like trying to get a rise out of Roan, or needle me into snapping.”
“He was always like that,” Jay said slowly. “But…”
I nodded, catching his train of thought. “But this time it was different. He didn’t look at her like a guy messing with a PR manager. He looked at her like a—”
Anger flickered through Jay’s veneer of calm. “Like an unmated omega.”
The whole idea tasted like blood in my mouth.
I straightened and started pacing again, one hand fisted tight in my hoodie sleeve. “You’re telling me none of us noticed? Not once? Not in years?”
Jay tilted his head, frowning slightly. “If she was on suppressants…”
“She was on something.” The memory crashed into me—her scent changing. The near-misses, the flashes of heat under her skin. The way she started avoiding the locker room, keeping distance, making excuses not to get too close.
Like she was trying to hide from us.
From me.
From all of it.
I stopped pacing. “What if that photo? The one with Beckett in the owner’s box? What if he knew?”
His stare sharpened. “You think he was trying to stake a claim?”
“He was scenting the air near her when we passed him in the hall.” My voice went flat. “I thought he was just being gross.”
Shoulders tense, Jay stood a little straighter. “If he picked up on something we didn’t…”
“He’d go after her.” I didn’t hesitate. “Especially if he thought she was going to go into heat and wouldn’t have anyone around to stop him.”
All at once, Jay’s voice dropped into something far colder and far more dangerous. “Do you think Marchand knew?”
“I think he didn’t care,” I growled. The man only ever cared about his bottom line and the reputation of the team. Even the latter was negotiable. “Or worse—he saw the leverage and wanted to use it.”
He went still again. Thinking. Calculating.
But I was already halfway back to the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I don’t care if it’s a long shot—I’m going to find her. I’ll drive every icy road from here to Alaska if I have to.”
Jay followed me into the hall. “Rhett.”
I turned back.
“If you go rogue, you might spook her. Make it worse.”
“I’d rather her be pissed at me than alone in a cabin with some feral asshole circling her like prey.”
He didn’t argue, because he knew I was right. All he said was, “Then we do this smart. I’ll keep digging. You check the highway cams. Look for traffic logs, gas receipts. Roan might have something soon, and if he doesn't—he'll come looking too.”
I swallowed hard.
Everything inside me was howling now. Not just anger.
Need.
Fear.
Something older.
She’s in heat.
She’s alone.
She’s ours.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
But I was already moving.
Because if Beckett Rylan thought he could lay one hand on her, he was about to learn exactly how feral I could get.