Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
RHETT
The door closed with a quiet click, but it echoed like a gunshot in the back of my skull.
Roan stood just on this side of it, fists clenched, chest rising like he’d just run a damn marathon. His ironclad control seemed a hair’s breadth from cracking.
And I wasn’t much better.
I scrubbed my hands down my face and turned away, trying not to breathe too deep. Not to inhale her. Like that ever worked. Her scent was everywhere. Seeped into the walls. Saturating the fabric. In the fucking floorboards.
Thick. Wild. Sweet.
She wasn’t just in heat, she was in distress. Her body was screaming for relief, and every damn one of us could feel it in our bones. And worse, every instinct in my body wanted to give it to her.
Again and again and again until the scent faded, until her thighs stopped shaking, until her body melted into ours with exhaustion instead of suffering.
I’d never felt anything like this. I’d been around omegas in heat before. I'd seen the effects. Smelled it. Wanted it, sure. But not like this.
Not her.
I dropped into the nearest chair, hands gripping my knees, trying to lock my joints to hold myself still. My voice was low when it finally came.
“We may not be able to wait.”
Roan turned toward me, slow, like even that movement took effort. His face was pale, lips pressed together, jaw tight enough I thought his teeth might crack under the pressure.
“I heard her,” I added, quieter this time. “What she said. She’s breaking apart in there, and you—” I cut myself off and looked away, guilt flaring. “You’re holding it down, but Roan… if you fracture, the rest of us are gonna shatter.”
He didn’t deny it. Didn’t look at me, either. Just stared at the floor, unmoving.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. “Her scent is worse than when we got here. Stronger. It’s not fading.”
“Because she’s getting deeper into it,” Roan said, voice a low rasp. “The suppressant damage…you said it altered things and dragged it out. She’s stuck in it.”
The unspoken truth hit like a freight train.
She might not get out of it.
Not without help.
I lifted my head and stared at him. “You know what that means.”
Roan didn’t answer.
My throat burned. My gut twisted.
“We’re past the wait-it-out plan. Past moral high ground and noble restraint. She needs an alpha, she—hell, she probably needs all of us. If you think I’m just gonna sit here while she—”
“She didn’t ask for us.” Roan’s voice cracked like thunder, sharp and final. “She didn’t invite this. She didn’t consent.”
“No,” a calm voice said from the kitchen where he’d shifted after Roan carried Wren away. “But she’s also not throwing us out.”
Jay.
He moved back into the room like a shadow, posture steady, composed—like always—but there was heat under his skin. I could see it now. He was white-knuckling the same restraint Roan was, the same leash I’d been chewing through since we got here.
How fucking bad was it if Jay, a beta, was struggling? No wonder I was in hell. Roan turned his head slightly, not quite meeting Jay’s gaze.
“She doesn’t have to ask,” Jay said simply. “She’s letting us stay. She’s letting us touch her. She’s been naked under your hands, Roan, and you wrapped her up like you were covering a damn flame. She let you.”
That sat between us like a line drawn in ash.
Not permission. Not consent.
But not refusal either.
Jay folded his arms, voice quiet and solid as granite. “We’re not here to take advantage. But if we wait too long, it won’t be a choice anymore, for her or us. You know that.”
Silence spun out.
No, if it continued at this pace, it would be absolute madness.
The primitive, biological drives would take over.
I didn’t even question whether or not I would be susceptible to it.
Wren touched me in ways no one ever had—alpha, beta, or omega.
The fact that her need was a keening demand in the air called to me on the most fundamental level.
I stood slowly, because sitting wasn’t helping anything. Neither was pretending that my hands weren’t shaking, that my breath didn’t hitch when I thought about her voice breaking, about her looking at Roan like he was the only damn lifeline she had left.
I swallowed hard.
“You’ve always led us,” I told Roan. “So lead now. Tell us what the hell we do.”
Roan didn’t answer right away.
His shoulders stayed tight, spine straight, like if he let his posture give even a little, the whole dam inside him would crack open. I could see the war on his face, the tension riding every muscle. The alpha in him was screaming and he was denying it with everything he had.
And I knew why, for the same reason I was. It wasn’t about ego or pride, but Wren. This was our Wren. That possessive hit like a Mack truck.
Ours.
She was ours.
The woman who drank her coffee blacker than sin and smiled like a knife’s edge. Who kept us out of scandals and fights and jail cells. Who’d been our handler, our babysitter, our sharp-eyed guardian long before any of us even noticed who she was underneath.
Roan had noticed. Maybe longer than the rest of us. Maybe too long.
“She’s not some omega in heat,” he said finally, voice tight with barely checked strain. “She’s Wren.”
“We know that,” I snapped, too fast, too hard.
His head jerked slightly like I’d hit him, but I didn’t back down. The pressure had been building in me since we walked through that door and smelled her on the air like wildfire. And I wasn’t proud of the temper coiling through my gut, but I wasn’t ashamed of it either.
“If she wasn’t Wren,” I went on, louder now, “we wouldn’t be here. You think I’d be fighting every goddamn instinct in my body right now for just anyone? You think Jay would be sitting on his hands, burning from the inside out, if she wasn’t her?”
Roan turned to me slowly, and I saw the flicker in his eyes. Pain. Conflict. Guilt.
“She matters,” he said, so quietly it barely made sound.
I stepped in closer, jaw clenched. “Then stop acting like she only matters to you.”
That did it.
Something behind his gaze flared hot, challenge, or maybe grief.
Jay didn’t move, didn’t even breathe loud, but I felt him right behind me, that steady presence grounding me before I went too far. But I wasn’t finished—not yet.
“She’s important to all of us,” I said, voice quieter but sharper than before. “You’re not the only one who sees her. Who’s seen her for years. She’s not your burden to carry. She’s not some line you have to walk alone while Jay and I pretend we’re not coming apart at the seams.”
Roan’s hands flexed open at his sides, then clenched again.
“She didn’t ask for this,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. “But she’s in it now. She’s suffering. And if you think standing in this room while she burns alive in the other one is the noble fucking choice, then maybe you’re not thinking as clearly as you believe you are.”
Roan’s nostrils flared. His mouth opened—then shut.
The silence that followed was tight and charged.
Jay broke it, his voice low, certain. “We can’t fix this by pretending it’s not happening.”
Roan finally looked up at us both. Really looked.
Then he dragged a hand down his face, exhaling like it gutted him.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “Damn it, damn it.”
He didn’t argue with us anymore.
For the first time since this whole thing began, I saw the exact moment Roan stopped trying to fight his nature—and started trying to figure out how to control it, for her sake.
Not to deny what she was.
But to meet her in it.
To meet us in it.
Roan dragged both hands over his face, like he could scrub the war out of himself by force.
Then, voice low and raw, he asked, “What exactly did your cousin say? About… the heat. How bad it could get? How long?”
I blew out a breath and rubbed at the back of my neck. “Not much. That’s the problem. No one really knows. There aren’t enough controlled studies because no one’s supposed to use suppressants that long. But what research exists says there’s a pattern. A dangerous one.”
Roan’s stare locked onto mine, and it hit like a steel bar across the chest.
“She’s already past the 36-hour mark,” I said quietly. “And her reactions are intensifying. You saw her—this isn’t tapering off. This is climbing.”
“And if it keeps climbing?” he asked, jaw clenched.
“Then it’s going to get worse.” I hesitated, then added, “There’s no map for this, Roan. No clear line. No guarantee. All we can do now is what she wants. What she needs.”
Roan’s expression turned colder, sharper. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer we’ve got,” I shot back. “We don’t decide how this plays out. She does.”
He didn’t like that, obviously. Roan thrived on control, on strategy, on being the one with the plan. But there was no plan here. No command post, no playbook. Just the heat and the ache and her.
Jay’s voice came from the far side of the room, calm and deliberate. “You don’t have to stay, Roan.”
That pulled both our gazes to him, sharp and fast.
“She wouldn’t blame you if you left,” he said. “None of us would.”
“The hell I wouldn’t,” I muttered.
Jay ignored me. “You’ve been shouldering this since the second we smelled her. You’ve been trying to protect her, protect us, and keep yourself in check. But if you can’t be here for what she actually needs, then—”
“I’m willing,” I cut in sharply, eyes locked on Roan. “Whatever she needs—however she needs it—I’m in.” I paused, just long enough for the lie to come out with teeth. “And if she pushes me away after, if she never looks at me again? I can live with that.”
We all knew that was bullshit.
Even I didn’t believe me.
Then Roan looked at me, really looked, and something in his expression cracked.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said finally, voice low and solid. “Don’t care if it kills me. I’m staying.”
That admission hit like a shot of adrenaline, lighting something up in my chest. Not relief, not exactly. Just… certainty.