Page 32 of Omega’s Forward

Maybe it’s the first name that does it. He stops mid-sentence, and I watch him actually look at me, and whatever is in my face makes him take one step back.

“You need to go upstairs,” I say. My voice comes out wrong. Low, and not entirely mine. “Right now.”

“Excuse me?”

He doesn’t know. He’s flushed and he’s furious and he genuinely doesn’t know yet.

He’s going into heat.

10. Everett

My argument dies in my mouth.

One second I’m telling Brody Callahan exactly why the league is right about his six games, and the next my whole body goes hot from the inside out. A cramp rolls low through my belly. And I can smell it, rising off my own skin, sweet and unmistakable, filling the space between us.

Across the gym, Brody has gone very still on the bike. His nostrils flare. His eyes are black.

I work it out maybe a second after he does.

Heat. I’m going into heat.

I don’t say a word. There’s nothing to say that my scent isn’t already announcing on my behalf. I turn and take the stairs at a run — the basement flight, the hall — and slam the guest room door behind me hard enough to shake the frame.

The suppressants didn’t work.

I doubled the dose the day I moved into this house and I have swallowed them every morning since, religiously, and they didn’t work. Or they worked just well enough to let me lie to myself, which is worse. I stand with my back against the door, heart slamming, and run the week back with clear eyes: the armchair in the hotel. The kitchen counter. Standing too long in the hallway outside his bedroom door on Tuesday. Waking up with the taste of woodsmoke in the back of my throat. It was stress, I told myself. Grief, maybe. It’s been a rough month.

I should have known.

The first slick comes while I’m still standing there. Warmth, then wet, sliding down the inside of my thigh, and my cock is already hard enough to hurt, and none of what happens next is going to be dignified.

Because the thing my brain serves up, unasked, is Brody on that bike. Sweat down the column of his throat. The taped hand wrapped around the bar. Shoulders and thighs working, all that mass moving easy, the T-shirt stuck to him. Big rough alpha body one floor below me, and I know exactly what his hands feel like now. That’s the problem. My imagination no longer has to invent anything.

I want him. There it is, flat where I can’t unsee it: the size of him, the brutality and the hints of kindness that keep showing up underneath.

I call the emergency line before I can lose my nerve. My doctor is in London, which makes it morning there. The service picks up on the second ring and patches me through to Dr. Ansari herself, which tells you what I pay for.

“I need something to stop a heat,” I say. No preamble.

A pause while she pulls up my file. “Everett. Has it started?”

“It’s starting.”

“Then I’m sorry, but no. Blockers work ahead of a cycle, not inside one. Once a heat has broken, anything strong enough to interrupt it would put you in the hospital. I wouldn’t prescribe it if you were standing in my office.”

I know that. I’m not stupid. I’ve been an omega long enough to know how heats work. I also know that there must be ways around it. All you need is money and you can fix the world.

“There must be something. A private clinic. I’ll pay whatever—”

“I’m aware you’ll pay. There is nothing to buy. Anyone who sells you something will be selling you an admission ward.” Then, gentler: “Is there a trigger? Are you somewhere safe?”

“I’m safe.” It comes out rough. Safe is one word for this house.

“Then fluids, food when you can face it, and no decisions in the first twelve hours. It will pass in three to five days.”

I thank her. I don’t mean a syllable of it.

It isn’t the heat I’m afraid of. I’ve done heats. It’s that I already know how this one ends.