Page 1 of Altius (The Scent of Victory #2)

One

Morgan

“ D o you know today’s date?” An unfamiliar older woman with a kind smile and frizzy brown hair leaned over me. Her white coat stung my eyes. I couldn’t focus on anything further than her shoulder.

I squinted at her, dry lips trying to form words my sluggish brain had yet to supply. My mental calendar blurred together, missing weeks one moment and then cramming in too many months the next.

“T-Thursday,” I rasped. “November…twenty-something?”

“Close enough. Don’t worry, it’ll come back to you. Now, can you open your mouth for me?”

I complied, inadvertently cracking my jaw and sending a twinge of pain down my neck.

Why was I so sore?

She swept a penlight across the inside of my mouth.

“A little bite on the tongue, nothing serious.” She smiled, clicking off the penlight and tucking it into her breast pocket. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Digging through the mush inside my skull, I found a few half-formed impressions. The squeak of shoes on the basketball court. Sitting next to Dr. Flemming, cheering on the Lady Narwhals.

“I was at work. Basketball game.”

“What happened afterward?”

Nothing, as far as I could tell—just a nebulous uncertainty that grated on my nerves.

“I…don’t know.”

She turned, directing her next question to a large gold-tinged smudge in the corner. “Your friend found her on the floor?”

“Yes, she was unconscious. He didn’t witness any convulsions,” the smudge replied in a deep voice that helped relax the muscles in my aching neck. “She has a history of seizures stemming from a traumatic brain injury and takes multiple medications.”

I liked this voice, even when it rattled off complicated prescription drug names.

It reminded me of Cal Carling. My very tall, very beefy boyfriend. The one whose sandy hair had golden streaks from hours spent on football fields under the summer sun. Who was going to take me out for sushi tomorrow.

Squinting at the corner, I took stock of my surroundings—a cramped hospital room, probably in the ER—with a Cal-shaped mirage near the door.

No, that was Cal in the flesh.

I’d recognize those broad shoulders and solid frame anywhere, even without my glasses.

Wait—where were my glasses?

“Did I get the day wrong?” I asked, puzzled by the hoarseness of my voice. “Not supposed to see you today…am I?”

Cal paused mid-sentence, apologized to the woman—the doctor —and came over. Thumbs hooked in his pockets, he leaned against the hospital bed, the picture of competent nonchalance.

“There’s been a change of plans.”

With a growing sense of dreadful understanding and panic coiling low in my stomach, I scanned the various monitors attached to my body and the sterile surroundings.

“I had a seizure?”

“Yes,” the doctor said. “And based on your medical history, we’ll be admitting you overnight for observation.”

Trembling fingers gripped the sleeve of Cal’s cardigan. “Don’t tell Kelsey.”

“Sorry.” He grasped my icy hand. “You needed a healthcare proxy.”

Too many emotions surged forward, clashing until anger took control—as it always did in situations like this—reducing me from a mature adult to a frustrated mess.

I yanked my hand away.

“You called her— why ? Why would you do that? You don’t have the right!”

His all-knowing demeanor had never been more infuriating. Cal didn’t flinch. Didn’t try to appease me or explain himself. Simply turned to the doctor and resumed their earlier conversation as if I hadn’t just snapped at him.

“Yes, we’d like a pack suite.”

***

Two hours later, I’d been poked, tested, scanned, and resettled in a spacious room with a view of the Tolliver Bay bridge. Downtown Northport’s skyline reflected on the dark water, its blinking red antennas mirroring the warning sirens in my head.

I was running out of patience, and an alpha would take the brunt of it.

“When are you leaving?” I grumbled as Cal set cups of grapes and cheese cubes on the overbed table. “We’re not pack. They’ll kick you out any minute now.”

My gaze, still blurry despite the return of my glasses, shifted to the muscular form next to the sofa.

“Same goes for you.”

Wyatt Redmond ignored me, his wavy black hair falling forward to shield his face as he dug into a weekender bag. It looked suspiciously like one of Kelsey’s.

His biceps flexed as he pulled out another throw pillow and added it to the growing number on the sofa—five, maybe six. I’d lost count. But they’d all fit perfectly in my library nest. Then he handed a gray weighted blanket to Cal, jolting a loose synapse in my muddled brain back into place.

That was my favorite blanket. And those were my pillows. My things.

Mine .

A rare flash of omega possessiveness ripped through me.

“You were in my suite?”

“Only for a few minutes,” Cal said, draping the weighted blanket across my legs. “I asked him to grab your essentials—phone charger, pajamas.”

“Snacks.” Wyatt zipped the empty bag shut.

I glanced at the food on the table, belatedly recognizing the rations my younger sister and caretaker, Kelsey, had prepared before leaving for Tacoma—food I hadn’t touched, just like the lunches and dinners forgotten in the fridge.

Wyatt knocked his fist against the pillows, clearing a space to sit. “The toothbrush is new, though.”

“And he fed the cats,” Cal added, as if being helpful erased the transgression.

“Tenny likes me.” Wyatt’s face brightened, undeterred by my irritation. “Even let me give him a belly rub after dinner.”

An uneasy pause filled the room. I wanted to tell them to leave. That they were overstepping my boundaries, and I could manage on my own.

But I couldn’t, which upset me most of all.

How had I ended up in this situation?

The first suppressant reduction should have been the brutal one, not the second. I’d taken my pills on time, stayed hydrated, done my best to eat regularly, and gotten extra sleep.

So why had it wrecked me?

Only time and further testing would tell. Hopefully, we’d have results in the morning. I hated hospitals. But that was my problem. Not Wyatt or Cal’s.

Rubbing the pressure point between my brows, I exhaled. “Thank you.”

The words were reluctant but genuine. It didn’t matter how much I hated moments like this—painful reminders of my body’s limitations—I still appreciated their thoughtfulness.

“Of course.” Cal pulled up a chair and settled beside the bed, totally at ease as he crossed his legs and locked his hands behind his head. “And they’re not going to ask us to leave. Kelsey signed an overnight permission slip.”

“But…” I glanced between my current boyfriend and the man who’d almost held the title a decade ago. Neither of whom I had a legal relationship with. “But we’re not…”

“I’m your healthcare proxy for the time being. Wyatt’s acting as your parental pack’s representative, which means he’s got your parents’ seal of approval to stay. All the necessary paperwork has been signed, and we’ve received our credentials.”

He unclipped a visitor’s badge from his belt and set it on the table. Lines of abbreviated jargon and a security barcode framed a low-res photo of Cal.

Wyatt likely had a similar badge, and despite my confusion over who in my family would approve of his presence at a time like this, I decided to accept what I couldn’t change.

My head fell back against the pillows. “Fine.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to get rid of us.” Cal flashed a crooked smile, nudging the cheese cubes closer.

Wyatt shifted in his seat, still trying to get comfortable. “I grabbed a few meals from your fridge, if you’d rather have something warm.”

Pack suites came with an attached second bedroom and a kitchenette—unnecessary luxuries for a single omega. Especially me. There was no need for added creature comforts or soft furnishings. I planned to leave as soon as possible.

“No, this is enough,” I said, picking at the corner of a cheese cube.

The door swung open, and my younger sister, Piper, rushed in. She was wearing a full face of stage makeup, her brunette hair slicked back into an intricate bun, topped with a glittering pink crystal tiara.

Had she come straight from her dress rehearsal for The Nutcracker ?

“What the hell happened?” she demanded. Piper shucked off her coat, revealing a long cardigan and baggy sweatpants hastily pulled over a nude leotard. “And turn up the air purifier. It smells like shitty perfume in here.”

Piper tossed her coat on the sofa and squeezed onto the bed beside me, clutching my hand in a death grip as she fixed Cal with a fierce stare. “I want answers.”

Cal maintained his air of amiable professionalism, as unbothered by my sister’s temper as he was by mine. “Still waiting on some blood tests. We’ll know more in the morning.”

“I’m all right,” I told her, straightening a partially dislodged bobby pin in her hair.

Her amber eyes widened with alarm. “You had a seizure!”

“Won’t be the last time,” I said with a shrug, trying to project a casual indifference I didn’t feel. “But I don’t want you rushing around late at night on my account. You didn’t even take off your makeup.”

“As if I’d risk getting a speeding ticket for you,” Piper scoffed. “That’s what your boyfriends are for.”

I turned to Cal in confusion. He gestured toward the entrance.

The long, dark form of Joaquin Toledano leaned against the doorway, watching me with unsettling intensity.

His nostrils flared as he tilted his head back. A devilish smile spread across his angular face, exposing his sharp incisors. The epitome of a predator closing in on weakened prey.

“Hiya, doc,” he drawled.

Ignoring the staccato beats on my heart rate monitor—a normal physiological occurrence caused by my illness, not a sudden influx of nerves because Joaquin seemed liable to pounce—I turned to Cal, raising a brow in challenge.

“Does he have an overnight permission slip, too?”

“No, of course not,” he said, having the decency to look a little sheepish as Piper and I stared him down. Cal cleared his throat and stood up. “We’ll give you ladies some privacy.”

Joaquin pressed his back to the wall and crossed his arms.

“But I just got here.” Despite speaking to Cal, Joaquin’s eyes never left mine. “Why can’t I help kiss her better, too?”

Ooh, willing cannon fodder. How convenient.

But before I could order the leering tomcat to get out, Cal clapped a hand on Joaquin’s shoulder, steering him toward the door.

“Move along, Casanova.”

While they grappled with each other, bickering down the hallway, Wyatt retreated to the attached bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

“They’re being weird tonight,” I murmured, more to myself than Piper.

“Because you scared us all shitless.”

“Piper, I didn’t mean—”

“You never do. But that doesn’t change the fact that you lied to Kelsey.

You lied to our parents—to all of us—about how bad things really are.

” Piper’s face flushed red as she laid into me.

“You think sugar-coating everything makes us worry less, but it’s the opposite.

It only makes things worse. Why do you have to push yourself so hard? ”

She paused, taking a ragged breath, and ran a manicured hand over her bun.

“And why— why —after so many years, are you still so fucking obstinate?”

Tears stung my sensitive eyes. How could I defend myself when I couldn’t even think straight?

“That isn’t… It’s not—”

A strangled sob gave voice to my family’s worst fear. “ What if you hit your head again? ”

The last brittle link holding me together snapped. I pulled off my glasses and pressed my palms into my eye sockets, breathing hard, trying in vain to hide my weakness. But it was too late. The collapse was underway.

“I—I just want to go home.”

“I know, I know.” Piper held me close, stroking my hair while I cried.

“It might take a day or two, but we’ll get you home, to your kitty boys, to your nest. But the best thing you can do for yourself right now is to shut up—and let those men take care of you.

” She gently pushed me away, her face scrunched up in distaste. “After you take a shower.”