Page 27

Emmie

Mom is asleep when I return, so I climb the stairs on my tiptoes, trying not to cause a creak on the old wooden staircase. By the time I reach my room, my heart is still racing from my conversation with Eli, and I want to scream.

I hold the handle and slip into my bedroom without a sound, but the small space suddenly feels like a prison cell, the walls pressing in from all sides.

I pace from the window to the dresser and back, my hands balled as I go over the conversation with Eli and wonder if he’s really coming around to us being together.

His face keeps flashing through my mind—the raw pain in his eyes when he spoke about his past, the careful distance he maintained even as every fiber of my being screamed at me to close the space between us.

I’d wanted to hold him so badly it physically hurt.

I’d wanted to smooth away the lines of hurt around his eyes, to promise him that I wasn’t her, that I wouldn’t leave him.

But I couldn’t. The moment I touched him, really touched him, I would have crumbled.

All my carefully constructed walls would have come tumbling down, and Mom’s thoughts would have been proven right about everything.

But Mom doesn’t understand. She can’t understand what it felt like to see Eli vulnerable, to know that beneath all that controlled Alpha exterior is someone who’s been as broken as I have.

Someone who understands what it means to have your trust shattered by the people who were supposed to protect you.

Mom wants us to leave, to start over somewhere new.

She thinks I’m being manipulated, that I can’t trust my own feelings.

But what I feel for Eli is not manipulation.

I’ve thought about it. It’s surely recognition.

Eli and I are two wounded souls seeing themselves reflected in each other.

And now she wants me to throw it all away based on her own trauma, her own fears.

But even as the angry thoughts spiral through my mind, a small voice whispers that maybe she’s right. Maybe I can’t trust my judgment anymore. Maybe everything I think I feel is just a stupid Omega being manipulated when I thought I’d been so brave. The uncertainty makes me want to claw at my skin.

I throw myself onto my bed, burying my face in the pillow to muffle the frustrated growl that tears from my throat so she can’t hear me.

I toss and turn in my bed. There’s an odd tingling sensation running along my nerve endings, like electricity sparking just beneath my skin. I feel so strange, restless in a way that has nothing to do with emotional turmoil.

I roll onto my back, staring at the ceiling as the restlessness intensifies.

My skin feels too tight, too warm, and there’s a peculiar ache building low in my abdomen.

I check the time—just before eight p.m. Exhaustion pulls at me like I’ve been awake for twenty-four hours.

Only sleep will help. Maybe tomorrow this will all seem less catastrophic.

But sleep doesn’t come. Instead, I toss and turn, kicking off the blankets, only to pull them back up minutes later when a chill races through me.

The ache in my abdomen spreads, becoming a persistent throb that makes it impossible to find a comfortable position.

Every time I close my eyes, I see Eli’s face—the way he looked at me like I was something precious he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch.

And then there is Beck who wants me, I’m sure of it.

By ten o’clock, I’m grouchy and drenched in sweat despite the cool night air drifting through my window. I’ve changed my pajamas three times. Had cold showers. And now the sheets cling to my skin uncomfortably, and there’s a strange, sweet scent filling the room that I don’t recognize.

Needing to cool down once again, I stumble to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face and neck. In the mirror, my face is flushed, my pupils dilated. When I press the back of my hand to my forehead, my skin burns hot against my knuckles.

“Just stress,” I whisper to myself. “Just stress from everything that happened the past few days.”

But even as I say it, a terrible suspicion forms. The restlessness, the fever, the way my scent has changed—all of it suddenly clicks into place with horrifying clarity. No. No , this can’t be happening. Not now. Not when everything is already falling apart.

I race back to my dresser, frantically searching through the drawer where I keep my suppressants.

The small white pills rattle in their bottle as I shake it.

I pour them onto my palm and count them, but it only confirms what I already know—I’ve been taking them religiously, never missing a dose.

I’m confused. I know suppressants can fail.

Stress can trigger breakthrough heats. And being around multiple alphas, especially ones I have feelings for. ..

My legs give out, and I sink onto the edge of my bed as the full implications hit me. If I’m going into heat now, here, with Beck and Eli and even Romeo... If the scent carries, if they catch even a hint. Mom was right. We do need to leave. But now it might already be too late.

The ache in my abdomen pulses stronger, and despite my terror, my body responds with a flush of want that makes me hate myself.

I’m faced with the worst possible timing, but my biology doesn’t care about convenience or safety or the promises I just made to my mother.

The need claws at me, primal and desperate.

I need comfort, need someone to hold me, to tell me everything will be okay.

But the Alphas I know are off-limits. Yes, they would take me through my heat.

But at what cost? And Romeo... Romeo has never been an option.

But Jude... I press my hands against my mouth to stifle the whimper that wants to escape.

“Jude,” I whisper into the darkness, my voice barely audible even to myself. “I need... I need someone to hold me. I need you to hold me.”

But would he break his celibacy for me? The words hang in the air like a prayer, desperate and broken. I curl into myself, pulling my knees to my chest as another wave of heat washes through me.

And then, soft as a whisper in my mind, I hear: Come to me.

The voice is warm, familiar, unmistakably Jude’s. But that’s impossible. He’s not here. He can’t be here. I sit up straighter, my heart pounding.

“Jude?” I whisper again, but there’s no response except the sound of my own ragged breathing.

I must be hallucinating. The heat, the stress, the emotional upheaval—it’s all catching up with me. Making me hear things that aren’t there. But the voice had sounded so real, so present. And for just a moment, the ache in my chest had eased, replaced by something that felt like hope.

But I have to do this alone. I have to pretend everything is normal while my body betrays me at every turn. I have to keep my promise to stay away from the very people my Omega instincts will be screaming for me to find. And I have to do it all while my world burns down around me.