Page 25 of Stream Heat (Omega Stream #1)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kara

Reid led me into the kitchen, not rushing me, but definitely watching like he expected I might bolt for the nearest escape. In fairness, I probably looked like a flight risk, all wide-eyed and clutching my prescriptions like they were my last lifelines.

He pointed at a stool by the island. "Sit." No negotiation in his tone. Then, "I'll make coffee."

I didn’t argue. I just sat, which ought to have been our very first clue that I was circling the drain. Anyone who knows me knows Kara Quinn never obeys orders without a fight, and this time, I just caved.

Reid moved around the kitchen with the same efficiency he brought to every part of his life, and I stared at my own hands, trying to fit words around the medical death sentence I'd just been handed. The silence between us wasn’t awkward.

It was just dense. Heavy enough to make breathing feel like hauling gravel.

He set a mug in front of me, the coffee so strong the aroma cut right through my mental sludge. "Now talk to me. What happened at the doctor’s?"

The warmth seeped through the ceramic as I held the mug. Anchoring. "I saw a specialist. About the suppressants, mostly."

A muscle in his jaw flicked, barely visible. "Not your regular doctor?"

"Different kind." I focused on my coffee, not on him. "This one handles…military-grade stuff."

He got it instantly, and I hated him a little for it, that precise, perceptive brain of his. Realization, then pure alarm. "You were trying to get more."

He didn’t phrase it like a question, but I nodded, burning with shame anyway.

"Quinn–"

"Don’t." I cut him off before he could go full after-action debrief. "I know it was reckless. Illegal. Whatever lecture you want to give, I've already given it to myself. I just wanted to feel like myself again. Just for the tournament."

His voice softened, just enough to kick the legs out from under me. "I wasn’t going to lecture you," he said. "I was going to ask what the doctor told you that has you looking like this."

That gentleness? It destroyed me. It would’ve been easier if he’d just chewed me out. Judgment is safe. This concern, raw and real, made me want to fall apart.

"He said I’m fucked." The laugh that came out was too sharp, brittle enough to shatter. "Not his exact words, but close enough."

Reid sat down across from me. Didn’t blink, didn’t look away. "Be specific."

I had to suck in a breath before I could answer.

Then I pulled the data stick from my pocket and slid it across the counter, because I physically couldn’t get the words out another way.

"Eight years at three times the max dose. Military suppressants. My endocrine system is pretty much wrecked. My liver's barely holding on. Hormones, too. The doctor doesn’t think they’ll ever normalize. "

He picked up the drive, jaw tight. "And if you tried going back on them?"

"Organ failure. Neurological shit. Death, probably." I stared at my coffee, wishing I could climb into the mug and disappear.

The silence was bottomless. When I finally looked up, what I saw in Reid’s eyes nearly knocked the air out of me. Not pity. Something more primal. Fear, I realized. Real, gut-deep fear.

"So what’s the next move?" His voice was so measured it almost sounded like nothing mattered. Almost.

"Withdrawal. The legal suppressants, but for way longer than we’d thought, than Dr. Patel thought. Maybe a year or more." Another laugh, all edges, no softness to it at all. "Even then, everything might stay out of whack. Heats, senses, hormones...I could be permanently scrambled."

He absorbed all that. Nothing showing on his face. Professional, if you didn’t know him. Cold, if you weren’t paying attention. "What else?"

It caught me off guard. "What do you mean, what else?"

He was relentless. "You’re holding something back. What else did he say?"

Damn him for being right. I looked away, barely above a whisper. "He said pack bonding could help."

The air changed. I couldn’t describe it. It was like static, but sharper, more like the high pitched whine of a mosquito being too close to my ear. Reid went perfectly still, the way predators do before they move.

"Pack bonding," he echoed, voice gone low and dark, the Alpha side showing in a way that made my skin warm. "Explain."

Heat, which I was sure translated as redness, crept over my cheeks. "He said Alphas, being around them, especially in a pack, can help stabilize things. Something about pheromones, balancing biochemistry during withdrawal."

"And?"

"And I told him that wasn’t an option." I forced myself to look up. "This is a business deal. Not a real pack."

Something flickered in Reid’s eyes. Annoyance, maybe? Or something that read dangerously close to regret. "After everything you still think that’s all this is?"

"What am I supposed to think, Reid?" The defensiveness flared fast and sharp. Anger was a shield, always had been. "That five Alphas I barely know are suddenly supposed to be my saviors? That I should just fold up my pride and give up my independence because my body is a train wreck?"

He shook his head, voice even but the heat never left his eyes. "No one’s asking you to surrender anything. But pretending this isn’t happening won’t fix it."

"But the only options suck! Either I live with being a mess for the rest of my life, or I start depending on Alphas for…basic functioning. After poisoning myself for years just to be taken seriously in a job that never really wanted me anyway? This is supposed to be a win?"

My voice went up, all the panic and fury I’d been choking down since the clinic finally spilling out. Reid just watched, steady and solid, refusing to let me spiral into self-destruction.

He let it hang for a second, then said, "The reality is you’re not alone in this. Whether you want to see it or not."

Before I could rip into that, footsteps in the hall signaled we weren’t alone anymore. Malik leaned in the doorway, concern written all over him.

"Everything all right? I heard some shouting."

Reid kept his focus on me. "Quinn had her appointment. She’s filling me in."

Malik’s gaze shifted to the data stick, then back to my face. "Do you want to tell everyone, or keep it private?"

That tripped me up. I’d expected someone to just drag it out of me, not ask, not give me choices.

"I…" I almost said no. Instinct. Hide everything. But the truth was, I didn’t want to haul this mountain by myself. "You should get the others. It affects the schedule."

Malik nodded, not making it a thing. "I’ll bring them in."

Ten minutes later I was on the couch in the living room, five Alphas around me, my medical disaster projected on a giant screen. I didn’t have it in me to repeat the litany of things wrong with me, so I just nodded when Reid asked if he could share the details.

As he laid out Dr. Levine’s findings, total body system meltdown, likely permanent, all because I’d sold myself out for suppressants.

I watched their faces.

I waited for the disgust, the disappointment, the calculation of my value as it tanked.

Instead, what I got was fury, on my behalf, a quiet kind, and something that looked like stubborn loyalty.

"So basically," Theo summed up, "those Nexus Management assholes slow-poisoned you for profit, and now your body’s in open revolt."

"That’s one way to put it," I said, voice flat.

"It’s criminal," Ash growled, barely holding onto his rage. "Someone should–"

"For what crime?" I cut in, harsher than I intended. "I took them of my own free will. No one stuck a gun to my head."

Jace was calmer, clinical. "Coercion doesn’t always need violence. They manipulated you. That counts as exploitation."

I wanted to argue but couldn’t. The absolution in their eyes stung in a way I couldn’t name. "Doesn’t matter. It’s done. The question is, what the hell do we do now?"

"You follow the doctor’s plan." Malik, steady as ever. "Withdrawal, liver meds, whatever else he gave you."

"And what about the tournament? The streaming calendar? Our sponsors who want results? I’m already operating at half capacity. Now you want me to roll up and compete with a body that might melt down at any second?"

"We adapt," Reid said, simple as that. "We adjust the schedule. We build a narrative that works for you."

I let out a jagged laugh. "What narrative? The tragic Omega who blew out her health playing pretend?"

"How about the one who’s breaking glass ceilings in a biased industry?" Jace threw in, deadpan. "The one fighting her biology and still kicking ass."

"Or the Omega who finally tells the world to shove it and owns her story," Theo added, practically vibrating with excitement. "We make it your brand instead of your secret."

I didn’t know what to say to that. They saw opportunity, when all I saw was the end of the line.

"And the pack bonding?" I said at last, voice barely audible. "If it’s medically necessary, is that…on the table?"

All five sets of eyes zeroed in on me, the room suddenly buzzing with something dangerous.

"Your call," said Reid, careful and deliberate. "No one here is going to push you."

"But if I said yes. If I wanted it. You’d…?"

Charged silence. On some level, the air was thick with unspoken Alpha tension, like scent caught between thunderclouds.

"We’d be open to it," Reid confirmed. The way he said it, voice low and resonant, did things to my Omega brain I tried not to acknowledge. "If that’s what you wanted."

"Not for pity," I said, sharper than necessary. "I couldn’t take that."

Ash snorted. "No one's pitying you. You know that. You see how we respond to you? Don’t play dumb."

He wasn’t wrong. I had noticed, even if I lied to myself about it.

The instinctual way they shifted when I walked in, the subtle accommodations, the fact that I’d started stealing their hoodies and hats for my nest without even thinking.

Just like they pretended not to see the evidence, I pretended I didn’t need it.

"This doesn’t have to be decided today," Malik interjected, always the diplomatic one. "Quinn’s recovery comes first. Full stop."

"Yeah," Theo added, bouncing in his seat. "No pressure. Just options."

All I could do was nod, the exhaustion catching up in a tidal wave. The reality crash-landed on me, stealing whatever fight I had left.

"I need some time to think."

Reid got up. "Take all the time you want. We’ll fix the schedule."

They all filtered out, leaving me on the couch, staring at the wall and grappling with the aftershocks.

The idea of pack bonding, of letting go and giving control over to biology, was everything I’d fought against for eight years.

That independent streak in me shrieked at the mere suggestion, but the Omega side, the one I’d been crushing into silence, just wanted what Dr. Levine had suggested.

It wanted connection like it wanted oxygen.

"Quinn?" Jace’s voice was so soft I almost didn’t notice him. He’d come back, mug of tea in hand.

I took it. Let the heat scald my palms. "Thanks."

He hesitated, sitting beside me but not too close. "My sister," he started, "she was on military suppressants too. Special ops. She went through a similar withdrawal to yours."

That jolted me into focus. "Did she make it through?"

He nodded. "Almost didn’t, at first. Tried to tough it out. Nearly died. Eventually, she accepted help, from her old unit. Her pack, basically. Now she’s doing better. Still bad days, but…she’s good. She’s herself. Just, a version of herself that allows for being an Omega."

"She stayed in the military?"

He gave a half-smile. "Different role, but yeah. Still serving. Still a badass."

The implication was obvious. I could still be me. Still fierce, sharp, dangerous. I just had to face the damage instead of chasing the lie.

"I’m scared, Jace." I wasn’t planning to say it, but it came out before I could stop it.

He didn’t try to sugarcoat it. "I know. You should be. This is huge. But you don’t have to be alone, unless that’s what you want."

He got up after that, just as quietly as he’d come. "No matter what you decide about pack bonding, we’re your team. That doesn’t change."

I drank the tea. It was chamomile, perfect temperature, just-barely sweet.

For a long time, I just sat there, sorting through the thousand things I didn’t have answers for.

Could I compete as an openly Omega gamer?

Could I build a new life out of chaos? Could I connect to these five Alphas in ways that were real and messy and terrifying?

I didn’t know yet. But as I sat there, surrounded by their scents (still lingering in the space, subtle but alive), something shifted. For the first time since that public heat crash burned my old life to the ground, I felt something like hope.

Not because the diagnosis had changed, it was still a total disaster. But because the disaster wasn't mine alone anymore.