"Bullshit." Whiskey takes a step closer, and I resist the urge to step back. "You've been avoiding me since we got back."
"We've been cleaning up the destruction you caused. Hardly avoiding."
"You know what I mean," he insists, closing another few inches of the distance between us. "You won't look at me. Won't talk to me. Except to tell me what a fucking idiot I am."
"If the shoe fits," I reply coolly, but the attempt at detachment feels hollow even to my own ears.
Whiskey's eyes narrow. "Why are you like this?"
"Like what?"
"This." He gestures at me, frustration evident in the sharp movement. "Cold. Distant. Like nothing ever touches you."
"Perhaps because it doesn't."
He laughs, the sound brittle and humorless. "See, that's what I thought too. That you were just an ice prince who didn't feel anything. But then I felt you react when I pushed you against that wall."
My ears get hot. "It was a biological response to the omega's scent," I say through gritted teeth, rage prickling the back of my neck. "Nothing more."
"Sure." He steps closer still, near enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body. "Tell yourself that if it helps you sleep at night."
"You're fucking delusional."
"Am I?" His voice drops lower, rougher.
Then he reaches for my face.
I catch his wrist before he can touch me, my fingers wrapping around the solid muscle of his forearm. "You're overstepping."
Something I can't read flashes in his eyes before he deliberately relaxes in my grip. "Am I?"
We stand frozen like this—my fingers around his wrist, our bodies inches apart, the air between us charged with energy that doesn't make any sense. I can feel his pulse hammering beneath my fingertips, matching the too-quick rhythm of my own heart.
This is madness. Complete, utter madness.
"It's the omega's heat," I say finally, releasing his wrist and taking a deliberate step back. "It's affecting all of us. Making us... irrational."
Whiskey doesn't follow, though his eyes track my movement. "Is that what you need to tell yourself?"
"It's the truth." I fold my arms across my chest. "Scent-matched omegas in heat trigger heightened responses in pack-bonded alphas. It's well-documented. It can manifest as..." I pause, searching for the most clinical term possible, "...displaced arousal."
He snorts. "Displaced arousal. Right. Good to know you're aroused."
"Would you fuck off?" I snarl.
He gives a low chuckle, moving to the door and opening it in clear dismissal. "Yeah. Sure." Then he pauses in the threshold, turning to look at me one more time. "For what it's worth, I think you're full of shit. But if that's how you need to play it, fine."
Before I can respond, he's gone, pulling the door shut behind him with enough force to make the frame rattle. I stand frozen for several heartbeats, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway.
The silence that follows is deafening.
With a growl of frustration, I press the heels of my palms against my eyes until spots of light dance across my vision.
My body is still thrumming with arousal from both the omega's scent and Whiskey's proximity. The physical evidence is impossible to ignore, straining against the thin fabric.
I hate him.
I fuckinghateWhiskey.
