The nickname makes something twist in my chest. Even in his deterioration, even consumed by rejection sickness, he still uses the name only he's ever called me. The name that started at prep school, when we were fourteen and discovering that pack bonds could mean more than just shared strength.
I enter anyway, my enhanced vision adjusting quickly to the darkness. The destruction is worse than yesterday. The mirror is shattered, blood on the glass. His desk is kindling. And there, in the corner by his closet, a shrine that makes my stomach drop.
Vespera's things. A sweater. Hair ties. A water bottle from rehearsal. And—hell—underwear that could only have been stolen from her room. All arranged with the careful precision of someone trying to preserve a scent that's fading, trying to hold onto something that's already gone.
"You need to eat," I say, setting down the tray I've brought. Protein shake, supplements, bandages for whatever damage he's done to himself tonight.
"I need her." His voice is raw, desperate. He's standing by the window, shirtless, and even in the moonlight I can see how much weight he's lost. Twenty pounds, maybe more. His body is eating itself alive, the Alpha biology demanding its omega and destroying him in her absence.
"She's gone, Dorian."
He turns on me, and his eyes are more wolf than human, that eerie gold that means his control is completely shot. "She's in Columbus. Corvus found her. Two weeks and she'll be there, thinking she's safe, thinking she's escaped."
"Maybe she has." The words escape before I can stop them.
He's across the room before I can blink, slamming me against the wall with his forearm across my throat. Not enough pressure to actually hurt—even feral, he wouldn't truly harm me—but enough to establish dominance.
"She's ours," he growls. "Mine. The bond is still there, I can feel it. She's suffering just like we are."
"We made her suffer for months before this," I point out, even though challenging him in this state is dangerous. "We hunted her, terrorized her, broke her down systematically. Maybe she's better off—"
His mouth crashes into mine, cutting off my words. It's not a kiss—it's possession, desperation, the same claiming intensity he used on her but directed at me. His teeth catch my lower lip, drawing blood, and the copper taste mixes with his familiar scent of sandalwood and rain.
"Don't," he says against my mouth, "suggest she's better without us. Without me."
This is us—has always been us. Since that night in the boathouse when we were eighteen, when he cornered me after crew practice and asked if I wanted to know what it felt like. Since years of sharing beds on pack trips, of touches that went beyond friendship but never quite reached relationship. We fuck when the tension gets too high. We find comfort in each other's bodies when the world gets too complicated. But we never talk about it, never name it, never let it interfere with the pack dynamics or our carefully maintained public personas.
"You're destroying yourself," I say when he finally pulls back. "Look at yourself, Dorian. When's the last time you ate? Slept? Your body is going into rejection psychosis."
"Then fix me." It's half command, half plea. "You're the healer. Make it stop hurting."
"I can't fix this." But I'm already moving toward him, my hands checking his temperature (dangerously high), his pulse (erratic), the new cuts on his knuckles from whatever he destroyed tonight. "The only thing that fixes rejection sickness is proximity to the bonded omega."
"Then we get her back."
"Dorian?"
"I need her, Oak." His voice breaks on my nickname, and suddenly he's not the commanding pack Alpha anymore. He's just broken, desperate, falling apart in ways I've never seen. "I can't—I can't breathe without her scent. I can't think withoutknowing she's ours. I close my eyes and all I see is her walking away, choosing death over us."
"Come on," I say gently, guiding him toward his bathroom. "You need to get cleaned up."
The bathroom is the only part of his suite that's still intact, probably because it's marble and harder to destroy. I start the shower, adjusting the temperature—hot enough to relax his muscles but not so hot it'll spike his already dangerous fever.
"Get in," I instruct, already pulling off my own shirt. He needs someone to make sure he doesn't pass out and crack his skull open on the marble. My cock is already half-hard from his scent and proximity, the familiar Pavlovian response to being this close to him.
He strips without hesitation, and I inspect the damage. Weight loss, muscle tension, the tremor in his hands. His cock is already hard—three weeks of constant rut without release, his body demanding an omega it can't have.
I follow him into the shower. His hands are immediately on me, shoving me against the marble wall. "I saw what you did during the claiming," he says, voice rough. "How gentle you were with her, even while helping hold her down. You felt guilty."
"We all should have." The water pounds down on us. My hands move to check the cuts on his knuckles. But his fingers are already wrapping around my cock, and fuck if my body doesn't respond the way it always has.
"She was perfect during her heat," he continues, stroking my cock. "So responsive, so fucking sweet even while she hated us. Did you know she'd be that perfect, Oak?" He sighs. "I need to forget," he says, dropping to his knees, and fuck, this is such a bad idea but I'm already threading my fingers through his wet hair. "Make me forget for just a few minutes that she's gone."
His mouth is hot and desperate, taking me deep with no hesitation, no build-up. Just raw need to feel something other than the rejection eating him alive.
"Fuck," I groan, my hips bucking. This is wrong—he's not in his right mind, the rejection has him unstable, I should stop this. But his mouth feels too good, and I've never been able to resist him like this.
He pulls off just long enough to say, "I need to fuck you, Oak. Need to feel something other than this emptiness where she should be."
