But the weight in my chest says otherwise.
We make our way back through the corridors, and I’m hyperaware of every detail now, trying to catch even a little hint of her buttercup sweetness. But there’s nothing, just the smell of popcorn and beer and sweat from the arena mixing with the industrial cleaner they use on the floors.
The supply room door is closed. I wrench it open hard, but it’s just as empty as I knew it would be.
“Fuck!”
The space looks exactly like it did earlier—stacked chairs, equipment bins, that pile of tack. But no Willa.
“Willa?” Charlie calls out anyway, and I can hear the desperation creeping into his voice.
But I do catch something. Faint. Barely there. I move away from the room and start down the hallway, following it.
“It’s Willa. Can you smell it?”
Jake and Charlie both start to shake their heads, but are quick to nod when they pick up her scent.
“Her scent leads this way.” The hallway stretches ahead of us into the service area. Areas just for maintenance staff.
“What the hell would she be doing down here?” Charlie’s right behind me, his boots heavy on the concrete.
“Maybe she was trying to get outside?” Jake suggests, but there’s doubt in his voice.
“The scent is getting stronger.” With every step, her scent intensifies. And underneath the sweetness of buttercup and honey, there’s a rich, deep thickness that my Alpha recognizes as heat.
“This can’t be right. She smells like she’s in heat?” Something that makes my Alpha snarl with possessiveness. Our Omega is in heat without us, and the sour undertones I’m getting… definitely distress. Ours, and she’s not safe.
Fear. Terror. Panic.
“Why wouldn’t she call us?” Charlie asks, his voice tight with anxiety.
We round the corner, and I see a glint of something on the concrete floor about thirty feet ahead. It’s shiny and out of place.
Jogging over, I pick it up and recognize Willa’s phone. Her case—the rose gold one she showed me just yesterday—is dented. The screen is shattered into a spiderweb pattern, and when I pick it up, pieces of glass fall away.
“Someone else was with her,” Jake says.
“I know that scent. Felton.” Charlie’s voice is flat, and the murder in his eyes is unrelenting. “If he hurt her, I’m fucking ending him.”
Her scent is everywhere now—coating the walls, saturating the air. So thick I could follow it blind. And that acidic note offear is stronger here, concentrated, like she stood in this exact spot and?—
And what? Fought? Struggled?
“This way.” I take off at a jog, following the trail. The hallway narrows, the overhead lights spaced farther apart, so we’re moving through patches of shadow. Just gray cinderblock and exposed pipes and that overwhelming scent of my Omega in distress.
“Beau.” Jake’s voice is tight, strained. “Her scent. It’s— Fuck, it’s?—”
“I know.” The words come out clipped. I know what he’s smelling. The sweetness ramping up, the heat pheromones so concentrated they’re making my Alpha claw at the inside of my skull. “She’s deep in pre-heat now. Maybe full heat.”
Alone. Vulnerable. Terrified.
The thought makes something primal and violent rise up in me. Something that wants to tear apart anything that might have touched her, hurt her, scared her.
There’s a sound ahead that doesn’t belong, and as we round the corner, I know why.
Felton stands at a door, trying to remove a metal chair that’s been wedged under the handle of a restroom door.
Everything slows to a singular truth.
