The thought of going to him makes something twist in my chest, something more complicated than simple desire or shame. The memory of his arms around me after the altar, gentle in the aftermath of violence. The memory of his voice in the library, telling me about his mother with his reflection ghosting in the window glass.
I don'twantto want him.
But my body remembers what happened on that altar. Remembers and wants it again with a ferocity that terrifies me.
I leave the library without bothering to reshelve the books.
-
I spend the next two days inventing ways to avoid someone in their own home.
I stay in my chambers with the door locked—not that a lock would stop him if he really wanted in, but leaving it unlocked is unthinkable. I pace back and forth until I've worn a visible path in the thick red rugs. I try to eat, but nothing tastes right, everything too strong or too bland or toosomething. I strip down and examine the scars on my hips like they'll reveal something new to me, when they're the same as they've been for weeks, shiny and hard and too thick.
I press my fingers against the largest scar and feel my pulse beating beneath it, steady and strong. Whatever the contamination is doing to me, it hasn't killed me yet. Hasn't even slowed me down.
Maybe the books are wrong.
Or maybe I'm just dying slower than the others did.
The heat builds in agonizing waves. Restlessness on the first day, a constant low-grade agitation that makes it impossible to sit still. Fever on the second, sweat dampening my hairline and pooling in the hollows of my collarbones. By the morning of the third day, I'm pacing in nothing but a thin shift because even that much fabric against my skin feels like too much, like sandpaper, like fire.
The bond pulses between us with every beat of my heart, reminding me that there's a way out of all this now.
I can feel him somewhere below, his presence like an anchor on my heart. His rut is rising to answer my heat, and I can sense it through the bond, can feel the beast stirring in him the way something feral is stirring in me.
I told myself I wouldn't go to him, that I would ride this out alone the way I've ridden out every heat since I was sixteen. In caves and abandoned barns and deep in the forest where no one could find me, where I could let the red haze take me and wakeup days later with blood under my nails and no memory of what I'd done.
But during those heats I blacked out, losing hours, sometimes days, my conscious mind retreating while my body did whatever it needed to survive. The darkness was a mercy. A refuge. The only way I knew to endure the howling emptiness that no amount of my own touch could fill.
This time is different. For some reason—probably the bond—I'm conscious and aware, present for every wave of need that crashes through me, every pulse of want that tightens my belly and slicks my thighs. The bond won't let me retreat into darkness. Won't let me escape.
This time I have to feel all of it.
And know that somewhere, not far from me, he's waiting for me to break.
-
The fever hits on the third day like a fist to the stomach.
One moment I'm pacing back and forth, miserable but managing. The next, heat crashes over me and I'm on my knees, hands flat against cold stone, gasping for breath while fire blazes through my blood.
I make it to the bed on shaking legs. The sheets are cool against my fever-hot skin but it's not enough—nothing is enough.
The bond pulls at me, insistent and demanding, pulling me toward him with a force that makes my chest ache.
I can feel him through it. His presence is like a fire burning somewhere below, heat I can sense through stone and distance. His scent reaches me even through closed doors—smoke and stone and something that makes my mouth water, makes slickflood between my thighs, makes every instinct I possess screammate mate mate.
I press my face into the pillow and try to breathe through it. Try to think about anything except the emptiness yawning inside me, the desperate need for something to fill it.
My grandmother's voice echoes in my memory:You're not like the other omegas, Kessa. Your blood is older. Wilder. The heats will be harder for you, but you're strong enough to survive them.
She never told me what to do when the heat was amplified by a bond I didn't choose. Never told me how to survive this.
Time loses meaning. The fever builds in waves, each crest higher than the last. I try to handle it myself—get my hand between my legs where I'm swollen and desperate—but touching just makes it worse. My fingers are too small, too blunt, nothing like what my body actually needs. Each stroke reminds me of what's missing. The fullness I felt on the altar. The knot that stretched me until I shattered.
The emptiness becomes a physical pain, a howling void wheresomethingshould be. An ache so deep it feels like I've become one with the emptiness. I sob into the pillow, past pride now, past dignity, reduced to nothing but need and the inability to satisfy it.
A knock at the door makes me snarl. There's nothing human about the sound. All animal, all warning, the noise a cornered predator makes.
