She looked small. Fragile. Breakable. I knew better. Underneath that vulnerability was steel. Fire. The fierce, unquenchable spirit that had kept her running for three years when any other Omega would have collapsed. She was going to fight us. I knew that. She was going to make us work for every inch of surrender, every moment of submission, every reluctant admission that she wanted this as much as we did.
I couldn't wait.
"Rest," I told her softly. "Tomorrow, everything changes."
Then I closed the door and walked away, already counting down the hours until she broke.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AVA
I woke up burning.
Not the slow simmer I'd been fighting for days, this was different. This was a wildfire raging through my veins, consuming everything in its path. My skin felt too tight, like it belonged to someone else. Every nerve ending was screaming, hypersensitive to the sheets beneath me, the air around me, the soft fabric of the shirt I'd fallen asleep clutching.
Ethan's shirt. Cedar and books and ozone.
I threw it across the room with a strangled cry, then immediately wanted it back.
What was happening to me?
I knew, of course. I'd known since the moment Ethan told me what they'd done to my suppressants. Knowing and experiencing were two very different things, and nothing, not my clinical training, not the horror stories I'd heard from other Omegas, not the desperate research I'd done at fifteen when I first presented, had prepared me for this.
My body was on fire. My mind was drowning. Somewhere in between, the last shreds of my resistance were being burned away. I stumbled out of the nest, my legs shaking so badly I had to grab the bedpost to stay upright. The room spun around me. Too hot. I was too hot. I yanked at my clothes—a sleep shirt and shorts they'd provided, soft cotton that had felt fine yesterday but now felt like sandpaper against my skin.
The shirt came off first. Then the shorts. Then the underwear, soaked through with slick I couldn't control. I stood there naked, gasping, trying to cool down. It didn't help. Nothing helped. The heat was coming from inside me, from some primal furnace that had been banked for six years and was now roaring back to life with a vengeance.
"Okay," I whispered to myself, pressing my palms against my eyes. "Okay. You can do this. You've survived worse. You can survive this."
Had I survived worse? I couldn't remember, couldn't think. My brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton, every thought sluggish and fuzzy around the edges. The only thing that came through clearly was the need. The need for touch. For skin. For Alpha.
No.
I forced myself to move. One foot in front of the other, across the heated floors—too warm now, everything was too warm—to the bathroom. Cold water. That would help. It had to help. The shower was one of those fancy rainfall types, with multiple heads and a digital temperature control. I jabbed at the buttons until water started falling, then stepped under the spray without waiting for it to warm up.
Ice cold. Perfect.
I gasped at the shock of it, my whole body clenching. For about thirty seconds, it worked. The cold cut through the fever,cleared my head, made me feel almost human again. Then the heat came roaring back, twice as strong as before.
I slid down the shower wall until I was sitting on the tile floor, cold water beating down on me, and I cried. Not the quiet tears I'd been fighting for days, great, wracking sobs that tore out of my chest and echoed off the bathroom walls. I cried for the life they'd stolen. For the body that was betraying me. For the future I could see stretching out ahead of me, every choice taken away, every path leading back to four men who'd decided I belonged to them before I'd even hit puberty.
I cried until there was nothing left. Until I was empty and hollow and shaking with cold that couldn't touch the fire inside me. Then I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a towel, and went back to face my cage.
The nest was waiting. It had grown again overnight, I didn't remember doing it, but I must have, because there were more blankets now, more pillows, the walls higher and thicker than before. And the scents...
God, the scents.
Mason's honey-sunshine warmth was everywhere, embedded in the cashmere throw I couldn't stop reaching for. Ethan's cedar-and-ozone clung to the shirt I'd thrown across the room, calling to me even from a distance. There were new additions too, a black t-shirt that smelled like pine and woodsmoke and bitter cold, a worn t-shirt that carried notes of dark chocolate and whiskey and something spicy I couldn't name.
Caleb and Leo. I'd added Caleb and Leo to my nest.
When? How? I didn't remember taking anything of theirs. Didn't remember them coming into my room. But the evidence was right there, woven into the fabric of the cocoon my traitorous body had built. I should throw them out. All of it. Stripthe bed down to the bare mattress and refuse to nest, refuse to prepare, refuse to give my body what it was screaming for.
Instead, I crawled inside. The relief was immediate and devastating. Surrounded by softness, by warmth, by the mingled scents of four Alphas my hindbrain had apparently decided were mine, the fire banked to something almost manageable. Still there. Still burning. But not consuming me alive.
I curled into a ball at the center of the nest, pulled the cashmere throw over my head, and tried to pretend I wasn't falling apart. A knock at the door. I didn't answer.
"Ava." Mason's voice, gentle as always. "I'm coming in."
