But mostly, from myself.
I’d gotten in late the night before, half-frozen and fully wired from the drive. The first few hours alone had been easier than I expected—almost peaceful. There’d been no buzzing crowd, no scent-thick locker room, no weight of alpha gazes dragging across my skin. Just trees. Cold. Stillness.
I thought it would help.
I was wrong.
Because now, on day two, my skin itched. Not in the way you scratch and move on—in thebone-deep, nerve-bright, jump-out-of-your-own-bodykind of way. The kind that kept me pacing across the hardwood floor like a caged animal.
I wasn’t in heat yet. I knew what that was. I’dbeenthrough that twice. The first time had been absolutely brutal, and the second had been a misery. Forty-eight hours of hell and eventually it passed. I’d started on the suppressants not long after that second heat.
Despite all these years, I hadn’t forgotten the build-up, the excruciating experience itself, followed by the come down. This wasn’t heat yet.
This was the build-up.
This was the beginning of what my body had been trying to do for years—shove past the drugs I’d force-fed it, rip down the walls I’d built, and flood me with everything I’d spent a decade pretending I didn’t need.
My scent was already different.
I could smell it in the throw blanket I hadn’t meant to curl up in the night before, in the collar of the worn hoodie I’d pulled out of my bag this morning.Not theirs.One of mine. Clean. Neutral.
But it didn’t stay that way.
Everything I touched started to smell likemeagain—and I hated it. Not because I wasn’t used to it, but because it felt…loud.Like I was shouting into the empty cabin, calling out to no one.
The worst part?
I keptanswering myself.
I folded the same towel three times before I was satisfied with the corner. Rearranged the firewood. Sorted the snacks. Stacked the books I’d brought by topic, then by size, then color-coded the spines until I wanted to scream.
This wasn’t nesting.
Not really.
I wasn’tfluffing pillows with purposeor scent-marking surfaces like some omega fantasy story.
I was just trying to feelnormal.
To keep moving before the ache swallowed me whole.
I hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before. Couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, my body kicked. Hot one minute. Cold the next. My jaw ached from clenching. My thighs ached from nothing at all. And my thoughts kept drifting back to the guys.
To Roan, arms crossed, always calculating.
To Jay, too quiet, too perceptive.
To Rhett—smiling like he wasn’t constantly two steps from combusting.
The way they looked at me.
The way I wanted them to look at me again.
No.
I shut the thought down.
Walked to the kitchen. Opened a cabinet I’d already checked twice and stared into it like something new might appear. It didn’t.
