“She didn’tsayanything,” Rhett shot back. “That’s the problem.”
Jay’s head turned slightly toward me, a quiet warning in his eyes. He could feel it too, that edge creeping in under Rhett’s words, the kind that carried scent, power, challenge.
“Back off,” I said quietly. “You start digging without her permission, you’ll make things worse.”
“Worse than her disappearing?” Rhett’s laugh was sharp, disbelieving. “You really think she’d vanish like that without a damn reason?”
“I think it’s her call.”
“And I think,” Rhett said, stepping right up into my space, “you’re scared to admit what we both know.”
Jay murmured, “Rhett—” but it was too late.
Rhett’s smile turned wolfish. “What if she’s an omega?”
The words hit like a puck to the sternum.
My jaw locked. “What?”
He didn’t stop. “What if that’s why she left? What if she’s in heat right now—alone, trying to keep it together, because she didn’t want any of us to find out?”
My pulse roared in my ears.
No.
No, that wasn’t—she wasn’t?—
But every memory slid into place like dominoes lining up for the fall.
The calm composure that always felt a little too deliberate. The way she controlled her scent — or rather, the nearabsenceof one. The edge to her voice when someone got too close. Her rigid boundaries, the refusal to ever let any of us step beyond that professional line.
And the one time, two years ago, when she’d vanished for a week mid-season, claiming the flu.
No one questioned it.
God help me, I’d dropped off soup at her building and left it on her doorstep because she wouldn’t answer the door.
Her voice, when she called to thank me later, had sounded… frayed.
Breathless.
Sweet.
The realization rolled through me slow and hard and primal.
If she was an omega?—
If she was in heat?—
Every instinct I’d spent years mastering suddenly wanted to claw free.
Rhett saw it. The faint widening of his grin said he did.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “You feel it too, don’t you?”
My hand flexed at my side. “Watch yourself, Navarro.”
“Why? Because I said what you’re thinking?”
