At least the first piece of it.
Despite the exhaustion and the heat still clawing at me, that admission gave me my first real breath in years. “Jay…”
“I’m here,” he said as if he needed to reassure me. Maybe he did.
“I really don’t know how to do this.”
“This?” At his prompting, I opened my eyes to look at him again.
“This.” I nodded to him, then looked up at Roan and found his eyes open and focused on me. The realization struck all the air from my lungs in a visceral blow as the bloom of heat inside me expanded to a torrent of fire.
Fuck…How am I going to deal with this?
Withthem.
Chapter
Eighteen
ROAN
Iwoke slowly.
Not because I was tired—but because I didn’twantto wake.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, the weight in my chest wasn’t crushing. The room was quiet. Warm. My body was heavy, arms wrapped around the solid heat of a blanket-wrapped Wren, her weight pressed just enough against mine to anchor me. I could still feel the echo of her restlessness from earlier, the way she’d shifted in her sleep—how even unconscious, she seemed to seek me out.
And I had held the line.
Hadn't touched skin. Hadn’t let myself give in, even when every instinct screamed for contact, scent,closeness. I’d stayed exactly where I needed to be.
Until now.
Because now—now her voice was cutting through the haze of sleep, low and raw and husky with disuse and heat, and every cell in my body responded to it like a shot of lightning to the spine.
I didn’t move. Kept my breathing even. Eyes closed.
But inside, my awareness snapped into brutal clarity.
She was speaking to Jay. Her voice was quiet, but the acoustics of the room—plus the heightened edge of my senses—let me hear every word.
“I was twenty when it started to… manifest.”
The sound of her voice. That tone. Thetruthin it. It did things to me I wasn’t proud of.
I gritted my teeth, fisted my restraint tighter. Tried not to focus on the curve of her body wrapped in my arms. Tried not to breathe too deeply—her scent was still thick in the air, impossibly sweet, persistent,dangerous.
I didn’twantto hear her confession. But I couldn’t turn away from it either.
“I’d spent my whole life thinking I was a beta. Hell, so did everyone else. My tests always came back inconclusive. Then one day, it wasn’t inconclusive anymore.”
My fists curled tighter, careful not to shift even a millimeter against her back. Her voice—gods, her voice—was breaking in all the wrong places.
I could feel the words vibrating in her chest against my arm.
“I was working for a company that didn’t tolerate… complications. Female employees were fine. Betas, even better. But omegas? Liability. Distraction. Weak link. There wasn’t a place for one on a security team, and I’d just fought my way into mine.”
A muscle jumped in my jaw.Complication.Weak link.
