“Wait.”
Oakley’s voice.
The single word cuts through the sound of running water with the surgical precision of someone who has heard something that doesn’t belong in a casual statement and is isolating it for examination.
“What do you mean, ‘don’t get to fuck you whenever’?”
I close the tap.
The silence that follows is immediate and total—the apartment’s ambient sounds collapsing into a void that makes the drip of water from the faucet into the sink sound like gunshots.
I turn around.
Three faces. Three expressions. Identical in their intensity, differentiated only by the specific variety of tension each man carries—Roman’s jaw locked, the temple vein visible; Alaric’s stillness deepened into something glacial; Oakley’s easy warmth replaced by a focus so sharp it looks like it could cut glass.
Stern.
All three of them, stern.
I grab the towel from the counter and begin drying my hands, the motion providing the anchor of normalcy that this conversation apparently requires.
“You know,” I say, and my voice is level because my voice is always level when I’m discussing things that other people consider significant and I consider environmental. “That’s why most packs are mad at Omegas right now. The suppressants. Without our heats, the Alphas don’t get to fuck us for those seventy-two to ninety-six hours. Don’t get to do whatever they want during the cycle.”
I fold the towel.
Set it on the counter.
“So that’s probably why they’re mad at me. It’s been a couple of months since I decided to stop having heats. Can’t really blame them for being frustrated when the whole point of a pack is biological access and I removed the access.”
The whole point of a pack is biological access.
I said that like it’s a fact.
Because it is a fact.
Isn’t it?
Nobody answers.
The silence in the apartment is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard—louder than the station fire must have been, louder than Roman’s cursing or Alaric’s measured observations or Oakley’s easy laughter. It’s the kind of silence that has texture, that has weight, that presses against the walls of a four-hundred-square-foot apartment and makes the space feel even smaller.
I frown.
“What?”
The question is directed at the collective, at the three-headed silence that is staring at me with expressions I can’t decode because they don’t match any of the responses I’ve been trained to expect. Not agreement. Not dismissal. Notthe nodding acknowledgment that accompanies information everyone already knew.
Something else.
Oakley speaks.
Quietly.
So quietly that the word barely disturbs the air between us, as if the question he’s about to ask is made of something fragile that might shatter if delivered with too much force.
“Hazel…did you not want to have sex with them?”
The question enters my brain and doesn’t find a place to land.
