"I don't know. I kept dreaming you'd disappeared. That the heat had been too much and you'd—" He couldn't finish. Just pulled me closer, burying his face in my neck, breathing me in.
"I'm here," I said softly. "I'm not going anywhere."
The others woke slowly, one by one. James with a groan and a muttered curse about his back. Neal with a confused blink and an immediate search for his glasses. Cal with a slow smile that warmed his whole face when he saw me awake and alert.
They looked wrecked. All of them. Dark circles under their eyes, stubble on their jaws, hair in desperate need of washing. They'd given me everything they had for days, and it showed.
But the evidence was undeniable.
The rings.
I saw them clearly now in the morning light. A second ring around each of their pupils, darker than the rest of their irises, perfectly defined. The mark of an Omega-bonded wolf. The thing the council had tried so hard to erase from existence.
"Neal." I sat up carefully, ignoring the protest of my muscles. "You need to document this."
He was already reaching for his bag. "Way ahead of you."
The next hour was a strange mix of clinical examination and intimate aftermath. Neal photographed the bite marks on my skin, measured my temperature, checked my vitals. He documented the rings in each of their eyes, taking close-up photos, making notes in a small leather journal.
"This is unprecedented," he muttered as he worked. "The physiological changes alone... the bond markers... the documented effects on feral stability during the heat..."
"What do you mean, effects on feral stability?" James asked.
Neal looked up from his notes. "I've been monitoring the ferals remotely. The ones at the Healing Center." He pulled out his phone, scrolled to something. "During Lumi's heat, every single one of them showed marked improvement. Reduced aggression. Better control during shifts. Gray actually spoke his first full sentence in weeks."
"Because of me?"
"Because of what you are." Neal's eyes met mine. "Your heat wasn't just about completing the bonds with us. It was broadcasting something—pheromones, maybe, or some kind of energetic signature. Whatever it was, the ferals felt it. And it calmed them."
I thought about the council's fear. About why they'd hunted Omegas to extinction. This was it. This was what they were afraid of—a single wolf who could stabilize entire populations just by existing.
The campus looked the same as we walked up to the Healing Center. Same buildings. Same trees. Same paths I'd walked a hundred times before.
But everything felt different.
I felt different.
I took a deep breath. The air was thick with scents I'd never noticed before—the particular smell of each building, the trails left by students who'd walked these paths. My senses had always been sharper than most, but this was something else entirely. Like someone had turned up the volume on the world.
"You okay?" James asked, appearing at my side.
"Yeah. It's just... a lot."
"It'll take time to adjust." Cole fell into step on my other side. "Your senses will settle eventually. Learn what to filter out."
We walked toward the Healing Center as a group. Five men surrounding me—not protectively, exactly, but present. Pack. The bonds hummed with each step, a constant reminder of what we'd become.
The receptionist's jaw dropped when she saw us. Two nurses in the hallway pressed themselves against the wall as we passed,their eyes wide. A doctor I vaguely recognized actually turned and walked the other direction.
"This is getting ridiculous," James muttered.
"It's fear," Cole said. "They don't know what we are. What she is. They just know something's changed."
We found Rae in her office.
She looked up when we entered, and for a moment, her expression was unreadable. Her eyes swept over the group—taking in the five men with their new rings, the bite marks visible on my neck above my collar, the way we moved together like a single unit.
Then she smiled.
