It was relentless. It was messy. It was the most honest thing I had ever been a part of. We were a single organism, feeding off each other, using each other to survive the fire.
When Stephen finally came, gripping Juno’s hair and pulling his head back to bare his throat, Juno collapsed against me one last time.
We stayed on the floor.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
The scent in the room began to change. The sharp, acrid edge of the burnt sugar softened. It became rounder. Warmer. Like caramel cooling on a stove.
Juno took a deep breath. It didn't rattle.
He lifted his head from my lap. He looked exhausted, bruised, and covered in fluids, but his eyes were clear. The golden fire had burned down to embers.
"It’s ebbing," Juno whispered.
He looked around at us, at Mateo wiping his face, at Stephen checking his pulse, at me stroking his hair.
"The wave is done," he said. "At least for now."
He rested his forehead against my knee, closing his eyes. I took a breath and felt the wonder and what I'd just been part of flow through me. Did I really have a pack? Me, a Beta who never thought she was useful for much other than paperwork, had I finally found somewhere I belonged?
TWENTY-SIX
Rowan
For the next forty-eight hours, time dissolved.
The cabin became a pressurized vessel, a closed loop of biology and heavy breathing where the only clock was the rising and falling tide of Juno’s heat. It wasn't linear. It moved in jagged, feverish spikes that demanded everything from us, skin, sweat, hands, weight, followed by sudden, lucid patches where the air would clear just enough to breathe.
I learned the rhythm of it. I learned that Mateo was the bedrock, his endurance infinite, taking the brunt of Juno’s frantic physical need with a stoic, terrifying gentleness. I learned that Stephen was the architect of sensation, knowing exactly when to push and when to hold back to keep Juno from shattering.
And I learned that I wasn't just observing. Typical Beta protocol during a heat is to bring water and stay out of the pheromonal crossfire. But Juno wouldn't let me leave the circle. Even at the peak of a wave, when his eyes were rolled back and he was slick with sweat and desire, his hand would search for mine. If I stepped away, he whined, a broken, high-pitchedsound that bypassed my logic centers and hit me straight in the chest.
So I stayed. I learned to use my hands. I learned that my cooler skin temperature was a balm when he was burning up. I learned that despite being a Beta, I could anchor him just by breathing against his neck.
But the most terrifying part wasn't the sex. It was the work.
Juno insisted on it.
During the lucid valleys, when the fever broke and he lay exhausted on the tangled sheets, he didn't sleep. He demanded the laptop.
"The King interview," he rasped, shivering under three wool blankets, his eyes ringed with dark bruises but bright with manic focus. "The clip is circulating. I need the sentiment analysis on the rebuttal."
"Juno, rest," Mateo growled, handing him a protein shake instead of the computer.
"I can rest when I'm dead or when Vance is bankrupt," Juno snapped, his voice weak but his will ironclad. "Give me the screen, Mateo. If I stop tracking the narrative, the narrative starts tracking me."
He wouldn't back down. So, we worked.
The bed, which I hadn't even realized the cottage had at first, became a war room. Stephen sat at the foot, drafting motions on his tablet. Mateo stood guard by the door, scrolling through security feeds. I sat propped against the headboard, Juno’s head in my lap, reading aloud the rising engagement metrics on theAnchor Protocolwhile I stroked his damp hair.
We operated in a fugue state of intimacy and strategy. One minute, Stephen was helping Juno drink water while I wiped his face; the next, we were debating the legal framing of a class-action lawsuit.
My anger was still there. It sat in my gut, a hard, cold stone. I was furious that they had lied to me, furious that they had managed my reality. But as the hours bled into days, the texture of the anger changed.
I watched Juno fight. I watched him battle a biology he had spent seven years suppressing, his body punishing him for everything he tried to deny, only to drag himself back to the surface to fight a war on two fronts. He was fighting Vance’s machine, and he was fighting a world that would look at him, sweating, needy, weeping with pleasure in the arms of his Alphas, and say he was too unstable to run a consultancy.
He had been fighting this alone for much too long.
