"You've handled heats? Whose heats?"
"Each other's ruts." The elevator opens onto the parking garage. "Ruts are the Alpha equivalent. They're not identical but they're close enough that we understand the mechanics."
He lets out a shaky laugh against my shirt. "You make it sound like we're changing a tire."
"The hard part is trusting your body enough to let it happen without fighting it."
"My whole life has been about fighting it."
"I know." I open the car door for him and he slides into the back seat. "That's what we're here for."
Dominic pulls the car out of the garage and onto the freeway heading downtown. Mattaniah stretches across the back seat with his head on the duffel bag full of nest items, his eyes closed, his hand reaching forward between the seats until his fingers find mine on the center console. His grip is tight and his palm is damp.
I hold his hand and watch the city lights blur past the window, running through the apartment prep list for the fourth time. The list cycles through my head on repeat: sheets, water, protein bars, electrolyte packets, the medical kit with fever reducers, towels.
"Amos." Dominic's voice is low enough that Mattaniah might not hear it from the back seat. "What about the forensic data and the board presentation?"
"Everything is backed up on three drives, two in the office safe and one in the apartment." I squeeze Mattaniah's fingers. "Father can't touch it."
"If he moves while we're gone..."
"He won't move without us there to challenge him. He'll wait." I turn my head enough to see Dominic's profile against the passing streetlights. "Father is a predator, Dom. Predators don't strike when the prey is out of reach. They wait until it comes back."
Mattaniah
Theapartmentdoorisbarely open when a spike hits. Dominic is still turning the key and Amos is behind me carrying the duffel bag when my body folds in half in the doorway. The cramp rips through my abdomen so hard my knees buckle. The only reason I don't hit the floor is Dominic's arm catching me around the waist.
"Inside." Dominic hauls me through the door and Amos follows, kicking it shut behind us. The apartment is dark and smells like cleaning products, nothing like the nest, and the absence of their scent makes the spike dig deeper.
"Bedroom's down the hall," Amos says, already moving past us.
"He's not going to make it to the bedroom." Dominic lowers me to the kitchen floor, the tile cold against my back through the sweatpants but I don't care because another wave is cresting and my hips are lifting off the ground chasing contact that isn't there.
Amos drops the duffel bag and crouches beside us. His hand finds my forehead and his thumb pulls my eyelid up, checking my pupils.
"His temperature is spiking." Amos' voice is steady. "This one is worse than any of the others. We need to break it before it compounds."
Dominic doesn't wait for the rest of the assessment. He strips my sweatpants off with one pull, the saturated panties coming with them, and the cold air on my overheated skin makes me gasp. His mouth finds my neck as his teeth scrape the spot below my ear. His hand pushes my thighs apart, fingers sliding through the slick that has pooled on the tile beneath me.
"Dominic, please." My hands grab the front of his shirt because his fingers are inside me but they're not enough and the cramp is building toward something that feels like it might actually kill me. "Please, I need more, I can't..."
He unzips his pants and pushes inside me on the kitchen floor of an apartment I've never been in before, and the stretch of him filling me pulls a cry from my throat that bounces off unfamiliar walls. The tile is hard and cold beneath my shoulder blades and his belt buckle scrapes my inner thigh where his pants are shoved down just far enough.
It's exactly what my body needs.
Amos positions himself behind my head and lifts it into his lap. His hands cradle my skull so the tile doesn't crack against my scalp with each of Dominic's thrusts. His fingers card through my hair and his thumbs trace my temples while Dominic drives into me.
"Harder." My legs wrap around Dominic's waist and pull him deeper. "Please, harder, I need it to stop hurting."
His hips snap forward with enough force that my body slides on the tile and Amos' hands on my head are the only thing keeping me from hitting the cabinets. The cramp starts to dissolve under the pressure of him inside me, each thrust replacing the pain with a pleasure so sharp it makes my vision swim.
My hands find Dominic's forearms and grip hard enough to leave marks. His face is above mine, his teeth bared, his eyes tracking every shift in my expression. He's not just fucking me. His gaze moves across my face, checking for something.
The pleasure builds in layers, Dominic's cock hitting the spot that makes my back arch off the tile while Amos' fingers stay steady in my hair. The combined scent of both of them is starting to fill this strange apartment. The spike's frantic edge dissolves as the pressure in my gut tightens. The sounds coming out of my mouth get softer and less coherent.
Then the softness starts pulling me somewhere else.
The edges of the kitchen blur. Amos' fingers in my hair feel very far away and Dominic's face above me goes slightly out of focus. My body is still clenching around Dominic, still arching into each thrust, but the conscious part of me is sinking. The warmth pulls me down into that quiet place where nothing hurts.
