I wake up feeling like hammered shit.
My head is pounding and my mouth tastes like something died in it. Every muscle in my body aches like I went ten rounds with a freight train and lost.
Post-rut.
I know the feeling. I've had enough of them to recognize the specific brand of exhaustion that comes after days of biology hijacking your brain and body.
But this one feels different. Heavier… like I swallowed lead and it moved into my chest and decided to stay.
I force my eyes open. The room swims into focus slowly. The unfamiliar ceiling and walls.
Wait.
No.
Familiar.
My room.
I'm in my own bed. The one I haven't slept in for a while because I’ve been too wrapped up in Marie to leave hers. The blue comforter I picked out three years ago is tangled around my legs. The dresser with the chipped corner from when Eli and I tried to move it without help sits against the far wall.
Alone.
I'm alone.
The sheets smell like me and sweat and the faint ghost of citrus that's been my scent since I presented. No jasmine and vanilla cream. No Marie.
Her heat must have broken and I must have crawled my pathetic ass back to my room.
I sit up slowly. The world tilts and my stomach lurches. I press my palms against my eyes and wait for my brain to come back online.
It takes longer than it should.
Fragments surface through the fog.
Marie's heat. Days of it. How many days? Three? Four? More? Time stopped meaning anything after the first twelve hours.
Her scent was everywhere. Filling the room, my lungs, and every thought in my brain until there was nothing else.
Her body under mine, the biological pull so strong I couldn't think past it. Her heat amplified everything. I couldn't question it. Couldn't do anything except respond to the omega in heat who needed an alpha and I was an alpha and that's what alphas do.
Ragon ordered us to stay even when we surfaced long enough to mention Vee. He wanted us to stay and take care of Marie, despite what she'd done. Despite how she'd lied.
Drake, stay with her. She needs you.
Drake, don't leave. The heat isn't done.
Drake, one more round. She's asking for you. We'll get to Vee later, I swear. We'll fix it.
I did everything he said. Everything she needed. Everything my biology screamed at me to do.
Ragon used his alpha bark. Even when we went for supplies, he’d bark that we had to return right away. Told us Vee was fine, she wasn't in heat, Marie was. Vee could go a few days without attention.
Hell, she'd already been going months without it.
The video footage plays out again in my head.
The zoo footage.
