My hand had found its way to myself during this conversation—massaging the base of my shaft where the knot sat swollen and aching, the residual, throbbing aftermath of hours spent with an Omega in heat. Inappropriate, probably. Definitely not the setting for personal maintenance. But the physical reality of a post-heat Alpha’s biology didn’t pause for narrative context, and my body was going to manage its requirements whether or not the timing was socially optimal. Renzo didn’t spare it a glance. Didn’t acknowledge the adjustment. The practiced non-reaction of a man who had lived in a pack long enough to understand that Alpha bodies did what Alpha bodies did, and commenting on it was neither necessary nor invited.
“Why the fuck would she induce heats on purpose?” I asked, genuinely baffled. The question wasn’t rhetorical.Heats were consuming. Debilitating. The kind of biological event that disrupted every other function—athletic, professional, cognitive—for the duration of its cycle. Voluntarilyincreasingtheir frequency was the Omega equivalent of a goaltender deliberately taking slapshots to the mask during practice: technically survivable, but the motivation raised serious questions about the person’s judgment.
“Control.” Renzo’s response was immediate. Simple. The single word carrying the dense, compressed weight of a conclusion he’d arrived at long ago and had refined through years of reflection. “Frequent heats meant frequent dependence. Meant the pack was constantly in caretaker mode. Meantwewere the ones orbitinghercycle instead of the other way around. Our training suffered. Our performance dropped. Kael’s captaincy was compromised because he was managing a pack that was perpetually in heat recovery instead of preparing for competition.”
He met my eyes.
“It helped him momentarily. The immediate biological relief was real. But it’s never good to keep a cunning Omega around for too long.”
I frowned deeper. The assessment was harsh—cunningwas a word that carried weight in designation dynamics, the descriptor reserved for Omegas who weaponized their biology rather than coexisted with it. “What—she was plotting against you?”
Renzo’s smirk returned. Sharper this time. Carrying an edge that could have scored glass.
“Plottingwould be a kind word for someone who was trying to engineer the total destruction of your career, your pack, and your reputation.” He held my gaze with the steady, impenetrable composure of a man who had survived thedemolition attempt and had filed the blueprints for future reference. “But I guess Kael can give you the full debrief on that when he stops being a sulking ass.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Why the hell is he sulking?”
The question left my mouth before I could apply the filter that my sober self would have caught and my post-heat, tequila-residual self had apparently misplaced. The concern embedded in the words was more transparent than I’d intended—a flash of genuine, unguarded interest in Kael Sørensen’s emotional state that I would have preferred to deliver wrapped in approximately three additional layers of indifference.
I have to stop the eye-rolling reflex when it comes to that man. Because the eye-rolling is a mask, and the mask is getting thin, and what’s behind it is a level of caring that I don’t have the bandwidth to examine right now—not with an Omega asleep on the bed and a knot that needs another twenty minutes to fully subside and a man with green hair telling me things about Kael’s past that are rearranging the furniture in my chest.
It’s a dominance thing. The irritation. The impatience. Two Alphas whose designation-level wiring classified each other as competitors before it classified them as anything else, and the friction that proximity produced was the natural, unavoidable consequence of two gravitational fields occupying the same space.
But beneath the friction—in the deeper, quieter, more honest stratum where the things I didn’t say lived—I still fucking cared about him. Still wanted to know why his chest locked up at parties. Still remembered the way his breathing changed in the dark in Stockholm, when the composure he wore like plate armor had been temporarily set aside and the man beneath it had been…
Stop.
Not now. Not here. File it. Come back to it when your knot isn’t throbbing and your diamond isn’t sleeping ten feet away.
Renzo glanced toward the door. The movement was quick, checking—the instinctive, security-sweep glance of a man who had been conditioned to verify the proximity of his captain before discussing his captain’s private business. Satisfied that the hallway was empty, he turned back to me.
His voice dropped.
“Kael’s on rut blockers.”
The sentence landed in my awareness with the clinical, devastating weight of a diagnosis delivered in a language you understood but wished you didn’t.
Rut blockers.
The pharmaceutical intervention designed to suppress the Alpha reproductive cycle—the hormonal mirror of Omega heat suppressants, engineered to reduce the frequency, intensity, and behavioral disruption of rut episodes by modulating testosterone production and pheromone output. Standard medical practice for Alphas whose rut cycles interfered with professional function. Also: a chemical cage. A biological muzzle. The pharmaceutical equivalent of placing a governor on an engine to prevent it from reaching the speeds it was built to achieve.
“Without them,” Renzo continued, his voice maintaining the low, controlled volume of someone sharing information that had been classified until this moment, “it would be a pain in the ass to be around him. He’s been on them for the last two years, and it’s the reason he’s been able to function normally—captain the team, manage the pack, maintain the composure that everyone interprets as natural when it’s actually pharmaceutical.”
He adjusted the washcloth on Octavia’s forehead. Thehabitual, caretaking gesture of a man whose hands needed occupation while his mouth delivered difficult truths.
“But obviously, blockers mean he can’t really enjoy the benefits.” His tone was measured. Careful. Navigating the intimate details of his captain’s biology with the discretion of someone who understood the weight of what he was disclosing. “Takes him ten times longer to climax. The sensitivity is reduced. The drive is there—the blockers don’t eliminate thewant, just the body’s ability torespondto it efficiently. And what Omega has the stamina to work through that kind of timeline?”
What Omega has the stamina.
I had to physically restrain the corners of my mouth from ascending into a grin.
The effort required was considerable. The muscles of my face were receiving a directive from the deep, competitive, knows-exactly-what-he’s-got sector of my brain that was saying, with absolute certainty:the one sleeping on that bed has the stamina. And the determination. And the particular, relentless, I-will-outlast-you-because-I-refuse-to-lose brand of competitive endurance that comes from being a world-class athlete who spent two years rebuilding herself from a hospital bed and has never in her life accepted the word “can’t” as a final answer.
Renzo caught it.
The almost-grin. The suppressed, knowing, challenge-accepted energy that my face was broadcasting despite my efforts to maintain professional neutrality. His dark eyes tracked the micro-expression with the observational precision of a man whose position on the ice—forward, I assumed, given his leaner build and reactive energy—required the ability to read teammates and opponents from across a rink.
“She could probably handle it, huh.” Not a question. A reading. Delivered with the quiet, amused confirmation of someone who had assessed the data and arrived at the same conclusion.
