“I’m going to find out,” he says quickly.
“Keep me posted,” I say and hang up.
The streetlights smear past, and the city is a blur. My heart is hammering against my ribs with every bit of it.
I’ve never felt like this about an Omega before. Not once in thirty-one years. There have been women, plenty of them, but never one who made my hands shake.
She’s under my skin. The first whiff of her scent in that airport lounge flipped a switch in my body I didn’t know I had, and every single moment with her since has been me discovering what that switch is wired to—my pulse, my cock, my attention, my breath, my sleep, my appetite, my fucking ability to make a decision in under thirty seconds.
I close my eyes at a red light and picture her. Her hair spread out on the pillow. The way her mouth opens when she laughs, the moan she makes when she takes the first sip of coffee.
If that asshole Daniel has laid a single finger on her, I am going to hunt him down and remove every finger slowly. And then I am going to take my time with the rest of him.
The phone buzzes with an incoming call, and my eyes snap open. An unknown number flashes across my screen.
My stomach lurches, and I immediately pick up. “Yeah?”
“Ace,” a woman with a soft, rushed voice answers.“This is Clio.”
“Fuck, Clio, is?—”
“Listen—”
“Is Adelaide with you? Is she okay? Did something?—”
“Hey, hey, hey, big guy,breathe.She’s safe.”
All the air comes out of me at once. I pull the truck over to the curb because my legs don’t entirely work right now. My forehead drops to the steering wheel.
“Thank fucking Christ.”
“Language.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m kidding. Use whatever language you need.”
I sit up. “Okay. Clio. Hi. I’m sorry. I am going to be calmer now. Where is she? I’m coming.”
“Well. Here’s the thing.”
My hands tighten on the wheel. “Go on.”
“So we were going to my place, and we were on the way, and she went into heat.”
“Okay, okay.”
“We’re talking full heat out of nowhere, though I suspect it’s been building for days, but it just arrived. She was in bad shape, Ace. I’m not going to lie to you. Crying, shaking, in a lot of pain.”
I tense all over because we knew her heat was so damn close. “Where is she?”
“I’m getting there. She didn’t want me to bring her to you guys. So I took her to a heat clinic. It’s one I’ve used. She’s got a private suite, a clinic nurse checking on her. She’s safe but alone. And she refused an Alpha on staff, as she’s handling it herself.” Her voice cracks. “She’s not doing great, Ace. In her head. She’s not good, and, well, it’s your damn fault. Okay, I didn’t mean to say that part, but it felt so good.”
“All right, you’re gonna need to explain that.”
Silence.
“Clio.”
