He poured the batter into the pan. Thick, dark, with that dense sheen of melted chocolate and butter. He smoothed the surface with a spatula and raised the cookware to eye level to check that it was level.
And then he felt it.
It wasn’t dizziness. It was heat. An internal pulse that began at the base of his skull and traveled down his spine like liquid mercury. He blinked. He grabbed the edge of the counter with his free hand and breathed through his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Marta looked at him, frowning.
“Yeah. Just… Yeah.”
Ren set the pan down on the countertop. He rested both hands on the marble and closed his eyes. The heat wouldn’t go away. It was throbbing. It pulsed beneath his skin with the rhythm of a second heart that shouldn’t be there.
Fever. He’d had that sensation for a couple of days. He’d attributed it to stress, to being cooped up, to sleepless nights. But it wasn’t stress.
No.
He opened his eyes. He looked at his hands, covered in flour, and the slight tremor running through his fingers.
How many days had it been since he’d taken his suppressants? He’d lost count. Since before the auction. At the casino, they’d taken them away along with his clothes, his dignity, and his name. And he hadn’t asked for them here because his head was so preoccupied with Brody, the bond, the rage, and the confusion that he hadn’t stopped to think about the most basic need for an omega.
Idiot. You’re a complete idiot.
Ren knew his cycle. He’d tamed it over the years with regular doses of suppressants that crushed every symptom before it could bloom. He’d been so effective at erasing it from his life that he’d forgotten the signs. The low, constant fever. His skin’s sensitivity. The way certain smells hit him amplified, as if someone had turned up the volume on the world.
“Marta.”
“Hmm?”
“One hundred eighty degrees. Thirty-five minutes. If you stick a toothpick in and it comes out clean, it’s done.”
“I know how to bake a cake, kid.”
Ren grabbed the pan and slid it into the oven. The blast of heat when he opened the door hit his face and sent a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. He closed it. He wiped his hands on his apron and hung it on the hook next to the fridge.
“I have to find Brody.”
Marta didn’t ask why. She gave him a nod that was both a dismissal and an approval, and went back to her onions.
Ren left the kitchen and walked down the long hallway that connected to the main wing of the house. His bare feet on the wooden floor. Each step amplified the sensation. It wasn’t pain yet, but the promise of it.
He passed the library. The door was open, and the smell of old books hit him with absurd clarity: paper, dust, dried glue, the wood of the oak bookshelf. Every molecule of air spoke to him. Ren quickened his pace.
Brody’s office was at the end of the east hallway, behind a double door that was always closed. Ren had seen it from a distance but had never gone inside. Although no one had explicitly forbiddenhim, something about that door marked a territory that wasn’t his.
Now he didn’t care about the territory.
He knocked. Two sharp knocks with his knuckles. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck and soaked the collar of his t-shirt.
“Come in.”
Ren turned the doorknob.
And the world tilted.
Brody’s scent hit him like a wall. It wasn’t subtle or gradual. It was a shock. Raisins. Walnuts. Dark caramel. Burnt wood. The concentration of the scent in that enclosed space where Brody had been working for hours was dense, so saturated that Ren felt it enter through his nose, through his mouth, through his skin, through every open pore of his feverish body.
His knees buckled.
There was no transition. One second he was standing in the doorway, and the next he was on the floor with his palms flat on the floorboards and his head hanging between his shoulders. The heat that until then had been a warning turned into a fire. It coursed through his belly, down his thighs, up his chest to his throat. Every nerve ending in his body ignited at once.
