Page 35 of Omega’s Forward

The wanting isn’t even the worst of it. There’s another instinct under it with no sex in it at all: be in that room, hold water to his mouth. He’s hurting, alone, in a strange house in a country he didn’t choose, on the worst night to be alone, and the only person within reach is the one he least wants to see.

Around four I think about calling Sun. Emergency separation, medical grounds — get him somewhere with professionals and no me in the walls. I get as far as the contact screen.

There is no chance they’d agree. They are the people who put us in this box. I put the phone down.

At some point I sleep, face down on the couch, and dream about nothing I’d repeat.

Gray light. The house has gone quiet. My first thought is the cooler, so I go up, quiet on the stairs, and there it is outside his door, exactly where I left it. Untouched. He’d rather dehydrate than open a door I might be behind.

JP shows up at nine.

I forgot. That’s the honest truth of it. The plan was Linus, the leadership group doing staggered visits so we don’t blow past the two-visitor rule, and JP swinging by to collect me. We’d hoped that my little bust-up wasn’t big enough news for them to stay all night or bother coming back in the morning.

I remember all of this the moment that he knocks, far too late to do anything about how the house smells.

He’s got a coffee in each hand and his collar up against the cold, and he’s already talking as the door swings. “Okay, so parking at the hospital is a disaster, we sh—”

He stops. Mid-word, mid-step, one foot on the threshold.

I watch it happen. The nostrils. The blink. The slow look from me to the stairs and back to me, his face working through different theories before it lands on the right one.

JP has stood next to me in a locker room for years and he was ten feet away when the new owner shook my hand in front of the whole team.

“Brody.” He says it very carefully. “Why does your house smell like Everett Rourke?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Why does your house smell like Everett Rourke in—” his voice drops to a hiss anyway, “—in heat?”

There’s no play here. I had all night to come up with a story but I was kind of…distracted.

So I pull him inside, shut the door, and give him the truth. “We’re matched. Prime match. It came back ninety-eight percent. The Bureau’s had us in mandatory cohabitation since last week.”

JP sets the coffees down slow. “Fuck,” he says.

“I know.”

“That’s why you wouldn’t let me in last week. That’s why—” He points at me with his whole hand. “I knew I smelled something on your gear.”

“JP. Listen to me.” I haven’t begged for anything since I was a rookie, and it comes out of me now without a fight. “You can’t tell anyone. Not the boys, not Sacco, not your mother.”

JP looks at me for a long moment. Whatever he’s hunting for in my face, he finds it, and it settles him. “Okay,” he says. Simple as that. “Okay. I promise. Nobody hears it from me.”

The relief nearly takes my knees out. “Thank you.”

“I’ll cover for you. Hand’s flaring up, doctor says rest it, you’re keeping your head down until the hearing. Nobody’ll question any of that.” He picks his coffee back up and pushes the other one into my hand. “Linus — I’ll tell him his captain says heal fast and stop admiring his own passes with his head down.”

“People are going to notice, JP. Him and me, gone at the same time. Somebody in that room is going to put it together.”

“Nobody is putting anything together.” He says it flat, goalie-certain. “The boys think Rourke’s gone back to London, or he’s hiding from us, and either way they’re glad. And you’re suspended, which as far as the room is concerned means you’re at home punching a heavy bag and feeling sorry for yourself. Nobody is looking for either of you.”

He gets to the door and stops with his hand on it, and I brace for the joke. “Ninety-eight, eh?” A shake of the head, half a smile, then he leaves me to it.

I watch his car out of sight. The relief lasts about as long as the driveway. Because covered or not, there are days more of this — heats run three to five days, and we’re not one full day in — and I barely survived the night.

I don’t know how any alpha can handle a week of being a gentleman about this. I genuinely don’t know.

Then my phone chimes.