Page 128 of Run Wild Omega

How did I not put it together? How did I stand there with my nose against her pulse and not recognize the chemical shift that was already happening? I’ve been a medic for eight years. I’ve treated Omegas in distress. I know what preheat smells like, what the early stages feel like on the air.

But I was too busy being jealous. Too busy being hungry. Too busy marking her to notice that her body was already responding to the bond in ways none of us anticipated.

“We should have seen this,” I say from the back seat. “All of us. Three of us, constant contact, scenting rotations. We flooded her system.”

Miles turns to look at me. “We followed the security protocol.”

“The security protocol didn’t account for this.”

“No,” he admits. “It didn’t.”

Dylan pulls into the Hartwell driveway. There’s a fine dusting of snow on the windshield, the flakes tiny and dry, the kind that don’t stick but make everything look like it’s been sprinkled with powdered sugar. Margaret’s car is gone. Henry’s truck is gone. The house is dark except for a faint glow in the upstairs window.

We climb out. The cold hits me like a wall, but it doesn’t touch the heat that’s been coiling in my gut since I read Tess’s text. I walk up the front steps, Miles and Dylan behind me, and knock.

The door opens.

It’s not Margaret.

Tess is standing in the doorway, and the sight of her knocks the air right out of my chest.

She’s wearing pajama shorts. Tiny ones, navy blue with white polka dots, riding high on her thighs. A matching tank top, thin cotton, the kind that clings. Her hair is down, tangled, falling over her bare shoulders, and her feet are bare on the cold hardwood. No crutches. She’s holding the doorframe for balance, her cast angled slightly behind her.

And her scent.

God, her scent.

It hits me like a train. Not apples anymore, not just apples. This is something else entirely. Ripe, overwhelming, sweet and thick and drenched in a biological signal that screams fertility and availability and mine. It pours out of the open door in a wave that makes my mouth water and my cock harden in the space of a single heartbeat.

She’s not in preheat. Preheat has a restraint to it, a building quality, a gradual ramp. This is full. This is active. This is her body in the throes of a biological event that has nothing to do with want and everything to do with need.

“Jesus Christ,” Dylan breathes behind me.

Miles doesn’t say anything. He just goes pale.

“Hey,” Tess says, and her voice is thin, thready, cracks on the single syllable. Her pupils are blown wide, her skin flushed from her hairline to the swell of her chest above the tank top’s neckline. A sheen of sweat glistens on her collarbones. “I didn’t know who else to⁠—”

“Come on,” I say, stepping forward. “Let’s get you inside.”

We move through the door. I guide her back into the living room, my hand on the small of her back. The contact makes her flinch, not from pain but sensitivity, her nerve endings so raw that even the lightest pressure makes her gasp.

“Where are your parents?” Miles asks, scanning the house.

“The café,” she manages. “They left at six.”

“So you’re alone?”

“Yes. I called Mrs. Lacey last night. Mara’s covering the morning shift.”

The living room smells like her. It’s saturated. Every cushion, every curtain, every surface is steeped in the thick, honeyed scent of her heat. Being in this room is like breathing her in with every lungful, and my biology is screaming at me to respond.

I sit her down on the couch. She curls into the corner, pulling her knees up, the tank top riding up to expose a strip of bare stomach. She’s shaking. Not from cold. From the inside out, her muscles twitching as her body cycles through the early stages of a full heat.

“Tess,” I say, crouching in front of her. I keep my voice level, clinical, the medic voice I’ve used on a hundred patients. “I need you to listen to me. You’re in heat.”

“I can’t be,” she whispers. “It’s not due for two weeks. I track it. I’ve always tracked it.”

“I know. But your body doesn’t care about the calendar right now. You’ve been exposed to three pack scents for almost a week. Constant contact. Scenting. The pheromone load triggered a response. It’s a stress-induced heat.”