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“I’ve never seen Mr. Hardwick that nervous.”
“What does he have to be nervous about?” Avery asked.
“Dunno… but that was definitely weird.” Melvin glanced at his watch. “Speaking of lunch, do you want to go grab something in the caf? The food’s pretty edible there… and free.”
“Are we really in a spot where we can stop?”
Melvin glanced around the half-sorted piles. “They screwed this up in a week. We’re not going to fix it in a day.” Melvin grinned. “We’ve gotta eat. I’m not going hungry for this place.”
Avery smiled. A break would give him a chance to clean up a little. “Sure… I’ve gotta hit the head first.”
“Same. This morning’s coffee is screaming in my bladder.”
Avery followed Melvin out of their large cubicle. He pointed out a few of the folks who also worked in their department. While not all the positions exactly fell under accounting, per se—each position there was a part of the finance department as a whole, from an actuary to brokers, cost analysts to auditors, bookkeepers to payroll, accounts payable to them, accounts receivable—and everyone in between.
“Thanks for helping me out today. I felt like Mr. Hardwick just tossed me into the deep end and waited to see if I’d drown.”
“Like I said, that’s his management style. He did the same thing to me. Don’t take it personally.”
Avery smiled, sensing his phone vibrating. As they entered the restroom, he slipped the phone from his pocket and saw a text on his screen.
From Professor Conover.
Call me ASAP.
Avery dialed his mentor’s number and lifted the phone to his ear.
No hello.“Are you somewhere safe? Can you talk?”
“Not exactly,” Avery replied.
Conover sighed. “I was finally able to get ahold of my contact in the Western Provinces. I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner—we played phone tag for a while. He told me that every year or two, you’ll need to go off meds completely and have a heat. NoHeatex, noHeat Repress. Nothing. Once you have that single heat, your body will reset and you can go back on the meds for another year or two.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” He had another heat coming in a few short weeks.
“I can’t answer that for you. I can only tell you what I was told. He also said that if you take too long before cycling off, you could go into something that’s called a wild heat.”
“What’s that?”
“Something akin to a contact heat from the sounds of it… at any time, even before or after the full moon.Anyalpha could trigger it.”
A contact heat was something some omegas experienced when meeting their alpha for the first time. No matter where in their heat cycle they were, they’d spontaneously go into heat. Luckily, he hadn’t faced that with Wilder. Perhaps the drugs helped there…
But they were fading fast.
“Nomeds?” Avery had never experienced a full heat. He wasn’t sure he’d manage.
“Nothing,” Conover said. “It’s just the one heat. Then he said you should be right as rain.”
Avery dropped his head back, shaking it. “Easy for you to say.” Hell, he hadn’t been through one withnomeds to help ease his pain. He’d startedHeat Represson his very first heat and used it up until Conover had introduced him toHeatex.
“Well, thereisanother option,” Conover said. “But trust me. It’s worse.”
“What’s that?”
“Get pregnant. Then you get a year or two off the meds.”
“No, thank you,” Avery murmured. “I wish I’d known about this sooner.” He could’ve delayed starting his job and waited out the heat.
