Page 21 of The Heat of Us

My head rifled through a list of symptoms, trying to diagnose myself.

Feverish, skin tight, joint and muscle pain.

I was either about to come down with a flu or I was an omega going into heat.

Ok, so it was probably option A. But god, if this is what Juno felt like on a regular basis then I felt sorry for my sister. Sure, she was the human embodiment of a mosquito to me sometimes but that didn’t mean I wasn’t sympathetic.

There was also a scent I kept picking up traces of. As a beta, I wasn’t used to scents being distracting or affecting me. They were more like muted air fresheners I would pick up on as I went about my day.

But this particular one — something sweet, fruity and floral all in one — was like a nail being hammered into my skull.

Get it together, Ben. You’re here to celebrate with Juno. Focus on that.

If someone had asked me if I had a sister five years ago I would’ve said no.

Shameful. It was fucking shameful and I hated any reminder of it.

I thought Juno had abandoned our family and our financial struggles for an affluent pack of alphas.

In reality she had been forcibly bonded, going through an unimaginable hell. Handed over by our own father to settle a gambling debt when he discovered she wasn’t his biological daughter.

None of my excuses were good enough. It didn’t matter how demanding my course load at med school was. How busy I was because my parents pressured me to keep my part-time job to help with household expenses. Or the way they had participated in crafting a lie about Juno’s supposedly happy life.

I would always live with the guilt of letting her down.

“Have you received your residency offers for next year?”

I blinked hard to try and clear the fog overtaking my brain. I was in the middle of making small talk with Juno’s unnerving as fuck alpha Isaac and was certain both of us would much rather be elsewhere. His tone was friendly enough but there was a flatness to his stare that conveyed volumes.

“Er, yes I have actually.” I cleared my throat and massaged the back of my neck, trying to loosen the stiff muscle. “I start at St. Elizabeth’s soon. I’ve been looking for a place to rent in the city.”

“So you’ll be around for Juno more often.”

I gave the prime alpha a sidelong look. “I can’t tell if that makes you pleased or annoyed.”

“That’s because I haven’t decided yet, Ben.”

That was fair. I wouldn’t like me very much if I was him either.

Before I could say something dumb that would probably ruin my chances of ever gaining Isaac’s approval, one of his dads appeared and stole him away to be a fourth for mahjong. I took a deep breath, relieved.

There it was again. That fucking scent.

I spun around, eyes darting madly trying to track down the elusive source. I finally landed on a small group of women chatting in the corner. There was something inescapable and haunting about one of them. Even though all I could glimpse was a curtain of silky, long dark hair.

My eyes tracked downward. Curvescurvescurvescurvescurves.

Fuck.

I found myself searching through the crowd for my sister, sprinting toward her when I spotted her near the buffet table. I grabbed her by the elbow, only half-hearing her protests about being taken away from food or something.

“You’ll live,” I cut through her yammering. “Hey, those are your friends from the Omega Village, aren’t they? Who’s the taller one with long hair?”

The one that makes me feel like no one else exists in this room.

Juno and I looked over just as she turned slightly. I got my first look at her side profile and a flash of eyes so alluring I wondered if she was descended from the deadly sirens of legend.

“Ew, Ben.”

---