Page 25 of The Heat of Us

She turned and ran. Everything in me screamed at me to follow.

Not just follow but to chase. Subdue.

Pinning her to the ground before—

“What the fuck is happening to me?”

I collapsed against the wall, trying to clear my head of the rabid impulses bombarding me out of nowhere. My body felt coiled, loaded, ready to burst.

And to my great humiliation, nothing more so than my fucking dick.

I reached down, trying to adjust myself into some semblance of decency. My fingers stilled when I felt an unfamiliar rounded muscle at the base of my shaft and everything crystalised for me in a great rush.

I wasn’t a beta at all.

I was an alpha. A newly awakened, late-presenting alpha.

And the omega who just ran away from me was mine.

8

HAZEL

“How are you going this month, Hazel?”

I blinked away from the pointless bowl of smoothly polished rocks that sat on the table between me and my therapist. My new therapist. How many had I gone through now? Due to the mental aspect required to dissolve bonds, ongoing therapy was a mandatory part of the treatment. Even more so for those of us who had been in the trials to properly monitor our progress long-term.

Kerry probably received a file on me that may as well have been a giant printout of a middle finger. I gave her my best optimistic smile, fully aware I probably looked like a scarecrow.

“Good. Thank you.”

To her credit, Kerry did not scoff and call bullshit. Instead, she simply smiled back. “Fantastic. What was good about it?”

What was good?

Well, Ryder and I were making money hand over fist with our collabs. I wish I could say I was getting better at separating the post-knotting intimacy with the work we were doing but my omega was very happy to lie curled up with him for an extended amount of time.

I hit a new personal best with my deadlifts because my sleep was the shittiest it had ever been.

And I had my first kiss with someone outside of heat services and Ryder Hard since Adrian. I certainly talked a big game but that’s all it was. Talk.

My job certainly helped cement the illusion.

I had been drawn to Ben immediately. He was a bit of an enigma, a mass of contradictions. Tall but never felt like he was crowding or overwhelming me. Seriousness in his kind, soulful brown eyes. His slightly nervous bearing had been cute but his more vulnerable moments made him gorgeous. Nothing about his perfect golden skin (seriously, did he have a 12-step Korean skincare routine) or his stubbled black hair was intimidating. But I could sense something darker lurked beneath waiting to devour me.

He was supposed to be safe. A beta. With the fun, slightly taboo element of being my best friend’s brother.

Just a harmless kiss at a party, right?

I shouldn’t have ignored all the warning signs.

Because he went and utterly fucked it all up by awakening into my scent matched alpha.

No.

Not my scent matched alpha, I mentally corrected myself for the hundredth time. It had felt like that, but it couldn’t be that.

Ben was just a late-presenting alpha who I had the unfortunate coincidence of being around when he awakened.

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