Page 50 of Heat Hesitation

"Ophelia…"

Her round, ocean-blue eyes narrow, but she flips in her seat, turning the radio loud to drown me out. It's nearly half an hour before we enter South Loop, and she gets him to park outside her old apartment.

"Why are we here?" I ask, climbing out after her.

"I have a routine. I make a few stops. If you're going to add commentary and question everything, feel free to stay behind," she calls over her shoulder and starts walking down the street. We pass the old guy, Waylon, who's got a half-empty 40oz and an upside-down hat a few streets away. Ophelia tosses some cash in his hat, then I do the same, before we continue our trek.

She tells us this is a little earlier in the night than usual because her contact at the heat clinic changed her shifts. The news didn't alarm Ophelia; she said the nurse, Janey, changes shifts pretty often but that she'd normally do the drops later in the evening because that’s when most of her clients are out and about.

Since we're with her, she wants to at least swing by Queenie's to offload most of the pills before calling it a night.

We follow Ophelia, and when we get to the heat clinic, I witness her and Enzo's first real fight. She flat out refuses to allow him into the building. After a few minutes of cajoling, with Janey getting involved, Enzo finally relents.

I lean against the old brick building while he paces, shoving his glasses back up his nose, looking the most ruffled I think I've ever seen him.

"This the first time you've separated since you bonded?" I ask.

He pauses his pacing. "Yes. In public, anyway."

"You know… it's gonna—"

"I'm aware. I know it's going to happen again and more frequently as time passes. It's just… difficult. I find myself attached in a way I never thought possible. I think it's been more than five minutes. We should—"

"No, brother. She's okay. And the more you cling, the more it's gonna piss her off. Coming from someone on the receiving end of her ire, trust me, just let her be. I mean, you're lucky you didn't scare that nurse off altogether. If Ophelia hadn't told her you were newly bonded, it looked like she was about to throw Ophelia out, too. Looks like the nurse is taking some risks here. Just be cool."

Enzo ignores me and resumes his pacing.

Another minute later, Ophelia steps back out, immediately embraced by Enzo. She doesn't look annoyed, taking his possessiveness in stride.

She hikes her black backpack up a little higher on her shoulder, brushing off Enzo as he tries to take it from her, and continues her adventures into the night toward the strip club.

I wasn't lying when I told her I felt like we weren't bad-boy enough for her. She comes from a neighborhood where people are tough and hard. Their life experiences, her life experiences, are so different from ours. Not that I don't think we can hold our own—we definitely can—but it's different from what she grew up with.

I try to take it all in stride as we continue, finding ourselves in the alley outside Queenie's. I'd popped into the club to get eyes on her once or twice while she was working, but it's a whole new experience coming in now like this.

We ignore the scantily clad, half-naked women in the hallways and follow Ophelia to an office, where she knocks twice and lets herself in.

An alpha with a shaved head and neck tattoos glances up. His intensity rivals Enzo's, but his expression softens when he sees Ophelia.

Enzo growls when he stands, and it takes me by surprise. Enzo is an alpha, through and through, but before Ophelia, he never really acted like one. More like a beta—even keel, less aggressive, less possessive or territorial. I guess it was all in the reserves for when he met his mate.

Ophelia ignores him, and, to my surprise, so does the new alpha. Most might posture or be confrontational.

"Iggy, this is my mate Enzo, and Theo."

She didn't say mates, plural, but I still appreciate her including me in the sentence. Iggy nods, but his dead-eye stare doesn't look past Ophelia's bag. He doesn't make eye contact with us and doesn't respond to her. She acts like it's normal, so we go with it.

Iggy is like her brother, I remember. He, Caspian, and Red are of the Dante Pack. They own Queenie's and, from what we've been able to gather, are the unofficial leaders of South Loop. Like old-school mobsters, they offer protection and hustle right alongside the residents.

They do seem to be just as involved in omegas’ rights as our girl, despite the admittedly ass backwards way of showing it by running a strip club.

It's the last thing you'd expect, but maybe that's the point.

Iggy says very little, but his stance warms when he and Ophelia lean in to say goodnight after exchanging a bag full of pills for cash.

Damn, Sully asked me to find out what she was selling. Oh well, I'll just ask her later.

We follow Ophelia out the door, the smell of sex and pheromones ripe in the air. It makes my skin itch. I haven’t had sex in way too fucking long, and my alpha hates that she works here, around all this. I’m tensing, drawing Ophelia’s attention.

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