Page 19 of Heat Clinic

“Sam, but… yeah.” I hook my thumbs in the waistband of my fresh scrubs. “Heat minder is the actual job title if you wanna get specific. Is this a bad time?” I pointedly look at his phone.

“No, now is fine. I’m talking with my packmate.”

I nod and glance at his car. It’s one of those fancy new self-driving electric ones. The kind that starts at fifty grand and goes up from there. Way up. “Cool. So… she likes you.”

His eyebrows climb. “She said that?”

Laughing, I cock my head and stare at him. “Naw, man. She’s passed out in her nest. But I’ve been doing this a long time and I can tell. She likes you.”

His broad chest rumbles with a deep purr.

“Marcus!” someone shouts through the phone. “I can’t hear anything but your purr. You’re bloody rumbling in my ear like a lorry truck.”

The alpha shuts down his purr with a grimace. “Sorry. She’s mine. Ours!” The voice on the other end of the line says something I can’t hear from over here. “She’sours.”

“Anyway, if you want to stick around a few more hours, the front office opens at six. You can fill out the paperwork.”

He glances at his expensive watch. “Fine, I can wait five more hours. And then I can take her home?”

I blink. “Home? No. What? Naw, man. She doesn’t know you. You can fill out the request for courtship paperwork, but it’s up to her if she’s interested.” When the alpha does nothing but stare at me blankly, I cock my head. “This isn’t the fourteen hundreds. You can’t make off with an omega just because you like the way she smells.”

He growls. He fucking growls at me! Alphas. Knotheads, each and everyone of them. I throw my hands up and start backing away slowly.

“You can stay or you can go, but taking her home is not onlyso not a fucking option, dude,it’s also illegal. She’s in our care and won’t be released until she’s legally fit to take care of herself, or her emergency contact comes to collect her. So even if I wanted to just hand her over to some random dude, which I don’t, I can’t. Bashing my head in isn’t going to change that. You’re welcome to hang out and wait. It’s a free country, and I’m not the police. But do everyone a favor and wait in your car or go get a cup of coffee at the diner down the street. We’re open twenty-four seven for emergency cases so you can’t be hanging around in the dark parking lot like a horror movie villain. You’re gonna scare the omegas.”

The voice on the other end of the phone call cackles.

“I amnotlurking,” the alpha grumbles, his brows clashing in a glower that would make a weaker beta knock their knees together.

I make a big show of looking around and then glancing at my bare wrist as if I have on a watch. “Right.” Because it’s totally normal to hang out in the empty parking lot of a free clinic an hour after the treatment cycle ends. I walk away from him. He’ll figure it out. It’s not my problem.

“At least tell me her name!” the alpha calls out to me.

I freeze and spin back around. “No. That’s also super fucking illegal, dude. If she wants you to know her name, she’ll tell you after you fill out your courtship request form and she decidesifshe wants to contact you or not.”

His face falls as if I’ve gut punched him, and then he recovers like it never happened. Like he has no idea how this works. “You’re very protective of her.”

In my head, I finish the sentence for him.For a beta.But he never voices it. Smart man.

“How long have you known her?” he asks.

“Like…” I do the math. “Seven hours.”

That reminds me I need to sleep soon. Hopefully, she lets me curl up in her nest with her. She seems fun to cuddle. The alternative is having someone from day shift swap out with me in the morning, and that idea makes my gut clench. I don’t want anyone else touching her.

“And when did you know?” he asks.

“Know what?”

“That she’s yours too.”

The concept he says so calmly makes me flinch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a heat minder. This is my job.”

He squares off at me, his shoulders straightening into a flat line that makes him look even bigger.Damn, he’s built.It’s hard to see the alphas through the slots in the stations. And after a while, all the alphas kind of blur together. Big, broad, and blunt. Even the female alphas are bigger than most betas. They’re all a bygone relic from an ancient time when alphas led small clans, protecting the weaker betas and the omega breeders from rival packs. Now they tend to run companies or work in law enforcement or do skilled labor jobs. It’s us betas who fill in the gaps and keep everything moving.

“You feel it in your gut,” he says. “Like a pull. Looking at her makes everything brighter. Touching her makes butterflies swarm in your stomach. Fucking her… it feels like heaven.”

Alphas. They love to get cuntstruck at first knot.

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