Page 84 of Crossing the Top Line

“Is this something we need to call 911 for?” Oliver asks, kneeling in front of her to try to look into her face.

But she turns away from him, too, her chest heaving as she backs away as far as she can from both of us. I move to the other side of the sectional, recognizing the wide-eyed panic of a cornered animal on an instinctual level. Oliver doesn’t move, ever the pillar of calm in this literal and emotional storm.

Tori looks around, maybe trying to find somewhere to go, or to find a distraction, but after a moment, she sags, defeated. My heart twists with an emotion I don’t dare name as she pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms tight around them.

“I’m not going to die, if that’s what you’re asking,” she grumbles, hiding her face in her knees.

“Maybe we’ve got something here that could help,” Eli chimes in, his words filled with nervous optimism that none of us share.

Tori shakes her head but doesn’t look up. “I highly doubt it. Unless you’ve got heat blockers and hormones stashed in your bathroom cabinet,” she snipes, though her words don’t have any real heat or anger behind them.

My stomach drops like a lead weight, and I look away. I’d had a feeling this might have been related to what I put her through, but hearing her confirm it hits different.

“Heat…blockers?” Oliver echoes, thoroughly confused.

“Yeah. And strong ones. I’ve got one of my two hormone replacements, my mood stabilizer, my birth control, and my blood thinner in my emergency case, but I must have forgotten to refill the blocker and the other hormone tablet.”

Her words hang in the relative silence, the gravity of them underscored by a clap of thunder outside. I swallow the sudden lump in my throat. She’d said she was still dealing with the physical consequences of my actions, but I don’t think I could have imagined it was anything like this.

“Jesus, what the—that’s—why—”

“Ask. Him.” Tori’s ice-cold words cut off Eli’s flabbergasted ramblings, her head lifting just enough for her eyes to lock with mine. In the light from the candles, the mismatched blue irises flicker like the hottest flames of Hell. Oliver and Eli turn their attention to me, and the questions in their eyes louder than any words they could have shouted. But as I try to speak, my words catch around the lump in my throat, and I have to swallow before I try again.

“When I was at Michigan, in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I was…I wanted some spending money while I trained with Coach McQueen. So I signed up with the campus omega clinic. As one of their heat breakers. Toward the end of summer, right before classes were set to start again, I was called in to help with…”

I trail off, face flushing hot. My head is still too heavy on my shoulders from all the tequila I’ve had in the last few hours, but the memory of those three days I spent with Tori at the clinic makes it spin for an entirely different reason. I tried to push away the dreams and the nightmares, but no matter how much I tried, I could never forgether.Her scent, the noises she made, the feel of her wrapped around me, the way she looked at me like I was an angel or her savior.

But that look is long gone, the look in her eyes damning me to the deepest circle of Hell without needing to say a word.

“But a few days in, my agent called me. The Wardens wanted me for their training camps. And I…left.”

That last word drops like a bomb in the room, sending out shock waves that take a moment to penetrate the shock and horror on my roommates’ faces. Eli is the first to recover, his face twisting into the most vicious snarl I’ve ever seen from him. But Oliver is the first to move, a growl my only warning before he lunges at me. I manage to scramble to my feet, but he’s faster, grabbing me by the collar of my t-shirt and pinning me to the wall between two built-in bookcases. His near-yellow eyes are narrowed in a glare, burning hotter than the sun.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he shouts in my face, shaking me by my collar.

My instincts react before I give the command, trying to take a swing for his face but missing. Oliver’s arms are ever so slightly longer than mine, so he stands back out of the way, still holding me against the wall with one hand. The other is curled into a fist, cocked back and ready to fly.

“I didn’t fucking know! I had no clue that leaving would be… I didn’t know.”

I start off shouting back, but my strength waivers until my voice is barely above a whisper. The half-truth sits like ash on my tongue, drying all moisture, until I’m practically choking. The clinic staff tried to get me to stay, but I’d been reassured that there would be someone else to take my place. I look at Tori, trying to beg her with my eyes to say anything that might redeem me.

“They tried to put me with someone else, but the damage was already done,” she says, her voice tight and trembling slightly.

“What. Damage.” Oliver’s demand is directed at Tori, but all his anger is still focused on me. The fist at his side shakes from the effort he must be exerting to keep it from turning my face into ground beef.

“My hormones were so strong that the psychological damage of being abandoned was multiplied threefold, at least according to the hospital psychologist. In those first few weeks, even the scent of an alpha on someone else’s clothes would send me into a violent panic attack, along with any mention of heats. It was decided that, until I was mentally capable of handling it, my estrous cycle should be put on pause,” Tori explains, hardly any inflection in her words, like she’s dissociated from the emotion they might bring.

“How long has it been?” Eli asks gently.

“Six years. I haven’t gone into heat in six years.”

Only my highly tuned reflexes prevent me from catching Oliver’s fist with my nose, though I don’t move fast enough to dodge it entirely. His knuckles graze my cheek and ear, the glancing blow stinging, but it’s better than taking the force of a fully wound right hook to the face. When I look back to his face, Oliver’s lips are pulled back in a sneer of disgust, which hits me harder than any physical blow he could have dished out. He lets me go, taking several steps back, like he doesn’t even want to touch me.

“I’m so sorry, Tori. That’s—”

“Save your pity for someone who wants it, Elijah,” Tori hurls at the alpha, though her forehead creases with regret only moments after she says it. “Sorry, that’s…that’s not fair. My meds are wearing off, and I get really bitchy.”

Oliver gives me one more scathing glare before turning around and rejoining Tori on the sectional. She doesn’t move away when he sits close, putting a hand on her arm.

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