Page 1 of Heat Me

UTTERLY LOST

The doorbell jolted me out of my thoughts. I got up and opened it without even checking who it was—no point, really. Only one person ever showed up at my door since the court case: my cousin, Nathaniel. And, well, the repossession agents.

"Come in, Nathaniel," I said, waving him inside.

We headed to the kitchen, where I poured him a coffee without bothering to ask. Once I set it in front of him, I sat down and studied him for a moment.

Nathaniel had been through hell. His parents died in a house fire when he was just fifteen, leaving him with severe burns. My parents adopted him back then because his older brother, Hunter, was stationed overseas in the military and couldn’t take care of him.

The scars still told the story. One side of Nathaniel’s face was disfigured, his eye pale and blind from the burns. He’d lost an ear and some hair on that side, too. Bullies at school wereruthless, calling him a ‘monster’ (oh, how intimately I knew that word!). Eventually, he had to switch to private tutoring. His parents had left him a solid inheritance, so homeschooling seemed like the best way to shield him from further trauma, and my parents decided to go with it.

I was two years older, and from the start, I treated him like my little brother. We were close, and I couldn’t help but feel protective of him. Life had been beyond cruel to Nate, and it pissed me off how unfair it all was.

When my ex accused me of rape and my whole world collapsed, Nathaniel was the only one who stood by me—no questions asked. Sure, my parents didn’t reject me, but they were shaken by Tom’s calculated, manipulative story. He’d shown up at their house, bruised and sobbing, playing the victim so convincingly that they couldn’t help but feel deeply worried. My omega dad, in particular, was heartbroken and scared about what my future would look like. They offered me money, but I turned it down—it was my mess and my responsibility to handle.

It was different with my brothers, though. There was this undercurrent of tension, this unspoken distrust lingering between us. It felt like they couldn’t fully reconcile the brother they knew with the accusations, no matter how baseless they were.

Through all of it, Nathaniel never doubted me for a second.

If it weren’t for the burns, he’d be a ridiculously handsome alpha—very tall, with piercing light blue eyes, thick auburn hair typical of my father’s side of the family, where redheads were common, and Nate had striking features on top of that. But people only saw the scars, not the beauty.

"So, what’s going on, Storm?" Nathaniel asked, finally picking up his coffee. He winced and quickly put it back down.

"This fucking job is killing me," I muttered, pressing my fingers to my temple in a shooting gesture.

His good eyebrow shot up, his sharp blue eye narrowing. "Storm, working for a company setting up staged ‘assaults’ was a bad idea from the start. But hey, what do I know?"

"Oh, shut up," I snapped, annoyed. "You know why I took the job. Without that paycheck, I’d be drowning in debt. And I’d still owe you a ton."

Nathaniel shrugged. "I could’ve waited longer for you to pay me back. But this job—it’s crazy on so many levels. Anyway, I'm not here to lecture; we’ve already talked about that. So, spill it. What happened?"

I took a deep breath. The words seemed almost heavy. "One of the clients whose scenario I handled… is my True Mate. I’m 95% sure."

Nathaniel's eyes went wide, even the one that couldn't see, and I gave him a crooked smile. That reaction was pretty standard in ABO society when the subject of True Mates came up.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Believe me, I’ve been trying to make sense of it all day, too."

"But… how? You're on pheromone suppressants, how can you even tell?" He still stared at me as if I'd grown a second head.

"So many things pointed to it. Where to start?"

"Are you for real?"

"Absolutely."

Nathaniel went quiet, his expression a mix of curiosity and—was that longing? I knew what he was thinking.

After his accident, a nurse had once told him that finding his True Mate could heal his scars completely through the Joining. He had held on to that hope for years, obsessively reading the latest genetic studies on TM markers. But nothing ever came of it. These days, working from home, the odds of scenting his perfect mate were basically zero. And Nate had a small home-based software development startup.

His hand drifted to the scars on his face, and I hesitated. Should I say something? We’d talked about it before—after all, I worked in matchmaking and had access to a pretty big client database, plus advanced compatibility tests. No guarantees, sure, but it could help him. And then there was my special ability… the one nobody, not even Nathaniel, really believed in.

Nate was a particularly tough case—I’d never really managed to lure him out of his cave to seriously try what Fate’s Choice had to offer—things like marital contract fairs and other matchmaking opportunities. He was shy around people, always self-conscious. Putting himself out there was a difficult challenge for him.

"Are you… happy? Is this what you wanted?" he asked carefully.

I knew why he was asking. Not everyone wanted a perfect mate. The ‘Pull’ was intense, overwhelming. Once it kicked in, there was no escaping it. Couples who tried to resist didn’t survive.

These days, a lot of people opted for compatibility matches instead—choosing personality over biology—and using suppressants to keep things manageable. It felt more practical.

---