Page 158 of Citius

Cal asked her to repeat her email twice while typing it into his phone. “Thank you for trusting me. I’ll let you know what I find out as soon as possible—oh, one more thing before I let you go. Do you mind if Wyatt goes to your place to feed the cats and gather some essentials?”

I looked at Cal in confusion, feeling exceptionally dumb. How was I supposed to get into their loft?

“No need. He has a code.” Cal turned and raised a brow at me, still clicking that damned pen. “Don’t you?”

Code? What code—oh.Thatcode. The one Morgan sent me to access their home gym because I made everything smell like compost. A code I never intended to use.

But there I was, an hour later, after taking a rideshare to collect my car from campus, standing in the foyer of Morgan’s loft, face-to-face with an enormous black and white cat.

I recognized him from Morgan’s social media, although he looked more like a mobile footstool than a feline in person.

“You must be Tenny.” I crouched down and held out my hand. He responded with an eager head butt, soft fur brushing against myknuckles. So far, so good.

“Hungry, buddy? Let’s get you some of the good stuff.”

I pulled out my phone and reviewed Cal’s hastily typed instructions. First up—feed the cats.

Open the tall cabinet to the far left to find wet food. Divide one can between two bowls. Set the cans on thedesignated mats on the kitchen floor. Top up the automatic feeder with kibble.

Check.

Next, retrieve themedication basket from the adjacent upper cabinet and photograph every bottle and label. Easy enough. But why were there so many of them? Morgan couldn’t possibly take so many medications every day, could she?

I knew the basics of what happened after her accident, but clearly, her case was more complicated than I’d realized.

Onto step three: fetch her phone charger, gray weighted blanket, and a few soft furnishings from her nest. Simple.

I hurried into the omega suite, running my hand along the molding on the third panel to the right, searching for the hidden latch that would unlock the door, just like Owen’s server room.

With a quick press, the panel swung open. Light from the suite foyer spilled onto a plush carpet littered with shards of glass and overturned furniture. I inched inside and eased up the dimmer switch. The full, devastating extent of the mess made the bottom of my stomach drop out.

Smashed vases and broken picture frames. Holes punched through a fabric dividing screen. A fake pothos plant torn to pieces, its dismembered vines scattered about. Bedding stripped from the mattress—ripped, and maybe even stained in a few places.

The walls were ruined. Entire sections of the green velvet paneling were shredded, exposing the padded infrastructure underneath.

I must have the wrong room. This wasn’t an omega’s nest—it was a disaster zone. A shambolic fallout shelter.

Nests were supposed to be sacred spaces. Intimate havens. A refuge. But this…

This waswrong. Just like her scent.

Betraying a total schism between Morgan and her omega.

The silent screams echoing through the room were deafening—a testament to her decade of pain.

The constant physical struggle. Being forced to abandon her dreams of winning another world title on vault or going back to the Olympics. Accepting her sudden fall from the greatest height of success in oursport—and yet refusing to give up on herself.

And she’d done it all without me.

She didn’t need me. Didn’t want anything from me. My trio of gift bags sat neglected on a credenza. She hadn’t even bothered to unpack them. Despite being her scent match.

The most glorious promise, delivered in an unworthy package.

I had no right to interfere in her life, to use our compatible pheromones as an excuse to force us together. But what if she didn’t pass out because of a bad interaction between her medications?

Overpowering pheromones had alerted everyone that something was wrong with me. Even after weeks on scent blockers, I still caught whiffs of noxious compost clinging to my workout clothes and towels—the same way lingering traces of rotten orchid and rusted metal now clung to my skin.

If she had endured for years—painstakingly rebuilding her life—only for my presence to trigger the onset of mate waning syndrome…

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