Page 56 of Want It All
I couldn’t stop flushing at that. ‘No. I’m in my room. In the bath.’
He exhaled. ‘How can I help?’
‘Tristan didn’t want me to be alone.’ I bit my lip. ‘I thought about asking you to come. Into my room, I mean. But if that happens … If you scent me …’ I trailed off, my teeth worrying at my skin.
‘I know,’ he said gently. ‘If we scent each other, and it’s not complementary …’ He was silent for a moment. ‘But Rose … I caught enough of your scent the night of the party to know that I like it. It doesn’t mean you’ll like mine, but I can tell you right now that I wanted more.’
‘More of my scent?’
‘More ofyou,’ he purred, and it heated me more thoroughly than the bath had done. ‘More ofeverything.’
‘Because I’m an omega.’
‘Because you’reyou. I’ve known other omegas. Many of them. None of them ever made my alpha take notice in the way you do.’
I sighed again, melting against the side of the bath. ‘Then what do we do?’
‘Firstly, I’m going to bring you a chai latte and every dessert I can scrounge from the kitchen,’ he said dryly. ‘Okaymy ass; Sebastian just messaged to let me know you’re in shock, little liar. I’ll leave everything outside your door. Then, when you’re ready, we can –’ He faltered. ‘I don’t know. What usually happens in this situation?’
‘I don’t think this situation has ausually,’ I answered.
‘You’re the historian. What did people do before the Unveiling?’
‘They dated,’ I said. ‘They went to bars, or out for dinner or coffee, or they saw movies.’
‘A movie night!’ He sounded so enthusiastic that I couldn’t help but smile. ‘In my room, so that –’
‘My scent won’t be too strong, but I’ll be able to scent you,’ I finished.
‘That sounds good. There’s only one problem.’
I frowned. ‘What is it?’
He laughed. ‘What will we watch?’
Themistwaseverywhere.
I froze. Fear closed my throat and seeped down my limbs. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry for help. I hated feeling so helpless – as an alpha, it was torture – but there was nothing I could do and no way that I could fight. The mist thickened at the edge of my sight, swirling inwards until all I could see was white.
Red disrupted the vision. ‘Byron,’ Tina whispered, emerging from the mist, her face covered in blood.
I sat up in bed, gasping for breath, shaking off the nightmare with a groan. It was the dream I hated the most, and the one that came most often. My body was on high alert, my skin tingling as my nerves fired, my alpha riding close to the surface, my instincts roaring.
Most alphas wouldn’t think twice about the white mist. It was simply the way our vision clouded when we were in a rut, our sight narrowing to the person we were fucking or fighting. It wasa survival response, allowing us to serve or protect, to cherish or damage.
But most alphas didn’t know what I knew: that a rut was how an instinct blackout – goingferal– started. It was indistinguishable from a rut; that was, until you couldn’t stop falling into the white, and your conscious thought went with it.
If the general populace ever found out, the outcry would be instant and wide. Scent blockers wouldn’t be the only thing in the water supply. Alphas would be permanently on rut suppressants.
The government had to know. They were the ones who funded the Alpha Retreats – whereat-riskalphas were taken for recovery – and the APF. But the government was good at keeping secrets, and it wasn’t as if most feral alphas came back to tell the tale.
Five percent was the number I’d been told. Five percent of alphas who descended into a state of pure instinct were rehabilitated completely back into society. Some larger number – twenty percent or so – had a partial return to their former lives, working or shopping or socialising in the outside world before returning to Retreats where they were monitored and cared for by APF doctors.
But the majority – around seventy-five percent – were termedunrecoverable. Seventy-five percent of feral alphas were hospitalised permanently, or until their hearts gave out under the pressure of their raging hormones, and they died.
Ruts are natural and needed,Dr. Ford had told me more than once, his voice gentle.Ruts help an alpha serve an omega for the duration of their heat, a feat they would otherwise be unable to manage. Ruts help an alpha protect their pack from danger. Ruts, in themselves, are not the problem.
An alpha had control during a rut. Their vision might narrow, but they knew what they were doing, who they were fucking orfighting, knew whether their hands were caressing or hurting. It was only when a rut turned into something else – when the alpha inside overrode humanity – that it became dangerous.
