Page 41 of Stream Heat
He gave me water. I choked down two sips before I had to stop. He didn’t push.
“I’ll leave these here.” He lined up the protein bars. “Eat when you can. I’ll check back in an hour.”
He stood to go, and panic clawed up in my chest. I didn’t want to be alone, but I couldn’t make myself say it. The words tangled, pride too strong.
I grabbed his wrist, barely, but enough he noticed. “Wait,” I whispered, then let go immediately, hating myself for the slip.
He waited. “What do you need, Kara?”
Everything. Nothing. Impossible to admit.
I shook my head, turning away. “I’m fine.”
He knew it was a lie. I could feel the weight of it, but he left anyway. “I’ll be down the hall if you need.”
The door clicked shut, a sound that felt a lot like defeat.
I stayed curled around the pillow for a while, breathing in the faint hint of sandalwood and linen on the cloth. It wasn’t enough, not even close. But it was all I was willing to accept.
The water, the food, they were tokens, reminders that someone cared. I should have wanted them, but I didn’t. I just wanted the ache to stop, the need to fade, the nightmare of being at the mercy of my own biology to let up for two goddamn seconds.
Instead, I buried my face in the pillow and chased any microscopic comfort, haunted by the fantasy of what might have happened if I’d asked for what I really needed.
For him to stay.
For him to hold me, cover me, knot me until this burning emptiness wasn’t the only thing left inside.
The words echoed in my skull, taunting me.
Please don’t go.
Please help.
Please make it stop.
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Pride had always been my best armor. So I took the pain and the shame and did what I did best. I suffered by myself, while an Alpha who could fix it waited out in the hall for an invitation I’d never send.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jace
The audio spectrum on my monitor flatlined, dead as cold stone, and that’s when I knew something was seriously wrong.
I’d been deep in post production, chewing through the usual ASMR stuff for last night’s session. Fine-tuning the keyboard sounds, fiddling with page turns, basically pumping out the digital bedtime stories insomniacs begged for. Normal. Nothing out of place. Then Quinn’s audio feed bricked itself. No fade, no digital hiccup like someone hit mute or had to bolt for a bathroom break. Just absolute silence. The kind that means drop everything, something’s bad.
I peeled off my headphones, feeling the absence of their weight like a phantom limb. The house was too quiet. Most people don’t pick up on things like that, but I make my living catching the spaces between sounds. There should’ve been Quinn’s constant keyboard chatter through the wall. There wasn’t. There was nothing but this electric tension, vibrating through the drywall, the sharp charge you only get when alpha pheromones start spiking.
Malik’s footsteps, deliberate, soft-padded, moving down the hall toward her wing.
I told myself to keep editing. Trust Malik to handle it. He’s supposed to be our emotional deadman’s switch, the only one on earth who could talk Reid down from a rut or convince Theo to sleep when he was spiraling out. If anyone could help an Omega melting down in withdrawal, it was Malik.
But then my sister's voice cut through my head, gravel-rough and raw as a throatful of salt.They don’t get it. How alone you are. How everything in you is clawing at the walls, begging to get out, but if you do, you’re just proving you’re exactly what they always said you were.
Couldn’t just sit there. I killed my editor and pulled up the house technical feeds. Not to stalk, I’m not a creep, but because sometimes the data is the only way to know what’s actually going on. Quinn’s streaming program said she’d thrown up her “tech difficulties” overlay twenty-three minutes ago. PC was still running, lights flickering, but no inputs. No mouse, no keyboard. No Quinn.
That was wrong. Quinn would’ve been back in five, max, with a vicious meme about her own incompetence and a flawless headshot to rub it in.
There, a high noise barely audible from down the hall. Pain.
